Total Defence Tower Defence Game lets you defend Singapore against threats
Two NUS High school students spent 300 hours making this educational game for kids.
Building a fun game while trying to incorporate Singapore’s Total Defence values may seem like an impossible task, but these NUS High students seem to have figured it out.
The creatively named Total Defence Tower Defence Game (or TDTDG for short) features six towers based on the six Total Defence pillars of Military Defence, Civil Defence, Economic Defence, Social Defence, Digital Defence, and Psychological Defence.
Aimed at kids and teenagers from ages 10-15, the game lets players put down towers that attack threats such as Terrorists, self-radicalised individuals, and everyone’s favourite enemy, the Internet Troll.
Each tower can be upgraded for better effects, such as the Cheerleader boosting the attack speed of nearby towers or Firefighters stunning the enemy.
“I've played quite a few Tower Defence games and this game was inspired quite a bit by the popular Bloons Tower Defence,” said co-creator Siddhaarth Dharani.
"So I think the gameplay is a little bit similar to that, but it definitely has its differences."
Together with co-creator Wong Yue Heng, the duo spent 400 hours developing the game while still busy with schooling.
Graphics for the game were enhanced by a partner, CraveFX, which was arranged by Nexus, a Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) department that's focused on driving national education initiatives.
The students' own teachers were not involved, and they instead had assistance from Nanyang Polytechnic lecturers.
The game features a total of 40 levels, which Wong added was definitely possible to beat with the right choices of towers.
As part of the lead up to National Day, NUS High will also hold a school-wide competition for the game.
The winner will be the first to beat the game, or the student with the highest level reached when the time runs out.
You can check out the game here.
Do note that you may want to play this on a laptop or a tablet, as the game’s isn’t quite designed around touch, and the screens looked small and hard to play even on an iPhone 14 Pro Max’s relatively large 6.69-inch display.
"We realised while coding the game that when we tried to play it on mobile phones, the buttons and the UI would just be too small and would be hard to handle. So we decided, okay, let's just focus on making it suitable for PCs, laptops and tablets instead," said Wong.
"Because right now, MOE has the PLD programme, Personal Learning Device, where each student gets their own tablet-sized laptop. So if we optimise for this type of tablets, then our target audience, which are students, can play the game better."
Aloysius Low is an ex-CNET editor with more than 15 years of experience. He's really into cats and is currently reviewing products at canbuyornot.com
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