Make a tower defense with AI

In a tower defense, enemies walk along a path and you place towers to stop them before they reach the end. You earn money for defeating enemies and spend it on more towers. It is a satisfying genre to build because the fun comes from balance: waves that push you, towers that feel worth their cost, and money that keeps you choosing.

Name the genre, what the player does, the goal, and the vibe. For our tower defense:

A top-down tower defense where enemies follow a winding path and I place towers on the grass to shoot them. I earn coins for each enemy I defeat and spend coins to buy more towers. I lose if too many enemies reach the exit. Clean and colorful, with clear, readable shapes.

That gives OddShed the path, the place-and-shoot verb, the coin loop, the lose condition, and a readable look to aim for.

Send the prompt and play the game in the live preview as soon as it builds. Place a tower or two, let a wave run, and watch how it feels. Note whether the path is easy to read, whether towers hit reliably, and whether the coin amounts feel fair.

Tune the place-shoot-earn-spend loop first, one change at a time:

• Let me click an empty grass tile to place a tower, and show its range before I confirm.
• Make towers shoot the nearest enemy in range automatically.
• Give me coins for each enemy defeated and show my coin total at the top.
• Stop me from placing a tower if I cannot afford it.

Now add the structure that makes a run feel like a game:

• Send enemies in waves that get a little harder each time.
• Show which wave I am on and how many enemies are left.
• Give me a few lives, and take one each time an enemy reaches the exit.
• End the game with a win screen if I clear the last wave, or a lose screen if I run out of lives.

Balance is where a tower defense becomes fun. Play a full run, then nudge the numbers until it feels fair but tense:

• If it is too easy, make later waves bigger or faster, or make towers cost more.
• If it is too hard, give a bit more starting money or a slightly cheaper basic tower.
• Add a second tower type with a different trade-off, like a slow but powerful one.

Change one number, play, and adjust again. Builds that change the game save a restore point first, so a balance experiment that goes wrong is one step back. Export the version you are happy with.

• Use clear, colorful shapes so the path and towers read at a glance.
• Add a small sound when a tower fires and a coin sound when I earn money.
• Add a short shake or flash when an enemy reaches the exit.

When it feels finished, share it by link or publish it to the public game library. For a different genre, try the guide on making a platformer with AI.