If you’ve never played Towermadness, the rest of this post will make zero sense. Leave now. Or better yet, buy it for your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad; it’s one of the best strategy games I’ve ever played.
The map Endurance is crazy impossible to beat. It’s not the map that’s difficult, it’s the unending number of aliens they send at you: over 300 waves! But I’ll show you how to beat it! I don’t know if there’s a name for this strategy, but I’ll just call it The Reversal Strategy
Check out the first image above. Notice the tower layout, and notice there’s one, long winding path. If you’ve played the game at all, you’ve figured out the most basic strategy is to make the shortest path from the saucers to the sheep as long as possible in order to maximize shooting time. I’ve drawn the path out, half blue, and half purple. The blue path is that which the aliens will follow. But what’s up with the purple path? In the next image, notice the tower circled in red, just within the entrance to the sheep area. Suppose you delete it, and then rebuild it just one square to the right. What happens? The aliens turn around and head backwards! Yes, they’re retreating! Ok, not really, but what’s really happened is you’ve changed the shortest path to the sheep so that they now need to loop all the way around the map again. They’ll backtrack through the blue path, and continue on to the purple. If they’ve survived long enough to get to the end of the purple path, simply toggle the tower in the sheep entrance again. Continue reversing until all aliens are destroyed.
On this particular level, Endurance, I built a dozen fully upgraded flame throwers and a dozen nukes. I thought this was overkill (and it was for most of the game), but when the last boss aliens came around, I had to reverse back and forth many many times in order to kill them. It took several minutes kill the last ones. No matter how good of a maze you’ve built, and how much high powered weaponry you’ve built, it’s impossible to beat this level without the Reversal Strategy (if you can prove me wrong, I’d love to know how else to beat this level!)
PS - If you’re wondering how to take screenshots on your iPod/iPhone, hold the home button and then press the power button. Then email the photo to yourself.
