I was browsing the Internet the other day, I was looking at Wired Magazine’s best games of 2007. There was one game in that list that I decided to have a look at – big mistake. I discovered one of the most addictive games ever made, desktop tower defense.

Those people that play real-time strategy games would no doubt be familiar with the tower defense custom maps in Warcraft III. In these maps players would compete against each other to stop wave after wave of bad guys or creeps, as they were known. They would build a variety of towers that fired projectiles. You would build a maze of towers to make the creeps follow the longest possible route and hopefully kill them before they exited the screen. Each successive wave would get harder.

Hand drawn games have taken this idea, stuck it in a web browser and given it the name desktop tower defense. It may not be 3D like Warcraft III, but it lacks none of the fun or addictiveness. The game has all sorts of levels of difficulty. I advise doing the fun challenges as the hard mode is incredibly, frustratingly hard.

If you’re a fan of addictive browser games click here. Be warned you will lose hours of life that you will never get back again.

Five stars! (Out of five)

There is a game, its browser-based, its massively multiplayer and has over a billion players. It is not prohibitively expensive to play and it is not resource intensive; you won’t need to install a new graphics card to play when this game. This game doesn’t necessarily require a lot of attention, you can check on it once a week or once per hour and still be successful either way. The great thing about this game is if you are good at it, it pays! The best thing about this game is it is fun. What is this game? Why the sharemarket of course.

I play world of Warcraft. To start with I was crap, but over a period of years I have become very good at the game, but now I’m sick of it. And what have I achieved playing this game? Lots of wasted time where I could have been writing. I could have written several novels in all the time I’ve wasted playing this game. But with the sharemarket you may lose to begin with, but when you get good at playing the sharemarket you win in more than one way. It is not wasted time.

Anyway I think I’ll sign up. I will tell you how I do.