Ninja Kiwi Games, the prolific developers of the 2007 hit flash game series, Bloons Tower Defense, have just announced their latest spin-off title in the BTD series. This past Wednesday, November 19, saw the teaser announcement of this spin-off with a short six-second video of a tack-shooter tower standing up and beginning to walk away, revealing the playable monkey character within; a concept never before toyed with by the series until now.
Sharing the same art style as their latest hit, Bloons TD 6, the recently announced spin-off title, Bloons Blitz, sees players take on the role of an individual tower in a “bullet-heaven” style gamemode akin to games like Poncle’s Vampire Survivors. Where a bullet-hell, like Toby Fox’s Undertale, or Team Shanghai Alice’s Touhou Project series, might see the player faced with what appears to be a wall of enemy bullets to dodge if they wish to survive the encounter, a bullet-heaven like Bloons Blitz sees the player become the source of this projectile hellfire, though it might not feel so powerful in the beginning. The countless, slow-moving enemies surrounding you become obstacles in their own right, requiring your character’s level and damage output to be high enough to take on the countless waves increasing in difficulty. The recently popular mobile game, Habby PTE’s Survivor.io, is an incredibly close comparison to what it appears Bloons Blitz is attempting to encapsulate; however, that game itself is essentially a not-so-subtle rip-off of Vampire Survivors.
The core concept of Bloons Tower Defense has always been incredibly simple. The player takes on the role of the monkey military, placing various spike-throwing monkey towers in strategic and intentional placements along a given path, and as the game begins, an ever-increasing onslaught of balloons with varying attributes marches down the path. Depending on the player’s strategic tower placements and prioritized tower upgrades, one run might end up looking far more successful than another. Towers throughout all of the Bloons titles thus far have been stationary, save for a few special cases like the helicopter and plane towers introduced in more recent releases. Bloons Blitz, being a bullet heaven title, however, leaves room for speculation as to how the game will handle its different bloon types. It is also unclear whether the series’ well-known set bloon path system will carry over from previous Bloons titles, as the individual tower you play as is no longer immobile, meaning that players could theoretically avoid all camo, ceramic, or MOAB bloons, for example. The main question here is, what will the game’s loss condition be? This could be easily answered by the loss condition simply being touching the bloons directly with your character; however, this was never the case in any previous Bloons titles, as your health would only go down when the bloons successfully reached the end of their path unpopped.
Fans of the Bloons Tower Defense series are sure to be surprised by this sudden spin-off announcement by Ninja Kiwi.