Comparison

Tower defense vs Five Elements Tower Defense

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Tower defense

Defend your lone tower against endless enemy waves by strategically building your arsenal with random elemental weapons and upgrades. Unleash devastating attacks and status effects to survive punishing scenarios and unlock new towers.

Highlights
  • Randomized weapon shop
  • Elemental weapons (Fire, Water, Earth, Air)
  • Stackable upgrades
  • Diverse attack types (splash, barrage, bounce)
  • Status effects (Stun, Slow, Fear)
  • Unlockable new towers
  • Challenging scenarios
Features
Read full description

Stranded in the heart of a relentless onslaught, your lone tower must hold the line! Build your arsenal from a random shop that refreshes every 15 seconds—grab powerful elemental weapons (Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Basic) and stack game-changing upgrades. Watch your tower morph into an unstoppable juggernaut! Crush enemy waves with devastating attacks—splash, barrage, bounce, you name it—while inflicting nasty status effects like Stun, Movement Slow, or Fear. Climb challenges, survive punishing scenarios, and unlock new towers to annihilate even tougher enemies. It’s chaotic, it’s intense, and it’s all on you to keep your tower standing! Download now for free, brace for mayhem, and prove you can survive the onslaught!

About

Five Elements Tower Defense

Features
Read full description

Five Elements Tower Defense is built around one idea: every tower and every enemy belongs to an element, and the matchup decides the fight. METAL CUTS WOOD. WOOD DRAINS EARTH. Metal beats Wood, Wood beats Earth, Earth beats Water, Water beats Fire, Fire beats Metal. Attack the element you counter and you deal 1.5x damage. Attack the element that counters you and you drop to 0.7x. Elementless enemies ignore the cycle entirely — those you beat with position and timing instead. Each element brings its own effect from tier 1: Metal shreds armor, Wood poisons straight through it, Water freezes and slows, Fire burns, Earth stuns and empowers the towers around it. BUILD, UPGRADE, SPECIALIZE Eight tower types, three tiers each. At max tier every tower forks into one of two specializations — a permanent choice you cannot undo, so read the wave ahead before you commit. Selling refunds 60% of everything you put into that tower. KNOW WHAT IS COMING Twelve enemy types and six bosses. Armored enemies shrug off raw damage. Regenerators heal back what you cannot finish. Flyers ignore your maze and cross in a straight line. Splitters become two enemies when they die. Bosses shield themselves, summon escorts, or disable every tower in a radius, and enraged enemies cancel your elemental advantage outright. The next-wave preview shows exactly what is coming, and warns you when nothing you own can shoot at flyers. COMMAND THE FIELD YOURSELF Send a controllable hero anywhere on the map to body-block a lane. Your hero levels up during the run and revives at the rally point after falling. Recruit soldiers to hold a chokepoint. Call in an artillery strike on the densest cluster, or an Iron Curtain that drops every enemy on the field to a third of their speed. 23 MAPS, FIVE REGIONS, ONE ENDLESS ARENA Grassland, frost, ash, shadow and void, each with its own tileset and its own boss. Every campaign map is scored 1 to 3 stars on the lives you keep. Clear it, then unlock Heroic (tougher enemies, half the lives) and Iron (a single life, waves that never stop). Then step into the Endless Arena, where all six bosses rotate and the only question is how long you last. Global leaderboard included. SPEND YOUR STARS Stars buy six permanent talents: damage, gold income, starting lives, starting gold, skill cooldown and hero power. Prices climb, and there are never enough stars for all of them, so you commit to a direction — then refund and rebuild whenever you want. ALSO INCLUDED • Daily challenges that pay out mid-run • Achievements and lifetime stats • Cloud save across your devices • 15 languages, right-to-left included • Colorblind mode that recolors enemies and interface alike • Fast-forward, auto-wave, pinch to zoom, four targeting modes per tower • Plays offline — the game never blocks on the network Place the right tower. Hold the line.

Screenshots

Tower defense4 screens
Five Elements Tower Defense4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is ads: Five Elements Tower Defense at none against Tower defense's shown. Tower defense's advantage is iOS requirement (13.0 vs 15.0). On price, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Tower defense versus Five Elements Tower Defense: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterTower defenseFive Elements Tower Defense
PriceFreeFree
Rating2.5 (2 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings2 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 9 days—
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationAd-supported—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS13.0 — better15.0
Further details — not scored
Size453 MB72 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperPocket factory ABViet Anh Nguyen

In-app purchases

None

Tower defense

No in-app purchases

None

Five Elements Tower Defense

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Tower defense free?
Tower defense is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Five Elements Tower Defense free?
Five Elements Tower Defense is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Tower defense or Five Elements Tower Defense have ads?
Tower defense shows ads; Five Elements Tower Defense does not.

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