Merge Tower Defense Game: I Lost Wave 30 With the Boss at 33%

Wave 30. The Reactor Colossus had 33% of its health bar left, and my barricade read 0 / 420. The game announced it on a panel titled The barricade fell!, and I stared at that panel for a long time. Barricade Z is a merge tower defense game that loads right in your browser, nothing to install, and that was the last wave of its campaign.

The deal in one breath: turrets shoot on their own, you decide which turrets exist. You build them with coins, drag two identical ones together to get the next level, park your best five beside the barricade and hold thirty waves against a horde with three bosses.

Full disclosure: Polar Games made this game and I am the studio panda, so season my enthusiasm to taste. I still put my own defeat in the headline. I played at a desk with keyboard and mouse, with the game in English, and finished the campaign twice. Here is how it went, plus the buttons I wish I had pressed sooner.

Play Barricade Z

Merge tower defense game basics: scrap, pairs and five gold slots

Zombies walk in from the left along a cracked road. On the right, sandbags make the barricade and a grid of metal plates is your arsenal: one column of five gold-framed plates sits right behind the barricade, and two more columns of five form the workshop, ten spaces for turrets that are not on duty yet. Only the five gold plates defend you. The other ten are the bench.

I started with 45 coins, a Build button at 12 coins and four Lv 1 scrap turrets: two on the line, two on the bench. A tutorial bubble said Drag a tower onto an IDENTICAL one to merge them. Two Lv 1 became one Lv 2, and the chip in the top-left corner showed the next goal.

PolarzinhoFour tiny scrap turrets and a bubble telling me to stack them. Stacking things is basically my whole career, so I felt qualified.

Coins come from kills and from a bonus for every wave you hold. Each tower costs a little more than the last: my Build button went from 12 to 13 coins after the first turret, then read 17 on wave 3 and 18 on wave 4.

Twelve levels of turret

A turret goes from Lv 1 to Lv 12, from the Scrap turret and Twin barrels through the Minigun, Frag cannon and Rocket pod to the Tesla coil, the Railgun and the Singularity turret. Each first-time level pops up a New tower unlocked! card with its name, a very cheap way to make a panda feel like an inventor.

How to play, step by step

1. Press Play. The campaign opens on wave 1 in the Abandoned suburbs, and tutorial bubbles guide the first moves.
2. Drag two identical turrets together. The result sits where you dropped it, one level up.
3. Drag your strongest turret onto one of the five gold-framed plates beside the barricade.
4. Press B, or tap Build, when you have the coins. The new Lv 1 lands on a free workshop plate.
5. Let the timer run or press Space to call the next wave early.
6. From wave 3 use the Grenade (G, then click the field). From wave 7 use Overdrive (O).

Grenade and overdrive: two buttons for a bad wave

Both start locked, and the buttons say when they open: Grenade shows Wave 3, Overdrive shows Wave 7. On wave 3 a banner shouted New ability: Grenade! and later, when the crowd bunched up, a bubble said Tight horde! Tap Grenade and pick a target.

Press G or tap the button, it switches to Choose target, then you tap the field. I always aimed at the thickest clump. Afterwards the button shows a cooldown: a little circular arrow and a number of seconds.

PolarzinhoA crate on a parachute drifted into the middle of my grenade moment. I am a panda. Anything that falls from the sky is lunch until proven otherwise.

Overdrive arrives on wave 7 with its own banner, New ability: Overdrive! Press O and the button counts down an Active timer (I saw Active · 4s), then falls into a cooldown like ↻ 34s. It is the panic button, and panic is when I remembered it existed.

Waves, elites and bosses in this tower defense game

The campaign is thirty waves in three places, and a banner announces each: Abandoned suburbs at the start, Industrial yard from wave 11, Containment zone from wave 21. The Up next strip in the top-left previews what is coming, and waves 5, 15 and 25 carried an Elite in the horde warning.

Waves 1 to 10: the suburbs and the foreman

Early waves are a stroll of green walkers in shirts and ties. Runners with red headbands join soon, and by wave 9 the crowd was full of hard-hat workers. Cheap turrets are plenty here.

Wave 10 is the first boss. A title card slides in, BOSS · WAVE 10, The Demolisher, Tears down walls with its bare hands, and a giant in a yellow hard hat walks onto the road swinging a sledgehammer.

PolarzinhoHe brought a sledgehammer to a barricade fight. I brought coins to a boss fight. Only one of us read the invitation.

He went down, the game said The Demolisher defeated!, and then it tipped me: BOSS LOOT! LV 6, a Lv 6 turret on a free workshop plate.

PolarzinhoA free Lv 6 for beating the foreman. If every boss tips like this, I am applying to be a boss.

Waves 11 to 20: the yard and the mother

The yard swaps asphalt for concrete and hazard stripes, and the horde grows new faces. I noticed an Exploder around wave 13 (goggles, dynamite on the back), a Brute around wave 15 and a Spitter by wave 19.

Wave 20 is the Toxic Matriarch, introduced as Mother of the whole horde. The intro offers Tap to skip, and I watched it out of respect.

PolarzinhoCrown, green cloud, a title that says mother of the whole horde. I would have put that on my mug too.

Waves 21 to 30: the Containment zone and the Colossus

The last third is darker and greener, and wave 30 belongs to the Reactor Colossus: Armored. Unstoppable. Radioactive. The game's own words, and I have no notes.

My first attempt ended on the screen below: barricade at 0 / 420, boss bar at 33%, and a panel saying Wave 30 broke through. Your arsenal was kept.

PolarzinhoThirty-three percent. Not 3, not 30. A number built to haunt a panda.

That second sentence is the kindest line in the game. The button says Reorganize and try again, and the workshop was waiting with a fat pile of coins and two upgrades I had never touched.

Workshop upgrades: where my coins should have gone

Press U, or tap Workshop. The top row, Build level, picks which tower the B button builds, with prices under the icons. Below sit four cards: Production line, Hardened ammo, Reinforce barricade and Emergency repair.

• Production line raises the level you can build directly (Lv 9 of 10 in my screenshot), but each step stays locked until you discover a higher tower.
• Hardened ammo: +12% damage for every tower per level, up to Lv 15. First level: 70 coins.
• Reinforce barricade: +20% maximum barricade strength per level, up to Lv 10. First level: 55 coins.
• Emergency repair: restores 40% of the barricade, once per wave.

PolarzinhoReinforce barricade at Lv 9 and plus 180%. Before this screen my barricade was a sandwich. After it, a bunker.

After the fall I poured everything into the two cheap-looking cards: Hardened ammo to Lv 8 of 15 (+96% damage) and Reinforce barricade to Lv 9 of 10 (+180% strength). The barricade bar went from 420 to 1,176, and the Colossus finally fell. Lesson received, with interest.

A confession about the economy: my coin counter kept outrunning my spending. It read 21.3K before wave 30, and the workshop screenshot above shows 23.6K.

Codex, daily challenge and endless mode: what comes after wave 30

The main menu has a Codex with two shelves: Arsenal shows the twelve turrets (12/12 once found) and Bestiary shows ten entries, seven zombie types plus the three bosses with a skull. Each zombie card keeps a kill count.

PolarzinhoI have a small, unreasonable love for the Exploder. Goggles, dynamite, zero doubts. A role model.

The Daily challenge sits in the menu behind a lock: Unlocks after clearing campaign wave 10. Once open, mine said Today: Hardened horde · waves 26 to 30 · boss at the end. It dropped me straight into wave 26 with a ready-made arsenal, a Lv 12 turret on the line and 7,136 coins. The label says Today, so I assume the rule changes daily.

Clear all thirty waves and You survived! appears with Wave reached 30, Zombies destroyed 858, Coins earned 49.6K and Best tower Lv 12, plus The waves never stop. How far can you go? and three buttons: Endless mode, Play another campaign, Main menu. I pressed Endless mode, the counter flipped to Wave 31/∞, and I held a few more waves.

PolarzinhoYou survived. The workshop still stands. Two sentences my mother has been waiting years to say about me.

Settings, languages and a tall window

Settings has 14 languages, sliders for Music, Sound effects and Announcer voice, and switches for Mute all, Reduced motion, Damage numbers, Replay tutorial and Fullscreen. I tried Portuguese and Spanish, and the menu and workshop followed.

Then I made my window tall, 1080 by 1920, to see a phone-shaped screen. The game flipped to portrait: road on top, the five defense plates in one row under the barricade, the ten workshop spaces in two rows below.

PolarzinhoTall window, tall defense. Five turrets lined up like a boy band getting the album photo.

Merge tower defense strategy for a fresh campaign

If I started again tomorrow, this is the plan. It comes from two finished campaigns and one very public failure.

• Keep the five gold plates full. An empty slot is free damage for the zombies.
• Merge early and often. The goal chip names the next pair, and my first Lv 12 turret arrived on wave 24.
• Grenade the clump, not the stray. My best TRIPLE KILL popups came with the crowd packed tight.
• Spend on Hardened ammo and Reinforce barricade from mid-campaign, not after your first loss.
• Raise the Build level when the Production line unlocks, and call waves early on quiet roads: a +365 popped up when I called wave 30 early.

Barricade Z answers: saves, falls and life after wave 30

Is it a download?

No. It ran in my browser tab on a desktop, and the game page lists mobile too.

Does it save my progress?

Yes. The menu offered Continue with my current wave, and New campaign asks before wiping anything.

What happens when the barricade falls?

A panel shows Wave reached, Zombies destroyed, Coins earned and Best tower, plus how close you got, and two buttons: Reorganize and try again, and Main menu. Your towers stay.

Is there anything after wave 30?

Endless mode, and the Daily challenge that opens after wave 10.

Barricade Z pros and cons

Hold the barricade

Open Barricade Z on Polar Games, hit Play and merge your first pair of scrap turrets. Spend on Hardened ammo before the last boss, unlike a certain panda, and the Reactor Colossus gets a much harder afternoon.

Play Barricade Z