2025

29.10.2025 – Rewards / Missions / Changes

💰 Updated Reward System – More Fairness, Clear Calculations

Today's update focuses entirely on rewards for completed rounds.
Previously, each boss simply dropped a chest with gold and silver coins – depending on the difficulty level.
This system has now been completely overhauled and replaced with an individual evaluation based on clear, transparent values and multipliers.

rewardspage.png
Click on the Game ID in the Gold Coin entries to open this overview:

gctransactions.png

At the end of each round, every player receives their own evaluation, taking multiple factors into account:

🧱 Base Value

Each wave generates an individual base value, depending on the map.
This base value forms the foundation for all further calculations.
All bonuses are applied multiplicatively on this value.

Example:
If your base value is 5 and you have a Twitch subscription Tier 1 (+10 %), you will receive 5 + 10 % = 5.5 in total.

⚔️ Difficulty Level

The higher the chosen difficulty, the greater the multiplier applied to your reward.
More challenging rounds are therefore noticeably better rewarded.

🎁 Twitch Subscription Bonus

Players with an active Twitch subscription receive an additional bonus:

🏰 Tower Levels

The average level of your Boost cards plays an important role.
This value is applied as an additional multiplier on the base value.
It has a higher impact, as high tower levels are essential for team success.

Important: The average of all cards counts, not just your highest tower – you can play with lower levels without receiving fewer rewards.

🏆 Round Completion Bonus

If a round is successfully completed, you receive a small additional bonus.

👀 Viewer Reduction

CTD thrives on the interaction between the stream and the game.
Players not registered as Twitch viewers receive a significant penalty:
–50 % on the total sum of all rewards (Gold Coins, Silver Coins, and experience points).

All other bonuses (difficulty, subscription, tower levels, etc.) are added first, and the viewer reduction is applied afterwards.

🎯 Missions – Less Restriction, More Freedom

Most missions have been removed to ensure players are no longer forced into a specific playstyle.
You can now experiment freely without penalties on your rewards.

A future achievement system will eventually allow players to complete missions based on specific playstyles – but this will be entirely optional and without pressure.

🧠 Level Cap Increased – More Room for Progress

The maximum player level has been raised from 100 to 120.
This provides 20 additional points for your skill tree!

🐉 Dragon – Now Summonable

The dragon still appears with a 30 % chance on one of the three maps during map voting.
New: It can now also be manually summoned using 25,000 Twitch channel points.

Important:
Only one dragon can appear per round – regardless of whether it is summoned via channel points or appears through map voting.

17.10.2025 - Visual Update / Maps Removed / Behind the Scenes

🌄 Visual Overhaul – The First Step Toward a New CTD Look

Today’s update marks the beginning of a major visual improvement for CTD!
The first changes are already visible in your browser:

old_9.jpg
Before

new_9.jpg
After

But that’s just the beginning.

The old, blocky “voxel-style” visuals are being replaced with a true terrain system – offering smoother transitions, improved lighting, and far greater flexibility for environmental design.

The difference speaks for itself:

old_day.jpg
Before

new_day.jpg
After

old_night.jpg
Before

new_night.jpg
After

🗺️ 9 Maps Removed

With the switch to the new system, several older maps have been retired.
A total of 9 maps were removed from the game – including the Easter and Christmas event maps.
These will be rebuilt from scratch for future seasonal events, featuring the new terrain and lighting systems.

⚙️ Behind the Scenes – A More Modular Enemy System

There’s also a lot happening under the hood.
The enemy system has been completely restructured to be highly modular, paving the way for future enemy types such as demons or other special variants.

While this modularity was part of the original vision, the earlier implementation lacked the necessary flexibility.
That foundation has now been rebuilt – making future expansions far easier to integrate.

20.09.2025 – Support / Dragon / Tower Relocation

🛡️ Support Towers significantly nerfed

Support towers had turned into true multiplication monsters – a single one could boost the effectiveness of ten or more regular towers.

The current adjustment tones down this extreme effect.
It’s likely not the final balance, but it’s a step in the right direction for healthier scaling.

🐉 Dragon – DoT effects re-enabled

The Stage 2 Dragon can now once again be affected by damage-over-time (DoT) effects like Burn or Poison.

🏰 Tower Relocation – new control feature

A select group of players can now actively influence the battlefield by repositioning towers of other teammates.

How it works:

  1. Right-click the desired tower

  2. Left-click “Relocate Tower”
    TowerMove1.png

  3. Left-click the new position
    TowerMove2.png

This feature allows for more flexible strategies and dynamic adjustments during the game.

13.09.2025 – Maze Mode / Red Towers

🌀 New Game Mode: Maze Mode

CTD has so far been a classic tower-defense game with fixed zombie paths – except for the Random1 map, where paths were randomized each wave.
With the new Maze Mode, we’re taking it a step further: by strategically placing their towers, players can now actively shape the zombies’ route.

📹 The two examples show how the route dynamically changes when towers are placed.
It’s now up to the team to build clever layouts that maximize the zombie path length.

We’re excited to see how the community will embrace this new mode!

🚩 Red Towers – Inactive Players Visible

A new marking system now shows which teammates are not actively watching the stream.

03.09.2025 – Items, Items, Items

🎁 Items reworked – no more “trash” drops
Up until now, most generated items felt random: attributes were mixed together wildly, and finding a useful one was rarer than winning the lottery.
From now on, attributes are selected from matching categories only.

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⚡ Power-Ups made convenient
No more hundreds of clicks: Power-Ups can now be applied in bulk using a slider.

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🐉 Dragon – stronger and more consistent
The Stage 2 Dragon is now immune to status effects.
A poisoned or burning flying skeleton made little sense anyway – this change restores some of the Dragon’s intended might.

🛠️ Fixes and improvements

16.07.2025 - Hotfix #5 (important)

🕒 Cooldowns drastically reduced

All cooldown reductions from items, skills, and boost cards have been nerfed by up to 90 %.
Why? Because the goal of the game is not to make every turret feel like a Gatling gun in the end.

All existing items have been retrospectively adjusted to match the new cooldown values.

🧱 Updated cooldown limits

The cooldown rules introduced with the last update have been slightly extended:

💰 Selling/salvaging items = 100 % refund

Due to the major changes, dismantling an item now refunds the full amount of Silver Coins –
this applies to both existing and newly purchased items.

🛠️ Fixes & improvements

🧠 A note from the dev team

We know these changes won’t be everyone’s favorite.
But please remember: The game is still in active development, and updates like this are sometimes necessary.

Here’s an example for context:
When the Cooldown Boost Card was introduced, there were no skills or items yet.
The card alone gave 20 % cooldown reduction – with zero effort.
The Team Card added another 1 % per player, so with 40 players that’s 40 % for everyone.
Combined with skills, items, and more, players were reaching almost 200 % cooldown reduction – far too much.

We’re not planning any further drastic changes at the moment.
Right now, our focus is on balancing turret damage output,
so that each turret feels distinct and useful in its own way –
but still performs within a comparable damage range.

11.07.2025 - Hotfix #4

👁️‍🗨️ Reduced visual effects – improved clarity

We’ve further toned down visual effects to help you better follow the action – especially when facing large enemy waves or with many turrets firing at once.

🎯 Improved missile targeting at close range

Missiles now have better accuracy when locking onto nearby, fast-moving enemies.
Previously, missiles would sometimes fly past targets and make a dramatic loop before hitting – which looked cool, but wasn’t exactly helpful in combat.
This issue has been resolved.

🧪 Status effect system optimized (Performance)

The recent update introduced significantly more status effects per target, each linked to specific players and their skills.
This system has now been streamlined, resulting in noticeable performance improvements – especially during large-scale fights with many active effects.

💰 More credits – less frustration

This change was already tested on Wednesday but wasn’t mentioned in the previous changelog:
In some cases, no credits were awarded for zombie kills, which became a serious issue in higher waves.
This problem has now been fixed.

🛠️ Additional fixes

Various minor bugs and issues have also been addressed to further improve gameplay stability and experience.

05.07.2025 - Hotfix #3

With this hotfix, we've made further adjustments – both to improve clarity and to enhance overall game balance.

🌈 Less glare – more clarity

To give your eyes a break, we've once again toned down some of the visual effects – sunglasses should no longer be required when watching the battle unfold.
The following elements are affected:

Bright, flashy effects are great – but in a tower defense game with 40+ turrets on the battlefield, they can seriously impact visibility.

📏 Increased range for Rockets and Railgun

⚠️ Cooldown Power-Ups & Support Turret nerfed

Why this change?
Cooldown is one of the most powerful stats in the game. Instead of being "given away for free," it should now be earned strategically through the skill tree, items, boost cards, etc.
This also helps reduce visual overload when not every turret is firing at maximum speed all the time.

🧱 Bosses now immune to CC

💀 Health scaling reverted

🌐 Server reconnection restored

04.07.2025 - Hotfix #2

This hotfix addresses numerous issues and includes several minor improvements.

🔧 CTD Game

🌐 Web Interface (C-TD.de)

📺 Twitch

🌳 Skill Tree / Abilities

📌 Note on Importing Skill Tree Templates


Click the clipboard icon.

Skillshare.png

After that, you can share the displayed code with other players.

Shillshare Code.png

02.07.2025 - Hotfix

While the test run yesterday was a small success on our end, it was more of a disaster from your perspective.

Alongside numerous fixes, we’ve also made a few adjustments to help restore confidence among the player base:

  1. Power-up purchases have been refunded.

  2. The number of power-ups has been reset to the state before the update.

  3. Power-up prices are back to their pre-update levels.

01.07.2025 - The update is here

Today’s update introduces a wide range of exciting new features and deep changes to the game. Much has been reworked behind the scenes, and other parts are visibly altered – time for a detailed overview:

🎮 CTD – The Game

🧠 Skill-Based Attacks

The turret functionality has been fundamentally reworked.
Previously, most turret parameters were hard-coded and could only be modified to a limited degree via upgrades or power-ups – any changes required major effort.

With the new system, nearly every parameter – from the number of chain lightning targets to damage values or upgrade effects – is now defined in a central database.
The game itself only reacts to the bundled, externally calculated values.
Turrets are now "dumb" in-game and completely rely on external data, which gives us maximum flexibility for future expansions.

☠️ Damage Types

Each turret now uses one of six damage types:
Kinetic, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Poison, Plasma

🛡️ Resistance Penetration

Enemy resistances from wave 10 onwards previously turned higher difficulties into war-of-attrition scenarios.
To counter this, Penetration has been introduced:

Example:

Enemy has 50% Fire Resistance, turret has 10% Penetration → effective resistance: 40%.
If penetration exceeds resistance, bonus damage is applied.

🧭 Pathfinding

In addition to classic pathfinding (where enemies choose their path dynamically), there is now a waypoint system that enforces a predefined path.
This allows:

⚖️ Balancing & Difficulty

Due to the complete overhaul of turret logic, many balance values had to be reconsidered.
The game is currently deliberately unbalanced – which makes it unpredictable and (hopefully) more exciting.

💣 Bomber & Nuke

These power-ups can now once again be used at any time during a wave.
Especially noticeable on small maps with short paths.

🗺️ New Map: Green1

To showcase the new waypoint system, a new map is available:
Green1 – featuring multiple direction changes and re-entry points.
Ideal for fresh tactical approaches!

🌲 Skill Tree – Bigger, Deeper, Smarter

⚡ Power-Ups – Reworked & Repriced

Changes:

🤝 Team Bonuses – More Fair, More Controlled

Team Damage no longer doubles a turret’s total damage.
It now only affects the base damage (excluding item, boost, or skill modifiers).
This keeps total damage output in check and prevents runaway scaling.

🌐 CTD WebUI – New Features & Improvements

New:

Changes:

Temporary:

🧑‍💻 Note on the Update

Although this update is not fully completed in every area,
we had to release it within a narrow time window.
The reason is the team’s vacation schedule – to ensure we could respond quickly and collaboratively in case of critical issues, this release timing was essential.

Thanks to all players and supporters!
This update is a huge leap forward – technically and in terms of gameplay.
Enjoy discovering all the new features and possibilities!

21.05.2025 - Status Report

It’s been a while since the last changelog – time to give you a proper update on what's going on behind the scenes.

Some of this has already been mentioned in Twitch chat and on Discord, but since not everyone sees that, we’re putting everything together here in one place.

What’s coming – and what’s already done?

Currently, we’re working on three major areas:

1. Pathfinding & Waypoints

Since the early days of CTD, enemy movement has gone through a lot of changes.
Originally, it was a simple waypoint system: enemies moved from one coordinate to the next.

Later, we switched to a pathfinding system. That made the maps more dynamic, but also introduced new challenges – especially with intersections or tight paths.

The upcoming update will support both systems: classic waypoints and dynamic pathfinding – even with the ability to switch during an active round.

While the implementation was quick, there’s more behind it:

The goal: Make enemy paths visible on the website – super helpful especially for new players.

In-game (WebInterface), a visual path preview will be shown for all players by default – but can be disabled in the settings.

Green1(new).png
(Complex path example. WIP)

2. Turret System Overhaul

The old turret system has grown over time – and not always in the cleanest way.
Some of it was literally quick test code from the early days of CTD.

This update completely rebuilds the core turret systems:

Previously, everything was hardcoded – e.g. “this turret deals 100 damage every 2 seconds with 30% crit chance”.
Now, we use a skill-based system: the server sends instructions, and the turret handles all effects based on that.

This makes the system much more flexible and easier to maintain.
However, it also means a lot more data – up to 208 parameters per turret and per damage type.

We’ve spent what feels like an eternity in spreadsheets just to bring some balance into the chaos. 

3. New Calculation Logic

Previously, many bonuses and effects were calculated directly in code, which made balancing difficult.

Now, everything is based on the turret’s base value. External effects are applied as additive or multiplicative bonuses – much easier to track and tweak.

Example: Gatling Turret

Result: 200 + 150% = 500 damage per shot

This logic also applies to things like crit chance, bleed chance, burn duration, and so on – all bonuses are just added together.

Simple, transparent, and predictable.

So, when is the update coming?

That’s the big question – and not one we can answer precisely yet.

Because so many systems are involved, the update has to go live all at once. Partial releases won’t work here.

The good news: Most of the technical foundation is already done, including server support.
What’s still missing is testing, fine-tuning, and some integration with the web interface.

We’re aiming for a 2-week window at the end of June or early July – fingers crossed that everything’s ready by then.

Thanks for all the support!

Last but not least: a huge thank-you to everyone supporting CTD – whether with feedback, donations, bug reports, or just being part of the community.

This project wouldn’t exist without you – so thank you!

12.03.2025 - Bomber/Nukes

The team limits for the Bomber and Nuke power-ups have been removed. Instead, a per-player limit has been introduced to encourage teamwork while preventing a single player from negatively impacting the overall gameplay experience.

From now on, each player can use a maximum of 1 Nuke and 3 Bombers per game round.

10.01.2025 - Adjustments to the Hype Train

In the latest update to the Hype Train system, the reward mechanism for level progression has been revised. Previously, reaching a new level would trigger the appearance of a single unicorn in the game, which was deemed disproportionate to the increasing level.

From now on, the number of unicorns appearing in the game will correspond to the Hype Train level achieved:

With each level progression, the unicorns accumulate. For example, reaching Level 3 will result in a total of 6 unicorns (1 + 2 + 3).

This adjustment ensures a more balanced reward system, maintaining clarity while encouraging the community to collaborate in reaching higher levels. More unicorns mean more chests for everyone.

08.01.2025 - Unicorns / Hype-Train / Bans

Changes to Twitch Integration

Introduction of "Strictness" for Inactive Players

Hype Train Mechanics on Twitch