Bloons TD 6

I didn’t expect my most-played strategy game of the last few years to star a glue gun-wielding monkey fighting balloons. Yet here we are, several hundred rounds deep into Bloons TD 6, a technicolor chaos simulator that dares you to turn primates into precision military tacticians. It’s absurd, it’s brilliant, and it’s got more depth than a dart-filled kiddie pool has any right to.

At first glance, Bloons TD 6 feels like a Saturday morning cartoon come to life, monkeys with boomerangs, submarines, and sniper rifles stand guard over candy-colored paths while waves of ever-evolving bloons march toward doom. But peel back the playful art and what you’ll find is a high-caliber strategy game disguised in monkey business.

What makes BTD6 sing is the balance between accessibility and complexity. There are 25 distinct Monkey Towers, each with three upgrade paths and activated abilities. Throw in 16 wildly different Heroes (shoutout to Quincy, “Nothing gets past my bow!”), branching difficulty modes, and 70+ handcrafted maps, and you’ve got a strategy sandbox that rivals anything in the genre.

Each map feels like its own puzzle box. The early rounds are calm, relaxing, even. But by Round 60, you’re juggling cooldowns, min-maxing tower placement, and pre-emptively countering bloon types you haven’t even seen yet. Then Round 80 hits, and suddenly your screen is a Jackson Pollock of popping sounds and exploding confetti. That’s when you realize: oh yeah, I’ve been playing this for an hour, and I still want one more round.

Multiplayer kicks the chaos up a notch, letting you link up with up to three friends for coordinated monkey mayhem. Events like Boss Bloons, Contested Territory, and community-made Odysseys keep things fresh, and the Trophy Store lets you make your army as fabulous as it is functional.

Yes, there are microtransactions. No, you don’t need them. This is a paid game with no ads, and the devs (Ninja Kiwi) have been steadily updating it for years, adding new content like it’s a live service in disguise.

In a sea of mobile distractions, Bloons TD 6 is the rare game that earns your time. It’s a strategy masterpiece wrapped in a banana peel.