Warcraft 3 Reminiscence: Skibi's Castle TD

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Skibi's Castle TD (Tower Defense) is a custom map "made" (official) by Blizzard. It is automatically downloaded with the game (if it's not in the directory just attempt to connect to Battle.net and a downloaded patch will add this map to the directory). It is intended for up to 10 players, with 5 on each "side" of the map, though the map works with a single 5-player team as well.

Choose your difficulty!

Description

Like any tower defense map, the objective is to build towers in order to defeat waves of enemies that will eventually destroy the structure you're trying to defend (in this case, it's Skibi's castle, as the game name implies). Skibi's Castle TD also has difficulty levels that influence how strong enemies are.

Like most tower defenses, this map uses "lives," meaning that when an enemy gets through to Skibi's castle, the team loses a life until all lives are expended, though there are bonus levels with extremely durable enemies that don't expend lives if they make it through.

Like the previous description implies, Skibi's Castle TD plays like most other tower defenses, with diverse builder choices (a player can have multiple builders, but the first builder determines access to special structures as well as a unique passive related to the builder), air levels that challenge whether the team has made sufficient aerial defenses, boss waves (every 5 waves) with tough enemies with special perks, and so on. Skibi's Castle TD features some unique wave perks such as enemies that move faster over time, exploding monsters, and monsters that damage towers with an immolating aura, forcing the player to heal the towers. However, this is only part of Skibi's Castle TD.

The other part of the map is the minigames, where players can farm gold (if they're playing Classic/Impossible mode) or have fun (if they chose the Minigame mode). Doing well in a given minigame will award more gold, though some are competitive, often pitting the two teams (if there are two) against each other.

Final Words

Overall, the map is pretty decent. However, I rarely saw it hosted (honestly the only "Blizzard" map I saw hosted by players frequently was "Worm War," which I never played) and the only time I bothered with it was when I wanted to play something by myself because of a lack of internet. To be fair, however, it was time well spent. If you have a copy of Warcraft III (it should be available with or without the expansion) and you like tower defenses, I'd say try this one out.