Gummy Guard

Gummy Guard is a tower defence set in a candy kingdom that looks good enough to eat. A road of poured caramel runs out of a candy-cane gate, past lollipop groves and chocolate-bar bridges, and ends at the door of a gingerbread castle. Wafer pads sit along it, and what you put on them decides how far the sour things get.

Five towers, three levels each, and you sell any of them back for seventy per cent. Gummy archers fire fast single shots and are one of only two towers that can touch the liquorice bats. Lollipop mortars lob an arcing swirl that splashes, and they are the answer to armoured jawbreakers. Cotton-candy spinners throw a ring of floss that slows everything nearby and, at level three, sticks it to the road. Fizz fountains fire soda bubbles that bounce from one enemy to the next. Chocolate walls do not shoot at all: they send out marshmallow guards who hold the road with a wafer shield until they are knocked over, then pick themselves back up.

Sour worms come first, then sugar-rush swarms that sprint, liquorice bats that fly over your mortars, jawbreakers with a candy shell, bubblegum blobs that pop into two smaller blobs, and toffee slugs that leave a sticky ribbon behind them that gums up the towers it touches. Every fifth wave brings a boss, and the cake golem heals itself from any candy an enemy drops unless you tap the candy first. Every knockout fills the sugar-rush meter, and a full meter is spent on one sprinkle storm that batters the whole map. Twelve hand-laid maps across Frosting Fields, Chocolate Canyon and Fizzy Falls, three stars for a flawless run, then an endless map once all twelve are cleared.