Tower Of Kings Wiki

You are defending a mind. Not a castle, not a kingdom, one person's mind, rendered as terrain. The path is the route a thought takes from the moment it appears to the moment it reaches you. The base at the end of that path is the self.

Everything walking that path is a thought you have actually had. That is the core idea: the enemies are not monsters, they are yours. The game never calls them monsters or demons, and killing one is never framed as slaughter.

The ground tells the rest. The map is covered in cracked stone, and the buildable pads are old foundations. Other defences stood here before. Some of them held for a while. This mind has been defended before, and it has fallen before, and it is being defended again.

The tonal rule: the game is about resilience, not victory. There is no ending where the thoughts stop coming. There are only waves you survive and waves you don't.

The seven thoughts

Every enemy in the game is a thought, not a monster. Here is what you are actually up against.

The five defences

Aikido Tower, calm redirection. The starting tower and the only one that does not destroy anything. On a killing blow it can instead convert the thought, turning it to fight for you until it leaves the map. The game's central idea: the most effective response to a negative thought is not force, it is redirection.

Iron Mind Tower, pulsing resolve that fades on repeats. Hits multiple thoughts at once, but repeated pulses on the same target lose power. Raw discipline works, and it works less well every time you use it on the same problem. You cannot white-knuckle the same thing forever.

Networking Tower, pushes back, chips damage. Barely damages anything on its own. It pushes thoughts back down the path, buying your other towers time. Its strength depends on real support around you, not just numbers.

Purpose Tower, the tree that makes the others grow. It never fires a shot. Instead it stands among your defences and quickens them: every tower within its aura fires faster, the longer it has stood the deeper the effect, and even Aikido conversions come more readily in its shade. Cost 90 gold, no damage, aura reaches two and a half tiles. A mind with a reason to fight fights better; Purpose joins the shop on Expanse II, where you first need it.

Focus Tower, the eye that never wavers. Slow, deliberate, and always fixed on the heaviest thought in range. It ignores the swarm and goes for the thing that actually matters, one hard hit at a time. Cost 110 gold, 25 damage, four and a half tiles of reach, one shot every four seconds, and it always picks the highest-HP target. Focus joins the shop on Expanse III, the biggest mind in the game, where picking your battles is the whole battle.

Every defence upgrades through five tiers, grown from the same root since ALPHA v0.21. Each upgrade costs double the one before and hits twice as hard, so surplus gold always has somewhere meaningful to go. The badge on the tile shows the tier, and from tier 4 a defence carries a brighter trim, so your heaviest resolve is visible at a glance. The fifth tier of any line is a commitment: an Aikido canopy ringed in gold, an Iron Mind furnace running white-hot, a Networking neuron fully webbed in synapses, a Purpose tree in full bloom, a Focus eye wide open.

The Mind States

One mind, three weathers. The map you defend is always the same mind, but the state you defend it in changes how the whole world looks: the ground, the path, the hills, the self at the end of the road, and even the faces the six thoughts wear. Mind States are visual only. No stat changes, no easier or harder waves, the fight is identical, the truth of it is what changes.

Since ALPHA v0.33.0 the battlefield is drawn as the mind itself. The ground is neural tissue, warm or cold with the state, grown fresh for every level with neuron bodies, dendrites, and faint threads linking them into a living network. The path the thoughts walk is a glowing axon with pulses of light riding it toward the Self, and on a Sad Mind those pulses visibly slow, because a heavy mind thinks heavy thoughts. Build fields breathe like synapses waiting to fire. The Self at the end of the road reaches dendrite arms into the map, and on a Heart Broken Mind its pulse quickens into a heartbeat when your last lives are on the line, while dark fissures vein the tissue with a faint ember glow. The design follows the neuroscience: a happy brain is not one bright spot but a whole network humming, a sad brain is a network gone quiet, and heartbreak is the pain matrix flaring hot in the dark.

Happy Mind is where every defender starts, sunlit and warm, because an untested mind assumes it is fine. That is not a criticism, it is just what an untested mind believes.

Sad Mind is the same mind seen clearly, rain and all. It unlocks only when you hold a full run of all 8 levels to the final gate, because only a defender who has actually held a mind knows what the thoughts cost. Sadness here is not a punishment and not a failure state. It is honesty, earned. The seven thoughts are still the same seven thoughts, they simply stop pretending to be smaller than they are.

Heart Broken is the mind that broke and kept standing. Scorched ground, embers drifting up out of the ash, and everywhere the cracks are veined with gold, because a mind that has broken and chosen to stand anyway does not hide its fractures, it repairs them with something more valuable than what was there before. It is earned by holding a full run while already in Sad Mind: a defender who has seen the mind clearly and chose to stand anyway. The art is live since ALPHA v0.7.4, and the state unlocks for anyone who has done exactly that.

You pick your state on the Choose Your Battle screen, on the Mind State cards under the level grid. Unlocks are yours permanently, and they survive Reset Levels, because what you earned by standing is not progress, it is character. Since ALPHA v0.9.3 the Choose Your Battle screen carries two resets, and they are not the same road. Reset Levels walks the campaign back to Level 1 but keeps everything you earned: scores, Mind States, Mutators, Endless. Reset All wipes the whole slate back to a fresh, untested Happy Mind, and it asks "Sure?" before it does, because that road cannot be unwalked.

The states also open the Mutators, the stricter disciplines on the Choose Your Battle screen. One Tower Only (a single tower type for the whole level) is open to every defender, because even an untested mind can choose focus. No Upgrades (tier 1 forever) unlocks with Sad Mind: only a mind seen clearly can be trusted to fight without embellishment, and since ALPHA v0.9.3 a tier-1 defence is given room to breathe, every level spreading four extra build fields across the map when the discipline is chosen. 4x Speed (the wall at quadruple time) unlocks with Heart Broken, because only a mind that broke and kept standing can bear that pace. Mutated games are practice and clips: they never touch run scoring, the Hall of Kings, or the state unlocks. They are written on their own roll instead, the Hall of Challengers below.

Ways to defend

There is more than one road through a mind. These are the modes on the Choose Your Battle screen, and what each one is for.

The Run is the campaign: Levels 1 to 8, played in order, each counted once. This is the only road that carves a name into the Hall of Kings, and the only road that writes Lost Souls when it falls. Everything else is practice, exhibition, or company.

Endless opens once you have held a full run to the final gate. It never ends in victory, only in how long you stood, and your stand is written in the Hall of Challengers.

The Expanse is a set of three wider, harder exhibition maps for defenders who have already proven something. Expanse I opens when you clear Level 8, Expanse II when you hold a Hall of Kings entry, Expanse III when you hold a Hall of Challengers record. All three have been walkable since ALPHA v0.31.0: Expanse II runs 40 x 22 with fifteen waves and sixteen foundations, and Expanse III stretches to 53 x 30 with eighteen waves and eighteen foundations, the biggest mind in the game. Expanse scores post nowhere; the maps are their own reward, and they are where Old Baggage first walks. Since ALPHA v0.32.0 the Expanse also grows the arsenal: the Purpose Tower joins the shop on Expanse II and the Focus Tower on Expanse III, and both maps were re-tuned for them, Expanse II opening with a 500 gold purse and softer late waves, Expanse III with 560 gold against lighter thoughts. Since ALPHA v0.33.1 the roads themselves tour the whole mind: each Expanse path now swings the full height of the board instead of hugging the middle, and because every road is longer, the thoughts that walk it arrive hardened in proportion to the road you actually drew. Zooming in on the big boards finally works properly too: drag with mouse or finger to pan across the map at any zoom.

Co-op: The Shared Mind, live since ALPHA v0.23, is the multiplayer road. One defender hosts a room and shares a four-letter code or an invite link; up to four defenders hold one mind together on a wide serpentine map built for two shoulders. Every defender has their own gold, and a thought's bounty pays only the tower that put it down, so where you build is a statement. Lives are shared: fifteen for the whole table, no matter whose wall leaks. Anyone can call the next wave (a second tap calls it off), dropouts rejoin with their gold and towers intact, and late arrivals land mid-battle with a fresh purse. Since ALPHA v0.27 the host also picks how long the table stands: Quick (12 waves, the short evening), Standard (20 waves, the full campaign-length siege), or Marathon, which never stops coming until the mind falls and is scored by how long you held. When it ends, the Defender Scores table settles who actually carried the wall: kills, damage, and gold earned, per defender. Since ALPHA v0.28 the host can also flip the rules to Type 2 · locked turrets: every defender picks (or is dealt) exactly one turret type in the lobby - Aikido, Iron Mind, or Networking - and that is the only thing on their bench for the whole battle. Your kills feed only your purse, tiers climb on your own earnings, and a wave your turret cannot answer is one a teammate's can. In co-op rooms the campaign unlock chain is waived, so a fresh defender can be dealt Iron Mind and still build it. Co-op is an exhibition between friends: it touches neither the Hall of Kings nor the Wall of Lost Souls. Since ALPHA v0.31.0 the host also picks the battlefield from three cards: The Shared Mind (the original serpentine), The Long Way Round (36 x 18, eighteen foundations, five long legs), and The Narrows (26 x 14, twelve foundations, a short mean corridor with a fat purse), and the choice applies to Team DM boards too.

Team DM: Mind vs Matrix, live since ALPHA v0.29, turns the room into a war. The host splits the table into two sides, THE MIND and THE MATRIX, and each side defends its own board against the same endless siege. Every side has a core of twenty lives and a Flow tank that drives its waves: a leak costs your side a life, drains your Flow, and feeds the enemy's tank, while clearing a wave refills your own. A side whose tank runs dry is stalled (it cannot muster new waves) and breaks on the next leak; a side whose core reaches zero has fallen. First side standing wins. Tap a name in the lobby to move it between sides, and remember the first law of the mode: every thought you let through is ammunition for the other board. Since ALPHA v0.30 your purse is your offense too: the SEND strip at the top right lets any defender spend their own gold to aim an extra attacker at the enemy board (the Mind sends its familiar thoughts; the Matrix fields Conformity, Doubt, Fear, and Distraction), and everything sent rides in with the enemy's next wave.

How falling actually works

The failure screen reads "YOUR MIND HAS FALLEN," and retrying picks up at the wave you lost rather than the start of the level. Falling is not failure here, it is expected. You rebuild and go again. That's the whole game, really: hold, survive, stand, then do it again tomorrow.

The Hall of Kings, the Hall of Challengers, and the Wall of Lost Souls

Three rolls remember every defender, and they remember different things.

The Hall of Kings is the roll of honour. Only a full run of Levels 1 to 8, played in order with each level counted once, carves a name there. Each level scores gold earned divided by (1 + lives lost), later levels weigh more, and the final score is the weighted average across all 8. Gold wins rounds; kept lives win runs.

The Hall of Challengers is the roll of the tested. Mutated victories and Endless stands never touch the Hall of Kings, but they are not forgotten. Win a level under any Mutator and your name is written with the discipline you chose and the score you held. Fall in Endless (a mode that opens once you have held a full run to the final gate, and that never ends in victory, only in how long you stood) and your name is written with the waves you survived. Newest first, twenty names at a time, and above the roll it keeps the Records: the best each discipline has ever produced, the highest score under each Mutator and the deepest Endless stand. It lives inside the Hall of Kings, behind the Challengers toggle.

The Wall of Lost Souls is the roll of the fallen. A Lost Soul is a defender whose wall fell before the full run of 8 levels was done. Every defeat, on any level, writes a name on the wall, newest first. There is no shame on it: every name in the Hall of Kings was nearly on that wall at some point, and the only way off the wall is to pick the run back up and finish it. Hold to the final gate and your name never joins them.

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