Burrow Guard

Insects march from the hole at one end of the meadow to the burrow at the other, and your job is to stop them arriving. Pick a defender from the shop on the right, then click any open ground to post it there. Almost every tile will take one — only the trail itself, the ponds and the bramble patches are out of bounds — so where you build is entirely your call.

There are five defenders and they are not simply better versions of one another. The hedgehog is cheap and sprays quills over a small patch. The squirrel slings acorns hard and often. The rabbit thumps the ground to bog a whole cluster down without doing much damage itself. The badger hits enormously hard and ignores the beetles’ armour. The owl watches half the meadow, though it cannot strike anything directly beneath it.

The one you cannot ignore is the air. Wasps and the hornet queen fly, and the owl alone can reach them, so the first flying wave is a bill that has to be paid. The insects on the ground push back just as specifically: beetles shrug off small hits, weevils grow their shell straight back unless you break it quickly, grub nurses heal everything around them, and a centipede splits in two when it dies. A meadow defended by five of the same animal will come unstuck against one of them.

The second half of a campaign brings worse. Dragonflies are quick enough to cross a defender’s reach before it can line up a second shot. Stag beetles are armoured heavily enough that only a badger really troubles them. Broodmothers lay as they walk, so a slow kill turns one insect into a dozen. A board that was comfortable at wave seven will not still be comfortable at wave fifteen.

Every insect you squash pays acorns, and clearing a wave pays more. Spend them on new defenders or on upgrading the ones you have, twice each, in place. Three meadows are on offer, each fifteen waves long, and each harder than the last. Clear all fifteen and you can keep going into an endless run for as long as your board holds.