Elematter is a pocket-sized tower defense game where picking the right element matters as much as picking the right spot. You can play Elematter unblocked in your browser with nothing but a mouse. Enemies march down a winding road in four types, Earth, Water, Air and Fire, and your towers come in the same four. Every tower hits one enemy type extra hard, so the fun is in reading each wave and building the counter before it arrives.
What You Are Defending
You start with 500 fragments and thirteen lives. Each foe that slips past your towers and reaches the exit costs one life, and losing the thirteenth ends the run. Survive all twenty waves to win, and the game scores you on what you have left: 100 points for each life plus your leftover fragments.
The game was made by Jack Rugile for the js13kGames contest, where every entry has to fit inside 13 kilobytes. Even the sound effects are generated in code.
How to Play Elematter
Press Play at the top to begin. Click an empty gray square beside the road and a build menu opens with the four elements. Hovering over an option lists its damage, reach and firing speed before you spend anything.
When a wave is fully cleared, the next one starts on its own. You can also hit Send Next at any time to call it early. The x1, x2 and x3 buttons change the game speed, and Play doubles as a pause button.
Towers have two upgrade levels, and each level makes them hit harder, reach farther and shoot faster. Look for a little white marker: it means you have enough to upgrade that tower. Built something in a bad spot? Reclaiming it refunds 75 percent of the total you spent, rounded up.
The Four Towers in Numbers
The code gives each element a clear personality. Here are the starting stats and what the top upgrade reaches:
- Earth costs 200. Damage 15 rising to 30, range 75 rising to 95. The cheap all-rounder.
- Water costs 300. Damage 15 rising to 30, but the shortest range (65 to 72) and the fastest firing. Every hit slows the target to half speed for a short time, and the slow lasts longer at each upgrade level.
- Air costs 250. The weakest hits, 10 rising to 14, but the longest reach, 85 rising to 121.
- Fire costs 250. The slowest firing, but the hardest hits: 20, then 33, then 55 at max level.
Upgrades get pricier each step. A Fire tower costs 313 for level two and 391 for level three, for example. Most towers aim at the enemy that has traveled farthest along the road. Water is the exception and picks a random target in range, which spreads its slow across a crowd.
The Element Circle and the Waves
The match-ups form a loop, and each one gives 50 percent bonus damage:
- Fire beats Earth
- Earth beats Air
- Air beats Water
- Water beats Fire
The waves follow that same loop in blocks of five. Waves 1 to 5 are mostly Earth, 6 to 10 mostly Water, 11 to 15 mostly Air and 16 to 20 mostly Fire. Wave 1 is eleven Earth enemies and nothing else, and each later wave in a block mixes in more of the other elements. The Next counter at the bottom breaks the coming wave down by type, so use it like a shopping list.
Enemies also get tougher as you go. A wave 1 enemy has 95 health, and every wave adds another 25.
Boss Waves
Every fifth wave brings a large boss: Earth on wave 5, Water on wave 10, Air on wave 15 and Fire on wave 20. A boss has twenty times the health of a normal enemy from the same wave but moves at half speed, and it pays triple when it falls. Have the right upgraded tower in place before each one shows up, because one boss leaking through costs the same single life as a small enemy, yet it soaks up a huge amount of fire on the way.
Elematter Strategy That Holds
- Start with Fire. Earth enemies make up most of the early waves, so Fire towers earn their cost quickly.
- Build the next counter early. By wave 4 or 5 you should already own a Water-beater (Air), because waves 6 to 10 lean hard on Water.
- Put Water near the start of the road. Slowed enemies spend longer inside every other tower’s range behind it.
- Tuck Air inside a bend. It has the longest range, so a corner spot can cover several stretches of road.
- Call waves early when things are calm. Pressing Send Next right after a wave begins gives the largest bonus, since it shrinks every moment.
- Speed up quiet waves. The x2 and x3 buttons save time when your defense is clearly winning.
Mistakes New Players Make
The most common one is building only one element. A wall of Fire crushes the first five waves and then struggles badly against Water. Another is upgrading a tower that sits on a short stretch of road, where even a strong tower only gets a few shots. Finally, don’t send waves early while enemies are still leaking. The bonus fragments won’t cover lost lives, and lives are worth 100 points each at the end.
Best on a Laptop
The board is a fixed size that scales to fit the frame, and the hover stats are easiest with a mouse. A Chromebook or laptop is the most comfortable way to play, and tapping works on a tablet if you know what each tower does. One full run of twenty waves takes a while, so it suits a longer break rather than a two-minute one.
For more planning games, browse the strategy games. Canvas TD is another tower defense game, but you build your own maze instead of lining a fixed road. PoliGuard and the slow-building A Dark Room trade fast waves for longer-term planning.
