Tower-Defense Roguelite

What it is. A tower-defense map you play as a run: you don’t own every tower, you draft a handful this run, and what carries over between runs is a persistent unlock tree — not this run’s board.

Player fantasy / why it’s fun. “This run I got dealt slow-field + splash and built a completely different machine than last time — and I’m two unlocks from the build I’ve been chasing.” The pull is a fresh hand every run over a defence loop whose fundamentals you already trust.

The brief

Tower defense but the roster is a per-run draft (structure vector). You keep genre-tower-defense‘s spatial fun intact and swap the container: instead of a fixed shop of all towers, each run hands you a small, semi-random toolkit, and a persistent tree decides what can be dealt.

The spine

You don’t choose your towers — the run drafts them, and every tower you commit to seal one lane is the board, gold, and build identity you no longer have for the threat the next wave brings.

Part	This game
Objective	Hold the map — keep every wave from leaking, run after run, and chase the build the meta tree keeps promising
Superpower	Place a drafted tower — commit fixed map geometry to the hand this run dealt you, not the roster you’d have picked
Scarcity	The draft (N-or-skip; you get given towers, not chosen ones) + the board (each placement spends a cell and a firing arc you can’t reuse) + the run economy (gold buys this tower or the next)
Obstacle	Waves whose archetype mix demands specific counters, arriving against fixed lanes — the enemies your drafted hand answers, or doesn’t
Renewal	Every run re-deals a seeded draft + wave mix (+ maybe lanes); within a run each wave re-asks whether your committed board covers what’s coming; the meta tree re-authors what the next run can draw

Resonance

Every element traces to the spine — the coherence proof (see process-the-spine). Note the death-handling row: a roguelite ends the run yet advances the tree, and that split is derived from the spine, not defaulted.

Element	Arrow back to the spine
Verb: place a drafted tower	The single agency — you commit dealt tools to fixed geometry; every build is this hand reshaped onto this map
Scarcity: a drafted hand, not a catalogue	You don’t pick — the run deals N-or-skip (`anchor-slay-the-spire`); which towers you were given is the whole plan, so the fork is real, not a rename
Scarcity: finite board & firing arcs	Each placement eats a cell and a coverage angle you can’t reuse — sealing one lane is space spent, never free
Scarcity: the run economy	Gold buys this tower or the next; covering now is income you won’t have when the mix shifts under you
Power creates the problem	The tower you place to seal one lane is the board, gold, and build identity you can’t spend on the next — and how you spend this round’s draft authors what next round deals and what it demands (passes the gate)
Renewal: seeded per-run draft + wave mix (+ lanes)	Every run re-poses “cover this map with this hand” against a fresh draw (`system-procgen-design`) — one tension, endless faces
Renewal: waves ramp → breathe → peak	Within a run, each wave re-asks whether your committed board answers what’s actually coming — the spine re-posed at encounter scale
The counter matrix the draft rides on	Near-hard `system-counter-systems` make which answers you drafted decide the run; without teeth the coverage puzzle would be `antipattern-fake-choice`
Telegraphed wave intent	Variance is shown, never blind (`anchor-into-the-breach`); a leak is a legible build failure, which is exactly what makes a drafted hand fair
Meta: persistent unlock tree	A lost run still advances something (`anchor-hades`) — and it unlocks options that re-author the next draft, not raw stats, keeping the spend-vs-cover decision alive (`system-meta-progression`)
Death-handling: run ends, tree advances	Spine is variance-run over a trusted loop; the loss must sting and pull forward — a run that ended for nothing, or a loss with no pull, would be dissonant (`antipattern-dissonance`)
Feel: range rings, placement feedback, finale crescendo	Makes coverage legible — you have to read what your committed board does and doesn’t cover to spend the next draft well (`pattern-readability`)

No row is decoration; no row fights the spine. The gate holds: the tower that seals this lane is the tower you can’t place against the next — and this round’s draft is authored by how the last one went.

Anchors

Anchor	What this recipe steals
`anchor-slay-the-spire`	Draft-of-N-or-skip. Your tower roster is a curated hand, not a full catalogue; the skip is a live decision and a lean set can be stronger than a wide one.
`anchor-into-the-breach`	Legible pre-visible threat. Wave intent is shown, so a leak is a build failure you can read, never a coin flip — the honesty that makes variance fair.
`anchor-hades`	Meta as narrative pull. Between-run unlocks that always advance something, so a lost run still moves you forward.

Genre + systems pulled

genre-tower-defense — the spatial core: range-ring geometry, biting counters, waves that breathe. Don’t restate it — build on it.
system-meta-progression — the persistent tree: what unlocks, what’s run-scoped, what stays sacred.
system-build-diversity — the guarantee that many drafted rosters are viable, so the draft is a real fork, not a rename.
system-procgen-design — seeded wave mixes and draft offers, both provable from one deterministic RNG.
system-counter-systems — the duel matrix the draft rides on; a run is do my drafted answers cover this map’s archetypes?
process-the-twist — the structure-vector move that produced this brief.

The twist applied

Vector: structure. The mechanical fun (placement, coverage, counters) is untouched — that would be the wrong axis to bend (genre-tower-defense‘s fun is spatial, not fictional). What changes is the container: a one-shot campaign becomes a run, the shop becomes a draft, and progression moves off the board into a persistent tree. Same as Dead Cells bending Metroidvania into a roguelite — keep the verbs, change the shell.

Extra twist seams (each an “X but Y” you can layer, one at most):

TD but you draft the map’s lanes too (structure) — the path is a run-seed choice, not fixed, so geometry is part of the variance.
TD but leaked enemies join the next wave (constraint) — a soft-permadeath pressure that punishes leaks without ending the run, à la anchor-into-the-breach‘s consequence-forward design.
TD but towers are drafted mid-wave, not between (structure) — draft under fire; the offer arrives when you can least afford to read it.

The 3 pillars

Build decisions that matter. The drafted roster must fork the run. If any hand beats the map, the draft is antipattern-fake-choice. Lean on system-build-diversity and near-hard system-counter-systems so the offered towers, not the count, decide the plan.
Run variance you can read. Every run differs — draft offers, wave mix, maybe lanes — but never blind. Wave intent is telegraphed (anchor-into-the-breach); the draft is seeded and shown. Variance that isn’t legible is antipattern-rng-frustration.
Persistent pull. A lost run still advances the tree (anchor-hades). Guard the two failure edges: unlocks that gate raw power become an antipattern-grind-wall; unlocks that only add width become antipattern-power-creep. Unlock options, not stats — see system-meta-progression.

Scope & first playable

Cut to the smallest thing that proves drafted build → run outcome → persistent pull.

In the first playable	Cut for later
One map, one seeded path	Multiple maps, branching routes
6–8 towers, drafted 3-of-a-larger-pool per run	A full catalogue
~8 waves authored as archetype mixes, telegraphed	Deep enemy roster
One meta unlock (e.g. “adds a tower to the draft pool”) that visibly changes the next run	A full unlock tree
Deterministic draft + waves from a single run seed	Cosmetics, boss waves, live-ops

The proof-of-fun test: two runs on the same map, different seeds, should feel like different builds solved the same problem — not the same build with reshuffled numbers. If they feel identical, the draft isn’t forking the run — return to system-build-diversity before adding content.

Author each run seed to a fixed pipeline: seed → draft offers + wave mix + (path). Keep it in a pure module so a run is replayable and a level is machine-checkable, the way system-procgen-design frames it and examples/sokoban/ frames the logic/view split.

Handoff

Fun proof: the tower-defense mechanical-truth gates — biting counters, range-ring readability, a wave curve that ramps-then-breathes-then-peaks — at design/FUN.md §8 · Tower Defense (verify-with above). The draft doesn’t change what “fun TD” means; it changes how the roster is chosen.
Winnability + connectivity: every seed must be provably clearable with the hand it deals — no dead draft, no impossible wave. If lanes are seeded, prove the path connects entry to exit. Frame both as a solver proof over the pure run module, per system-procgen-design.
Feel: juice and look go through the JUICE/JUDGE half once mechanics are green — telegraphs, placement feedback, the finale-wave crescendo.

Composes with

genre-tower-defense — the untouched mechanical core this recipe re-shells.
system-meta-progression — the persistent tree that turns a loss into progress.
system-build-diversity — the guarantee the draft is a real fork.
system-procgen-design — seeded, provable runs.
anchor-slay-the-spire — the draft-or-skip discipline.