TS (Tower Swap) is a game for web browsers and mobile devices. It's a terrific combination of match-three and tower defense genres. It's easy to play but has a fairly deep learning curve.
The goal of this collection of tips is to help people achieve high scores in TS up to the ~5080 range. The tips are arranged to be as non-spoilerish as possible, arranged from simplest to most advanced. I'd recommend only reading them as needed, because I think the game's plenty of fun to figure out on one's own. Note: This was originally published late Aug '22. There've been some significant updates since then, with most of them relating to quality control, and only a few related to gameplay.
BEGINNERS TIPS
- It certainly helps to have good general skills at match-three games. For example, scanning the whole board and creating matches that spend the least total moves is an essential skill. Or, "will making a match at the bottom bork up a possible match above it? Well then, better make the above move first." That kind of thing. There are generic match-three guides online, or one could simply play a bunch of TS (Tower Swap), learning what works best.
- Take your free gold as often as possible. This is done by hitting the pause button (upper left), then "Settings," then "Get Gold." One hundred gold is available every hour. For the same reason, it's helpful to belong to an active clan, which will tend to win battles against less-active clans, earning you a free weekly chest most of the time.
- If you make an accidental swap, you can go in to the pause menu and undo it. This doesn't work for moves (like matches) that introduce new resources to the board, in order to prevent gamesmanship.
- Try to pace yourself and don't rush. Remember that the game board is constantly changing, so it's easy to overlook an obvious swap or forgotten unit that might save you a bunch of moves.
- Let's say you have four resources sitting in the same general area, but one of those resources is sitting closer to an edge, and one closer to the middle of the board. All things being equal, I'll usually try to form a match using the one near the edge, as resources in the middle (and top) are easier to form matches with.
- Matching four or more raw resources will award extra moves that scale with how many resources total are combined. I believe this could be as many as seven resources combining in to one match, which awards four bonus moves.
- I'm not a fan of matching more than three raw gold resources at a time, as my theory is that making chests as quickly as possible is more valuable than a couple extra moves awarded here and there.
- When moves are limited, you'll want to focus on building weapons in the early game, i.e. not making chests, and not so much ice. Cannons in particular are extra useful because they're the only unit that can fire across a row, potentially hitting every dragon.
- While it's understandable to use chests immediately to get a couple more swaps, they have far more value when combined in to larger chests. During a typical game, I've found that aiming to build silver chests is the most effective strategy. Occasionally so much gold ore will rain down that it's worth the risk of going for a full gold chest, but that's pretty rare. OTOH, during a 'high score run,' you'll mos def want to aim for building full gold chests, which are worth far more moves (400) than silver chests (70).
- Arrow towers have their widest impact when not at either edge (1st & 6th columns). Therefore, a decent rule of thumb is to set them up in the 2nd and 5th rows, where they achieve maximum, even coverage, without overlap. That said, as one's defenses get filled in, particularly via ice blocks, it can be perfectly reasonable to have towers overlap their coverage here and there.
- All three weapon-types benefit from ice in order to maximise their potential, yet I sometimes forget to thoughtfully arrange as many ice blocks as possible to help out. In particular, directly surrounding my arrow towers. Don't be a Mister Bumble! (i.e. make the same mistake)
INTERMEDIATE TIPS
- One of the biggest, most obvious concerns in the game is preparing for the five 'mother dragon' stages, which scale up in difficulty. The first one can typically be handled without much preparation, while the last one (level 50) is usually going to be a loss in a typical game. Now, besides the completely obvious tip that the game allows you to fail one stage and continue, I've found a different strategy quite useful for surviving the mother. Specifically, it's to build up the castle's hearts to near the maximum (30), and simply ignore the mother, carrying on business as usual, letting the castle 'take the blow.' Done intentionally, this tends to work best in stages 2-4, and not so well in stage five, when the mother spawns more than 30 attackers.
- As you've noticed, this guide is full of little tips, techniques and ideas, and truly, technique is king in this game. Indeed, the best way I've found to improve is to keep working on technique, always, which also means playing mindfully, looking for any little method to save swaps, essentially. I recommend keeping your eyes open and trying to think ahead.
- Be careful about creating a stronger unit just because the move is available. Sometimes it's best to maintain three lesser units in order to provide better coverage across the board. You can always merge them later, of course.
- Starting the game with a bronze unit, my experience is that it's not possible to score more than around 5057. Of course that's a fine score to earn oneself a hefty-sized reward chest, plus the gold that comes in it, but in order to score closer to 5080, you'll need to start with better than bronze items.
- I highly recommend the 25k permanent upgrade. Not only will it give you three more starting hearts, but it will unlock the third sales slot in inventory, which will allow you to buy full chests for 300 gold. Very useful for building up stronger chests more quickly.
ADVANCED TIPS
- The following tip is pure gamemanship, but not quite cheating, so here goes-- when starting up a game, if you're not satisfied with the layout, go ahead and refresh the browser page. (note: not sure how this works on mobile; possibly ending the app and restarting works) You can do this two times for free, the third time after watching an ad, which can be repeated indefinitely. Personally, what I look for in a starting board are multiple pre-existing matches, which will create material and extra moves on their own. If one's lucky, they'll even get a 'cascade effect' in which additional pre-existing matches will be created. IIRC, I've gotten as many ten free moves that way, on top of the starting five moves.
- The following is a simple suggestion, and a repetition from earlier, but it's so important that I'm going to mention it again: try to play moves with the entire board in mind, as if it's a puzzle, and do it slowly. In that spirit, take breaks whenever you feel you're starting to drift in to 'automatic play,' and you'll naturally play better when you return. Indeed, during my highest-scoring games (which can drag on for hours in total play time), I've often broken up a game across multiple days. In short-- never rush when you're trying for a high score. Never, ever. Note: in browser, one can simply close the window, and the game will be restored next time one hits CrazyGames. Not sure if this works in the app.
- This one's probably obvious, but with the threat of the dragon mother every ten levels, it's super-useful to have a silver chest ready just before she arrives. This allows one to make a lot of progress and get their defenses best-arranged with the 70 extra moves. This also means that it can be a good idea to keep on eye on how close the silver chest is to being ready, perhaps even rushing it if possible. Alternatively, if the chest doesn't look it will be ready in time, it can be better to play a different style, with a bias towards well-distributed defenses that can be shifted to line up with the mother. Along with that, a common sacrifice is using up a bronze chest (12 free swaps) to make sure the mother's attack won't break through. Much of all this is simply down to chance, because sometimes gold resources are scarce in coming, and that's just the way it is.
- Specifically, the moves shown in 'News' (not shown in the tutorial) are: 1) raw resources can be tossed off any cliff edge (sides & bottom), 2) stone resources can be pushed from the top row in to the castle to reinforce it (adding hearts, up to a limit of 30), and arrow towers can and should be pushed up in the castle at the L & R sides (1st & 6th columns) until they're at gold level. All these moves cost one swap, and are critical towards achieving high scores.
- Moves and free spaces are the lifeblood of the game. Running out of moves brings on the dragons, and dragons will eventually end your game. Running low on free spaces means that it will be harder and harder to create matches, which leads to wasted moves. For this reason, the more space is limited, the more important it is to plan what type of (gold) unit you're aiming to create.
- Just think-- before a gold unit is produced of any certain type, at some point you'll have two silver, two bronze, and three or more resources of that type scattered around the board. That's at least seven spaces being taken up, which is just part of the game, of course. The real problem is having too many resources and units of the five item types, scattered around and taking up space. For example, without having a plan for what to build next, one could potentially have 5x7 spaces, i.e. 35 or more, being taken up by various resources and units, out of the board's 36 total spaces. That's a 'super-yikes' when you're on a high-score run, and the board's already got a few gold (fully developed) units. This kind of thing is why poor planning is a great way to end the game early.
- To be clear, unlike a raw resource, one cannot discard a unit of any level. Meaning, you'll have to turn that unit in to gold in order to free up the spaces. That's why trying to build more than one or two item types near the end of the game can be disastrous, i.e. there's simply no room. And yes, that directly implies tossing other resources you don't have a plan for, i.e. can't reasonably fit. Unfortunate... but it must be done.
- Reinforcing the castle with stone (to add hearts) is a particularly valuable move because it both discards an unneeded resource as well as boosting health, but it also helps in creating a new resource in the same spot, unlike tossing a resource of the edge. It's also a nifty 'lateral move,' when you don't have enough time to do much else, or might simply be unsure about what to do. It's also useful when you only have one stone resource sitting alone, with no immediate potential for matching it.
- Looking at clan high score lists, I often see a sizeable number of players in the 5050's who've presumably made their best attempt at a better score, but can't seem to get past that level. I fear what they don't realise is that one needs to start with a gold-level chest in order to score in to the 5070's and 5080's. If anyone's wondering why a gold weapon or ice wouldn't be better, well... a gold chest can produce a few gold weapons on its own, as well as, yes, more gold chests.
- If you browse around the TS site's Clans section, you'll notice some very high scores, such as scores in to the 5090's, and even beyond. Don't feel too bad, though. I believe most of these scores are cheats, as the dev has mentioned in News that various cheating methods have been closed off over time. One can also find hacks of the app online, so there's that, too. Point is-- outlandish scores probably aren't worth worrying about, and one can take genuine satisfaction in achieving a high score simply through careful play, patience, and good planning.
SAMPLE GAMES
- Aside from occasionally playing the game purely as a time-waster, by far my most common strategy is to aim for a good chest, ideally scoring in the 5050's. Generally I start such attempts with an available bronze item, and if I can build a silver chest about once every ten levels or less, then I'm on track.
- Sometimes on such a run, the gaming gods just aren't with me, gold resources aren't coming, and instead of scratching and clawing to eke out a couple more levels, I'll just relax and let the game play out. No biggie. I can just start another.
- Every once in while I'll go for a high score run, starting with a gold chest, and use every little bit of the trickery and techniques outlined above. To date I've done that three times, and my successive scores have been 5064, 5073 and 5077, directly related to my improved skill in the game. Actually, there was a fourth attempt, and based on my progress at the time, it was looking like a much stronger game than my 5077 score. And then I... accidentally quit the game after I went in to the pause menu to earn some free gold. Yes, you can earn free gold even in the middle of the game, and no-- currently there's no confirmation button for the QUIT button, so be careful with that. In any case, now you know why I rate this guide as being good enough to get to the ~5080 level.
addenda:
a free move can be had, when opening a chest while a combo is being processed
