Zombies, I had no idea why these two species were pitted against each other.

But you can also feel the land beneath you, holding fast, not breaking, not this time.

You can see the tide and imagine what it would feel like if it washed over you and pulled you out to sea. But when you can just match the rush with fortification, meet the swelling crowds with a steady hand, the sensation is something like watching waves crash against a rocky shore. Plan poorly and you’ll be quickly overrun plan too well and the game basically plays itself. Tower defense games are most satisfying when things are almost, but not quite, out of control. If you are efficient, responsive, and know how to best distribute your resources, your little kingdom will not perish from the earth. Your decisions are remarkably few: where to place your “towers,” when to upgrade them, where and when to intervene on the ground. You have technology, currency, a land claim, your master plan. This horde has numbers, doggedness, good shoes, optimism. They are essentially a series of last stands against an ungovernable horde. Tower defense games take up the tension between order and chaos directly. Your eyes, they just know: A human has been there. It’s amazing how you can be traveling in the blocky wilds and then see on the horizon, before you even know exactly what you’re looking at, the unmistakable signs of intention, craft, control. And if you’ve ever seen any elaborate Minecraft projects, then you know what a domesticated landscape looks like once a randomly generated world has lost its randomness. We still kill, but we’re more civilized about it. Many turn-based RPGs keep their randomness calculable so our own diligence and strategy will hold sway. Whatever is out of whack, we’ll gladly put back in whack. Puzzles in games satisfy our urge to put everything in its right place. As agents of order we plan, we rearrange, we make our mental to-do lists. Of course, there are plenty of games that go the other way. It’s as if nothing untoward ever really happens in the world of the game until you and your chaos come along.

Even the cuter encounters of Angry Birds and Super Mario are given to mayhem, leaving the dreams of pigs and turtles in pieces by level’s end. The very sight of you disrupts the established order of guard patrols and lame banter. First-person shooter fans know that delicious moment of anticipation right before you are seen by the enemy and the whole clockwork world throws a fit. Players of Grand Theft Auto can attest to the joys of an unscripted five-star police chase through oncoming traffic. One of the most basic pleasures of video games is pandemonium.

How to beat whack a zombie mini game