Crop Siege Beginner Guide: Grow by Day, Defend by Night

This Crop Siege beginner guide walks you through the one idea the whole game is built on: grow by day, defend by night. Crop Siege is a cozy farm and tower defense game for iPhone and Android from Softick. You plant crops in the sunshine, turn the harvest into coins, and spend those coins on towers before the pests come out after dark. It sounds simple, and it is easy to pick up, but the way the two halves feed each other is what decides whether your farmhouse survives.

Below you will find how a level is structured, what to do in your first days and nights, how towers, heroes, pets and abilities fit together, and what is waiting for you across 48 levels and 16 worlds.

How a Crop Siege level works#

Every level is a short story told in days and nights. The day is your economy. The night is your battle. What you grow in the sunshine pays for everything that protects you in the dark, so the two phases are really one game.

The day: grow your farm#

During the day you plant carrots, corn, pumpkins and sunflowers on the best soil, harvest them for coins, and place your towers along the roads the pests will use. Think of every crop as an investment. A coin you earn now is a slingshot, a beehive or an upgrade that is standing on the road when the sun goes down.

The night: defend your harvest#

When night falls, pests pour out of their burrows and march on your farm: rabbits, crows, raptors and, later, kings. Your job is to keep them away from the farmhouse. You upgrade towers, call in your hero, strike with the pitchfork and use your other abilities wherever the line starts to bend.

Your first days: five beginner tips#

1. Plant first, build second. Early on, coins are your bottleneck. Getting crops in the ground quickly means more money for towers by the first night.
2. Use the best soil. The game points you toward the best soil for a reason. Good plots are where your harvest, and so your defense budget, comes from.
3. Build along the roads. Pests follow roads from their burrows to your farmhouse. Towers that cover a long stretch of road, especially near bends, get the most shots in.
4. Save a little for the night. You can upgrade towers during the night, so a small coin reserve lets you react when a wave hits harder than you expected.
5. Do not forget your abilities. The pitchfork strike, the rain call and the frost bell are there to rescue a lane that is about to break. Using them a moment early is better than a moment late.

Towers that grow with you#

Crop Siege has more than 15 towers to build. You start with farm-sized defenses like slingshots and beehives and work your way up to catapults, frost towers, laser beacons and more. Each tower can be upgraded, and once you max one out you pick a specialization that changes how it plays:

As a beginner, a good habit is to spread your first towers across the road and then put your upgrades into the ones that sit at the busiest points. Specializations are a choice, not a strict upgrade, so think about what that spot on the map needs: raw damage on a single target, faster fire, or a way to slow the crowd down.

Heroes, pets, abilities and boosters#

Heroes on the field#

Your towers do not fight alone. Farmer Joe, Granny Bee and Sam fight next to them on the field. Heroes level up during the night and unleash their own skills, which makes them a flexible answer for whichever lane is in trouble.

Farm pets#

Pets add small but useful jobs to your farm. The cat pounces on crop thieves, the owl spots hidden pests, and the pig digs up treasure. They are a nice reminder that in Crop Siege your farm and your defense are never really separate.

Abilities and boosters#

Abilities like the pitchfork strike, the rain call and the frost bell are your emergency buttons during the night. Before a level you can also use boosters when you want an extra edge. You never have to: every level can be beaten without paying.

16 worlds, each with a new twist#

Crop Siege takes you from a sunny meadow all the way to the Moon. The 16 worlds are Meadow, Autumn Valley, Frosty Peaks, Misty Swamp, Sunscorch Desert, Tropic Isle, Haunted Hollow, Volcano Ridge, Candy Kingdom, Sky Islands, Glowshroom Caves, Clockwork Farm, Coral Depths, Moon Base, Dino Valley and Royal Castle.

Every world brings its own pests, its own boss and a new way to play. You will flip levers to re-route pests, use portals, dodge meteors, collect dino eggs and ride the ocean currents. A few examples:

• Coral Depths: currents and whirlpools change how the fight flows.
• Moon Base: low gravity and meteor showers.
• Dino Valley: grab the eggs before they hatch.

When you reach a new world, play the first level a little more carefully. The new twist usually changes where your towers should go, and learning it early saves retries later.

Boss fights#

Every world ends with a boss, 15 boss fights in total. Along the way you will meet the Yeti, the Toad King, the Sandworm, the Crab King, the Pumpkin Witch, the Dragon, the Cake Queen, the Thunderbird, the Spider Queen, the Mecha Boar, the Kraken, the Mothership and the T-Rex. Bosses come with their own tricks: the T-Rex roars and stuns your towers, the Kraken slams whole lanes, and the Mothership beams towers away. At the very end waits the Pest King himself, in three phases.

After the campaign: Endless and Boss Rush#

Beat all 48 levels and there is still more to do. In Endless you see how many nights you can last, and in Boss Rush you take on every boss in a row. Both are a good test of everything you learned about balancing your farm and your defense.

Free to play, fair to play#

Crop Siege is free to play, plays offline and needs no account. Every level can be beaten without paying. Gems, boosters and skins are optional, rewarded ads are always your choice, and one purchase removes the other ads for good.

Crop Siege is coming soon to the App Store and Google Play. Find screenshots, the trailer and support on the Crop Siege website. Questions, ideas or a bug to report? Write to hello@softick.dev; the team reads every message.