Packet Patrol
Defend a dial-up modem from pop-ups, spam and viruses with routers, firewalls and scanners. Every tower eats bandwidth, so overbuild and you slow your own defenses.
- Year
- 2000
- Era
- Early Web
- Genre
- Tower Defense
Free, no sign-up. Keyboard, touch or gamepad.
How to play
- Touch: tap a tower button, tap the board to build, tap a tower to upgrade or sell.
- Mouse the same.
- Keys: arrows move, Space build/upgrade, X sell/next type, 1-4 pick, Enter send wave.
On touch
- Tap a tower button, tap the board to build, tap a tower to upgrade or sell.
Every run starts on the title screen. Pause any time with P or the pause button; calm mode removes flashes and screen shake.
Designer’s note
Towers that spend bandwidth were the joke that turned into the design: build too much and your own defenses slow down. The enemies are the pop-ups and chain letters everyone remembers, drawn small enough that a crowd of them stays readable. We tuned it until a careful player can almost always see the loss coming.
The Early Web era, 1997–2004
Beige towers, bevelled buttons and games that loaded one modem squeal at a time.
High scores
The top ten runs are saved in this browser with your three initials. Nothing is uploaded, so clearing site data clears the table.
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