Arena

An arena is an enclosed area, often circular or oval-shaped, designed to showcase theater, musical performances, or sporting events. The word derives from Latin harena, a particularly fine/smooth sand used to absorb blood in ancient arenas such as the Colosseum in Rome. It is composed of a large open space surrounded on most or all sides by tiered seating for spectators. The key feature of an arena is that the event space is the lowest point, allowing for maximum visibility. Arenas are usually designed to accommodate a large number of spectators.

The term arena is sometimes used as a synonym for a very large venue such as Pasadena's Rose Bowl, but such a facility is typically called a stadium, especially if it does not have a roof. The use of one term over the other has mostly to do with the type of event. Football (be it association, rugby, or gridiron) is typically played in a stadium while basketball and ice hockey are typically played in an arena, although many of the larger arenas hold more spectators than do the stadiums of smaller colleges or high schools. There are exceptions. The home of the Duke University basketball team would qualify as an arena, but the facility is called Cameron Indoor Stadium. Domed stadiums, which, like arenas, are enclosed but have the larger playing surfaces and seating capacities found in stadiums, are generally not referred to as arenas in North America. There is also the sport of indoor American football (one variant of which is explicitly known as arena football), a variant of the gridiron-based game that is designed for the usual smaller playing surface of most arenas; variants of other traditionally outdoor sports, including box lacrosse and futsal/indoor soccer, also exist.

Bloons Tower Defense

Bloons Tower Defense (also known as Bloons TD) is a series of tower defense games under the Bloons series produced and created by Ninja Kiwi. The game was initially developed as a browser game, built upon the Adobe Flash platform and released in 2007. Later games in the series expanded to support various mobile platforms, including Android, iOS, Windows Phone, PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DSi.

In the game, players attempt to prevent balloons (called bloons in-game) from reaching the end of a set course by placing towers along it; units which can pop the bloons in a variety of ways. It is also possible to freeze and, in later levels, glue the bloons, giving other towers more time to pop them. Money is gained by popping bloons and completing levels, and can be spent on extra towers or upgrades for existing ones or even special items such as exploding pineapples and monkey tacks.

The series has received mixed reception, with most games reviewed well. Some versions have been described as the best free tower defense games for their platform while criticism for the games has largely been due to lack of innovation in recent games and performance issues.