This game is receiving new content, by way of Expansion Packs and/or Downloadable Content.

Be aware that any unused content you find may become used in the future. If this does happen, please specify as such!

This article is a work in progress.

...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.



Bloons Tower Defense 6 is, unsurprisingly, the sequel to Bloons Tower Defense 5. But this time, it's in 3D!

To do:

There are several freeplay rounds with custom layouts that are functionally impossible to reach (such as round 10,000, which always has 100 Fortified BADs).

The memetic "Slons Map" is in the game data, apparently. Look into that.

An unused "Big Monkey Towers" mode, as a counterpart to the "Small Monkey Towers" mode that is used

Unused Graphics

Extreme Icon



An icon for the Extreme map difficulty, which was previously seen in BTD5. Interestingly, while this icon is not used anywhere in-game, the official Ninja Kiwi Discord server has an emote of this icon.

Fortified Bloons

This needs some investigation.

Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.

Specifically: These bloons used to be functional, but were removed at some point, leaving only the graphics. When were they removed?

Every Bloon type has graphics for fortified variants, although only Lead, Ceramic, and MOAB-class Bloons can be fortified in the final game. Fortified Purple Bloons could appear in freeplay mode in version 1.0, but this was removed in version 2.0.

Red Blue Green Yellow Pink Purple White Black Zebra Rainbow Fortified Regrow Fortified Camo Fortified Camo Regrow Fortified

Early Churchill Texture

Early Final

An early texture map for Captain Churchill. These textures are much rougher than the final textures, and they greatly resemble his appearance in a render from an early icon. These textures don't fit Churchill's model/UV map in the final game, which indicates that Churchill had a different model one point.

Early Crate Textures



The Support Chinook's texture map contains early, placeholder-y textures for crates. The coin texture is ripped from the currency used on Ninja Kiwi's website, while the heart texture is ripped from BTD5.

Dartling Gunner Textures

This needs some investigation.

Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.

Specifically: When were these graphics removed? Were they removed all at once, or taken out incrementally over several updates?

LaserCannon

LaserCannonPlasma

DartlingPlasmaBeam

DartlingPlasmaHead

PlasmaAcceleratorBeamBody

RayOfDoomBeamBody

DepletedBloontoniumDart

HydraRocketPod

RocketStormRocket

MADRockets

Buckshot

PlasmaBuckshot

Various projectile textures intended for the Dartling Gunner. All these textures were removed in later versions.

(Source: Original TCRF research )

Rocket

ProjectileRocket, AAMissileSprite, TankShellDouble, TankShellTrebble

This weird-looking texture for a rocket projectile has three duplicates. Most likely a placeholder texture, given its ubiquity.

Bullet

Bullet

The same graphic as above, but grayscale and with the bottom half cut off for some reason.

Early Monkey Ace Projectiles

DartSprite

DartGreenSprite

FighterPlaneSprite

PineappleSprite

BomberAceSprite

GroundZeroSprite

TsarBombaSprite

SpectreSprite

A number of early, strange-looking textures for the Monkey Ace's projectiles.

Blue Shuriken

SeekingShuriken, SharpSeekingShuriken

Some blue shurikens. It seems that the Ninja Monkey would have used these when upgraded to Seeking Shurikens, instead of it using the regular shuriken textures, as it does in the final. Similarly, a second texture was supposed to be used for having both Seeking Shurikens and Sharper Shurikens at the same time, but is also unused and, oddly, is completely identical to the blue shuriken.

Unused Tracks

Monkeys in Space



This track was allegedly cut from the final game because one of the founders of Ninja Kiwi, Stephen Harris, does not like space maps. It was going to be Intermediate difficulty.

BTD1



As the name suggests, this is a recreation of the track from the very first Bloons Tower Defense game. This was most likely used for testing.

This image of the map is actually an early version of it, as it is from around 2017. Between that time and its almost complete removal from the game files in February 2018, decorations such as houses, windmills, and flowers were added. Their models would go on to be reused in tracks such as Monkey Meadows.

Test Maps

There are two additional test tracks, TestMap and TestWaterMap, both of which have the same path layout as BTD1. TestWaterMap has a mask (defined area for tower placement, such as the path or the ground) entirely of water, while TestMap has no mask at all.

Unused Text

Dartling Gunner

Various strings exist for the Dartling Gunner, a tower from BTD4 and BTD5 that is currently absent from this game. Based on the categories of its unused Monkey Knowledge, the Dartling Gunner is meant to be a military-class tower.

Tier Name Description Base Dartling Gunner Uses a dart-shooting machine-gun. Aims wherever you last tapped on the screen. Path 1 1 Focused Firing Increases accuracy of the Dartling Gun. 2 Faster Barrel Spin Makes gun fire much faster. 3 Laser Cannon Rapid fire laser blasts can pop Frozen Bloons. 4 Plasma Accelerator Concentrates a powerful beam of energy to a single point. 5 Ray of Doom Creates a solid line of Bloon annihilation. You can basically erase the Bloons at your leisure. Path 2 1 Powerful Darts Darts move faster and can pop 3 Bloons each. 2 Depleted Bloontonium Shots can damage any Bloon type. 3 Hydra Rocket Pods Shoots vicious little missiles instead of darts. 4 Rocket Storm Rocket Storm ability: Sends a powerful storm of rockets in all directions. 5 MAD (Moab Assured Destroyer) Each missile does extreme damage to MOAB-Class Bloons. Path 3 1 Faster Swivel Barrel can swivel much faster. 2 Lock and Load Can lock Dartling in one aim direction. 3 Buckshot Shoots blasts of deadly buckshot instead of darts. 4 Bloon Area Denial System 4-barreled auto-cannon can set to attack automatically. 5 Bloon Exclusion Zone Increased damage and upgrade to 6 barrels. Bloons are excluded.

Monkey Academy

Various strings exist for a tower called the Monkey Academy, a completely original tower (albeit possibly based on a building of the same name in Bloons Monkey City). Based on the categories of its unused Monkey Knowledge, the Monkey Academy is meant to be a support-class tower.

Tier Name Description Base Monkey Academy Place of Monkey education and training. Grants powerful benefits for Military, Magic and Hero Monkeys. Generates a small amount of Hero XP every round. Path 1 1 Military Efficiency Decreases footprint of Military Monkeys in the radius. 2 Wider Influence Gives Academy a larger influence radius. 3 M.A.S.H Monkey Army Surgical Hospital gives extra lives for Bloons popped. 4 Military Barracks Military Monkeys in radius get longer range, more pops and can be sold at a favorable rate. 5 Military HQ Military Monkeys everywhere gain huge range, pops and damage buffs. Path 2 1 Magic Sciences Magic Monkeys in the radius get extra pierce and attack speed. 2 Academic Network Increases Academy radius for all Academies with this upgrade. 3 Wizards Library Wizards, Druids and Alchemists in the radius can learn up to tier 2 in all three upgrade paths. 4 Magic Arcanum Academy Graduate ability: Creates a powerful Monkey whose abilities are based on what Magic Monkeys are nearby. 5 Nexus Crucible Academy Graduates created by ability are permanent! Path 3 1 Private Tuition Generates more XP per round for your Hero. 2 Heroic Presence Heroes get 15% increased range while in the radius of the Academy. 3 Heroic Academy Your Hero's ability cooldowns are reduced. 4 Power Hero Development (PhD) Generates lots of extra XP per round for your Hero. 5 Dynamic Duo Allows you to get a second hero!

Monkey Knowledge

Name Description Military Broad Blade Dartlings Shots from Dartling Guns can hit Bloons more easily. Dartling Coolant Dartling Gun attack speed increase by 10%. More Buckshot Buckshot shoots 5 projectiles. Focused Plasma Plasma Accelerator does damage faster. Support Elite Tutors Generates another +15 XP per round for your Hero. Long Graduation Academy Graduate lasts longer.

Additionally, a duplicate name and description for Supa-Thrive exists, although it is named "SupaGroFertilizer" in the code. Thrive only affects cash gained from popping Bloons, not from farming, so why the name refers to fertiliser is unknown.

Activated Abilities

Every activated ability in the game has a name and description, which are, internally, stored as separate strings from the names and descriptions of the upgrades they belong to. This system is similar to the one in BTD5, where the text was displayed as tooltips for each ability. However, abilities don't display tooltips in this game, so the text for most of the abilities go unused. The only exceptions are the text for the heroes' abilities, which can be seen in the hero menu.

Interestingly, some of these strings show changes made to certain abilities during development.

Name Description Notes Super Monkey Fan Club Converts up to 10 nearby Dart Monkeys into Super Monkeys for 10 seconds. In the final game, this ability lasts for 15 seconds. Plasma Monkey Fan Club Elite membership of this club grants the Dart Monkeys even more power! N/A Turbo Charge Makes this Monkey attack incredibly fast for 10 seconds. N/A Perma Charge Makes this Monkey deal additional damage for 15 seconds. N/A Assassinate MOAB Special missile flies out and does massive damage to MOAB-Class Bloons. N/A Eliminate MOAB Assassinate ability does 6x damage with a short cooldown. N/A Blade Maelstrom Covers the area in a storm of blades. N/A Super Maelstrom Even more powerful Maelstrom ability and lasts longer. N/A Snowstorm Freezes all Bloons on screen for a short time. N/A Absolute Zero Ability is so cold it freezes all Bloon types including cold immune and MOAB-Class. N/A Glue Strike Glues all Bloons on screen. N/A Glue Storm Glue Storm ability pelts the whole screen over 10 seconds with glue. This ability was changed to last for 15 seconds in update 4.0, but this text was not updated to accommodate the change. Supply Drop Drops a crate full of cash. N/A Elite Supply Drop Supply drop gives much more cash. N/A Elite Defender A lost life gives this Sniper 2x attack speed for a short time in retaliation. This ability is activated automatically and isn't normally visible to the player. In the final game, this ability increases attack speed by 4x. First Strike A devastating missile strike on the largest Bloon on screen. Destroys up to a ZOMG Bloon in one go, or many smaller Bloons. N/A Pre-emptive Strike Automatically triggers MOAB Assassin effect whenever MOAB-Class Bloon spawns from the Bloon entrance. This ability is activated automatically and isn't normally visible to the player. MOAB Takedown Grapples a MOAB-Class Bloon and brings it down. N/A Pirate Lord Can shoot 3 grappling hooks at once, and plunder extra cash from each MOAB-Class Bloon brought down with them. N/A Ground Zero Drops a huge bomb that destroys most things on screen. N/A Tsar Bomba A very, very large bomb. Someone put a stop to this craziness! N/A Support Chinook Redeploy Can pick up and redeploy most Monkey types. N/A Support Chinook Supplies Drops lives and cash crates. N/A Special Poperations Deploys a powerful special Monkey Marine with machine gun. N/A Pop and Awe Rains explosions over the whole screen, popping and immobilizing all Bloons for a few seconds. N/A Rocket Storm Sends a powerful storm of rockets in all directions. This ability is unimplemented. Mauler Storm Each missile does extreme damage to MOAB-Class Bloons. This ability is unimplemented. Summon Phoenix Powerful phoenix wreaks Bloon havoc for 20 seconds. N/A Wizard Lord Phoenix Wizard Lord becomes a master of the flame, turning into a super powerful Lava Phoenix for a short time. N/A Prince of Darkness Reanimate even more powerful Bloon servants to obliterate the enemy. This ability is no longer used. This ability used to be named "Soulbind", but the name and description were changed in update 2.0. This is strange, as the Prince of Darkness doesn't use an ability, so why this text needed to be replaced is unknown. Annihilation Destroys most Bloons completely and utterly within blast radius. N/A The Anti-Bloon <Program Directive> <Eradicate Bloons> <INITIATE> N/A Legend of the Night We turn to him, when all hope is lost... This ability is activated automatically and isn't normally visible to the player. Sabotage Lasts 15 seconds. During the sabotage, all Bloons move at reduced speed. N/A Grand Saboteur Ability duration is longer, and MOAB-Class Bloons spawn with less health during the sabotage. N/A Transforming Tonic Farms nearby the Druid earn 50% more money for a short time. Strangely, this description seems to be misplaced, and appears to describe... an early version of the Druid's Jungle's Bounty ability? In the final game, Jungle's Bounty simply generates an amount of cash depending on the number of Banana Farms near the Druid. No text for the Total Transformation ability or the Druid's abilities exist. IMF Loan Gives you $10,000 but you have to pay it back over time. N/A Monkey-Nomics For when you're too big to fail... N/A Overclock Target Monkey becomes super powered for a short time. No text for the Ultraboost ability exists. Spike Storm Shoots out a thick layer of spikes over the entire track. NA Carpet of Spikes Sets a carpet of spikes over the whole track, every round. This ability is activated automatically and isn't normally visible to the player. This ability was changed to activate every 20 seconds instead of every round in update 4.0, but this text was not updated to accommodate the change. Academy Graduate Creates a powerful Monkey whose abilities are based on Magic Monkeys nearby. This ability is unimplemented. Call to Arms Gives all Monkeys DOUBLE attack speed and pops for 10 seconds. In the final game, this ability only increases attack speed and pierce by 50%. Homeland Defense Ability affects ALL Monkeys and lasts for 15 seconds. This ability was buffed to last for 20 seconds in update 8.0, and the description for the upgrade was changed in update 9.0 to accommodate this, but this text was not.

Target Types

To do:

Verify the notes for all of these and fill in the unknowns

Text exists for seemingly every target type (targeting mode) in the game. A large number of target types are only used internally and can't be seen by the player, leaving the text unused.

Text Notes Custom Path This target type is unused. According to an official blog post, Centered Path originally allowed the player to draw their own flight pattern, so this may be a remnant from before the functionality was changed. Further supporting this is that the text for the Centered Path target type is the last one in the list in version 1.0, suggesting that it was added late in development. Necromancer Target Used internally for the Necromancer's targeting. Offset Track Unknown Random Position Unknown Random Target Unknown Close Shared Range Used internally for Advanced Intel. Expensive Friendly Target Unknown First Shared Range Used internally for Advanced Intel. Friendly Target Unknown Grapplable Unknown Target Independent Unknown Target In Front Unknown Last Shared Range Used internally for Advanced Intel. Target MOAB Unknown Target Opposite Used internally for the Robo Monkey, Tech Terror, and The Anti-Bloon's left arm cannon, which is set to the opposite target type of the player-controlled right arm cannon. Target Pointer Unknown Strong Shared Range Used internally for Advanced Intel. Target Tag Unknown Track Or Default Used internally for Acid Pool.

Miscellaneous

Achievements

Note that "{0}" is used in the game's text as a placeholder for numbers.

ID Name Description 12 Extreme Player Win {0} game on an Extreme map

Pause Menu Options

Text Notes Continuous Play Probably an early name for Auto Start mode. It may have been changed due to the text being too long to fit in the pause menu panel. Line of Sight This option existed in earlier versions, but was removed in version 11.0. Click & Drop This option replaced Drop & Lock in the PC version in earlier versions, but was removed in version 17.0 when the PC version's controls were redone.

Mode Descriptions

Each "main" mode (easy, normal, and hard) has a description that is displayed in a heading in their respective sub-mode menus. Sub-modes don't have their own headings, but a few sub-modes still have descriptions for them, which go unused.

Mode Text Notes Impoppable On Impoppable Monkeys cost much more than normal, you start at round 6, the Bloons move faster and you have 1 life. Beating round 100 in Impoppable awards you a platinum medal for that track. Impoppable mode is a sub-mode of hard mode and doesn't have its own sub-mode menu. Sandbox On Sandbox Monkeys cost normal, the Bloons move normal and you have unlimited lives and cash. Sandbox is a sub-mode of easy, normal, and hard mode and doesn't have its own sub-mode menu. This description seems to only apply to normal-sandbox, and there are no equivalent descriptions for easy-sandbox or hard-sandbox, so this may indicate that sandbox mode originally only had the normal mode version, like in BTD5.

Co-op Emote

Eco

An unused co-op text emote. This was most likely not used due to it being redundant to the piggy bank emote.

(Source: Original TCRF research )

Text Oddities

Several upgrades have different names in the code and in various file names, suggesting they were changed during development: The Mortar Monkey's Shell Shock upgrade is named "Shockwave" in various file names and in the language files. The Monkey Ace's Centered Path upgrade is named "FlightOrders" in one of its file names. This may be another remnant from when Centered Path allowed the player to draw their own flight pattern.

Monkey Meadow is named "Tutorial" in the language files. Despite this, the game's tutorial doesn't take place on this map at all—it takes place on Town Center!

CHIMPS mode is named "CLICKS" in several files. This is probably an early name, and presumably stands for something along the lines of "no Continues, Lives lost, Income, Consumables, Knowledge, or Selling", in the same vein as the final name.

In various file names and in the language files, the Time Stop power is named "DartTime", and the Longer Time Stop monkey knowledge is named "LongerDartTime". These are presumably early names, and appear to be references to "bullet time" from The Matrix.

The button that toggles monkey knowledge displays the text "Enable Monkey Knowledge", which switches to a different string when the option is toggled on. However, these strings are identical, so this goes unseen.

In the language files, the first 8 heroes are organised in a completely different order from the final game:

Internal Order In-Game Order Quincy Quincy Striker Jones Gwendolin Captain Churchill Striker Jones Gwendolin Obyn Greenfoot Benjamin Captain Churchill Pat Fusty Benjamin Ezili Ezili Obyn Greenfoot Pat Fusty

Version Differences

To do:

Expand this section to include all patch differences - added tracks, balance changes, etc.

Move the linked concept art to a prerelease page. (Currently, we only have concept art for Benjamin and Pat.)

Early co-op icon?

Striker Jones

Original Updated

Jones was usable since the game launched in version 1.0, though at the time, his icon used a design that was slightly different from the final. This was probably an oversight, as it was subsequently replaced in version 2.0. Compared to the updated version, the lighting was different, his cap had a slightly different emblem, and his fabulous mustache was smaller and didn't obscure his mouth. The original version can also be seen in a teaser image posted on Twitter before the game launched.

Captain Churchill

Original Updated

Churchill's icon has been in the game since launch, although he was not implemented in the game at that time. When he was released in version 2.0, his icon was changed. His original icon shows a rather drastic change in design: his helmet was green instead of brown, his goggles had black lenses instead of green lenses, the barrel on his tank gun was green instead of gray, the antenna on his tank didn't have a cap, and his hat and the side of the tank turret had emblems on them. Additionally, Churchill himself lacked a scar and had beady brown eyes instead of green eyes.

Benjamin

Original Updated

Benjamin's icon has been in the game since launch, although he was not implemented in the game at that time. When he was released in version 3.0, his icon was changed. His original icon is slightly different: he was facing right instead of left, his hairstyle was different, and he had sunglasses in his level 1 form (which matches his appearance in concept art).

Ezili

Original Updated

Ezili's icon has been in the game since launch, although she was not implemented in the game at that time. When she was released in version 7.0, her icon was changed. Her original icon shows some significant design changes: the pattern on her forehead was different, her eyebrows were square-ish instead of circular, her eyelids had small notches above them, and her hairstyle was different. Additionally, in the original icon, she was facing to the left, while in the updated icon, she's facing to the right.

Pat Fusty

Original Updated

Pat's icon has been in the game since launch, although he was not implemented in the game at that time. When he was (finally) released in version 9.0, his icon was changed. His original icon doesn't show many design changes, although he was originally in a completely different pose. In the original, his arm appears to be glowing orange, which doesn't happen in the final game, but can be seen in concept art, which shows that it would've occurred when using his Rallying Roar ability.