Free browser game · tactical tower defence
A wolf pack guards its den and an old golden totem at the end of a red sandstone canyon. Poachers, hyenas and rogue bears come in waves along the trails. You decide where each wolf stands — and every wolf you place changes the way the raiders walk.
Runs in the page. No download, no account, no ads, no purchases. Spirit Energy exists only inside the game.
Choose a canyon, place a few wolves, then call the first wave. Nothing happens until you call it, so take your time on the opening layout.
Keys 1, 2 and 3 choose a wolf. Space calls the next wave. P pauses, F toggles fast speed. With a wolf selected, U trains it and X releases it.
The raiders are waiting too.
The pack
No wolf does everything. Alphas hit hard but only reach the next cell over. Trackers barely scratch a raider, yet nothing hidden gets past them. Shamans wait a long time between moonbeams, and then stop a whole group dead.
The heavy bite at the front of the pack.
Stand an Alpha right beside a trail, ideally where two trails meet. It always goes for the raider closest to the totem. At the third rank it bites two raiders at once, which is what finally makes hyena rushes manageable.
Slows everything it touches, and sees trappers.
Trappers move through the canyon in camouflage and cannot be targeted until a Tracker is near. A Tracker also drags raiders down to a crawl, which buys your Alphas more bites per raider. Low damage on its own — it is a support wolf, and plays like one.
Calls a golden moonbeam on the thickest crowd.
The Shaman looks for the spot where the most raiders are bunched together and drops a moonbeam there. Everyone inside is hurt and stunned. Slow to recharge, so one Shaman per choke point is usually plenty.
Numbers read rank 1 → rank 2 → rank 3. Training happens on the spot, even mid-wave.
Raiders
Five kinds of raider. Each wave is a little tougher than the last — raider health grows by 9 per cent of its base value with every wave after the first.
The totem starts with 20 points. Each raider that reaches it removes its totem damage; at zero the den falls.
| Raider | Health | Speed | Totem damage | SE when driven off | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poacher | 55 | 1.05 | 1 | 4 | The most common raider. Average in every way. |
| Hyena | 38 | 1.75 | 1 | 3 | Fast and fragile. Arrives in packs and punishes thin defences. |
| Trapper | 70 | 1 | 2 | 7 | Hidden until a Tracker is close. Untouched by Alphas and Shamans otherwise. |
| Rogue bear | 300 | 0.62 | 3 | 14 | Slow, very tough, and knocks three points off the totem if it gets through. |
| Ringleader | 1500 | 0.5 | 8 | 60 | Appears once, in the last wave. Walks slowly and takes a long time to turn back. |
Spirit Energy
Spirit Energy is what you spend to call in wolves and train them. You never buy it. There are four ways to earn it, and the biggest one depends on where you stand.
Each canyon has three spirit springs. While a wave is running, a spring with a wolf within 2.2 cells gives 1.5 SE every second.
A raider that passes within 1 cell of a spring fouls it, and it stops giving anything for 4 seconds. Springs on a trail pay well only if raiders never reach them.
Every raider turned back leaves a little Spirit Energy behind — from 3 for a hyena to 60 for the Ringleader.
Clearing a wave adds 20 SE plus 4 SE for each wave held so far.
Changed your mind about a wolf? Releasing it returns 70 per cent of everything spent on it. The canyons start you with 130 SE on Red Fork and 150 SE on Moon Mesa.
Pathfinding
The canyon is a grid. Every time you place a wolf on open floor, the game recalculates how far each cell is from the totem, and raiders follow the shortest trail that is still open.
Under the hood this is a wavefront search: starting at the totem, the game numbers each walkable cell by how many steps it is from the den, spreading outwards one ring at a time. A raider standing on a cell simply steps to the neighbour with the smaller number. Place a wolf on the floor and that cell drops out of the count, so the numbers — and the dotted trail lines on the board — shift to show the new route before a single raider moves.
You can use that to stretch a trail into a long zigzag past your Alphas. What you cannot do is close the canyon completely: the game refuses any placement that would leave an entry, or a raider already walking, with no way through. Ledges are the exception — wolves on ledges never block anything, so they are the safe place to build when you are unsure.
Waves
Each wave is called by you, so there is always a quiet build phase in between. Here is the full order, so nothing in wave nine comes as a surprise.
| Wave | Raiders | Total | Comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6 poachers | 6 | entry A |
| 2 | 10 poachers | 10 | entries A and B |
| 3 | 8 hyenas, 4 poachers | 12 | every entry |
| 4 | 4 trappers, 6 poachers | 10 | every entry |
| 5 | 2 rogue bears, 8 hyenas | 10 | every entry |
| 6 | 12 poachers, 5 trappers | 17 | every entry |
| 7 | 16 hyenas, 2 rogue bears | 18 | every entry |
| 8 | 4 rogue bears, 6 trappers | 10 | every entry |
| 9 | 14 poachers, 12 hyenas, 2 rogue bears | 28 | every entry |
| 10 | 12 trappers, 3 rogue bears | 15 | every entry |
| 11 | 6 rogue bears, 18 hyenas, 6 trappers | 30 | every entry |
| 12 | 1 ringleader, 14 poachers, 8 trappers, 3 rogue bears | 26 | every entry |
Maps
Red Fork is the one to learn on. Moon Mesa gives you more floor to build on, and three ways in to cover.
Two entries on the east rim. Each trail runs through a spirit spring before the two meet in the open floor in front of the den.
Three entries — north, east and south — around an open mesa top. More room to build, more ways in.
Rock Ledge (build, never blocks) Floor (build, re-routes) Spring Totem
| Action | Mouse | Touch | Keyboard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Choose a wolf | Click its card under the board | Tap its card | 1 · 2 · 3 |
| Place it | Click a floor cell or ledge | Tap a cell to preview, tap again to place | — |
| Inspect a wolf | Click it on the board | Tap it on the board | — |
| Train / release | Buttons in the wolf panel | Buttons in the wolf panel | U · X |
| Call the next wave | Call wave button | Call wave button | Space |
| Pause | Pause button | Pause button | P or Esc |
| Change speed | Fast button | Fast button | F |
North Melbourne, 2026
Canyon Defender: Gold Pack is written and maintained by Eleni Papadopoulos in North Melbourne. It is plain JavaScript drawing onto a canvas — no game engine, no image files, no audio files. The wolves, the sandstone and the moonbeams are all drawn in code, and the sounds are synthesised in your browser.
Before this game, Shardjoy was a small site of written notes about wolf games on Google Play. The notes stopped in September 2026 and the site now carries one game instead, built from scratch for this page.
One honest limitation: a run is not saved if you close the tab. The only thing the game remembers between visits is your best wave count on each canyon and whether you turned the sound off.
Found a bug or a wave that feels unfair? Write to contact@shardjoy.com.
It is free, and there is no other version. No purchases, no ads, no account. Spirit Energy cannot be bought and has no value outside the game.
Because then there would be nothing to defend against. Raiders must always have at least one open route to the totem. If a placement would seal every route, the cell turns red and the wolf stays in the dock. You can still make that route as long and winding as you like.
Almost always a Tracker. Wave four is the first with trappers, and nothing else can see them. Put one Tracker where the trails meet, close enough to cover the approach, and wave four becomes routine.
Yes. The board scales to your screen, and on touch screens you tap once to preview a placement and a second time to confirm, so a stray thumb does not waste Spirit Energy. It is easier to read in landscape.
Not really. Raiders are driven off, not shown being hurt: they fade in a puff of dust and leave. There is no blood, and the tone is closer to a board game than an action game.