Howdy fellow developers!
I’ve soft-released a Tower Defense game and am looking for feedback and criticism to improve it and ready it up for the official release. Any opinion would be helpful!
Tower Defenders
(Apologies for the low FPS gifs, Gyazo doesn’t seem to capture my frames very well )
What Is it?
Tower Defenders in a simplified summarization is a traditional Tower Defense game, where X moves from point A to point B. The goal is to build multiple Y to stop X from reaching point B.
However, hard work, dedication, and community feedback will help set it apart from other TD games more than it already is.
Tower Defenders Intriguing Features
Fortunately, there is currently little competition in the TD genre and most of them seem to be pretty monotonous and linear with little to no progression.
The genre is a hit or miss that only one game has managed to stay buoyant in, Tower Battles.
I intend to change that.
Each player starts off with the basics, a free Archer tower, and 1 available tower slot. Tower slots are earned from achievements and progression. The last tower slot being particularly difficult to earn, which will add to the healthy skill ceiling dimension in the game.
Towers are varied in roles, purposes, strengths, and weaknesses. Some towers excel where others suffer. Some towers are meant for late-game, some are meant for early or mid-game. Some are even meant for all three!
15 Towers per player are allowed to be present at one time, this scales based on how many players there are in-game. However certain towers can raise this capacity cap.
There are a wide variety of strategies to choose from. Which is further diversified with the number of tower roles. Currently, there are 5 specified tower roles;
Physical Damage Dealer > Dishes out physical damage, offers variety to damage output although can be countered by Armor. They counter enemies with Magic Resistance.
Magical Damage Dealer > Dishes out magical damage, offers variety to damage output although can be countered by Magic Resistance. They counter enemies with Armor.
Support > Towers that heal or revive ‘Units’, or buff themselves and/or surrounding towers to improve their speed or damage. Support is a vital part of any composition, especially when there are Units around.
Utility > Towers that generate income, expand your tower capacity, reduce costs of surrounding towers, provide other unique features, etc. Utility towers are a unique way to spice up your arsenal.
Barracks > Spawns ‘Units’ which are perishable characters that charge unto the path and attack any non-flying enemy that draws near. Their goal is to delay the enemy for as long as possible while other towers eliminate the enemy.
There are currently 15 unique enemies all with their own unique animations, sounds, model, etc. Giving the waves a refreshing nature every couple of rounds or so.
Tower Defenders uses an organic-feeling logarithmic experience system where progression grows challenging yet more rewarding the higher you climb.
Achievements and other progression rewards are earned from just about any loadout or strategy you choose.
Healing Units
Units dying that you supported or spawned
Dealing damage
Killing enemies
Leveling up
Surviving waves
Beating the boss
Assisting in enemy kills
Earning achievements (almost always provide more progression)
Other unique ways of earning achievements can be found in the achievement page in-game.
I’ve created a nifty webhook system for moderation and for community feedback. You can send a filtered feedback message every interval directly to our Discord and I can review it immediately.
A big reason games succeed is the healthily frequent content updates, and I am working on this project daily. Now that most of the framework and backend is done content will be pouring out.
Unfortunately, there are currently only 4 maps. However, the current system is that you get 3 random maps to choose from and vote on, from the to-be-diverse pool of maps in-game. This helps to circulate content better.
There is much more to be noted but I don’t want to bloat this post or spoil too much. With that said…
Try It Out!
Play it, let me know what you think! Keep in mind that the game is still in pre-alpha so expect some bugs or missing / uncoded features. And obviously content will be lacking in some areas.
Everything is subject to change, every entity and feature and all data stored.
I mostly code and build and so I humbly acknowledge I am not particularly good at UI or GFX. So I understand there will be much criticism to the 2D aesthetics of the game.
I have yet to have GFX artists work for the game GFX for icons and thumbnails.
Content is coming and I am confident everything will mold together nicely once I get some different prospectives and criticisms other than my own.
Again bugs are expected but I do hope you will still oblige to report them via the in-game feedback report system, on this dev forum post, in the group game discord, or to me directly. Thank you!
The game is really well made! The animations like nice and the sound effects fit pretty well. The only opinions I have though is that the gui’s are a bit cluttered and take up a pretty big chunk of the screen for example, the gui where you click the tower to place them down seems a bit too big imo. It can be shrunked down.
You should also use UIAspectRatio thing to make sure the UI stays square since if I were to minimize it, it can look very stretched out.
For the paths where they show where the enemies go to, you can instead put a beam on the path itself flat down or ontop of set to face camera since the walls of arrows looks a bit off.
The view achievements button seems a bit off to the other buttons. You can maybe put it to the side like the feedback button which might make it fit more. The hovereffect sound effects sound nice but instead of adding a box that sizes out. You could try making the button itself size up a bit more.
Also, when I first played it, the shop got me confused since thats where I though the towers were going to be. You could try to rename it such as “GAMEPASSES” or “PRODUCTS” since the towers button also has a shop of its own.
Also, when tweening, you want to make sure the menu moves quickly instead of slowly since It usually is a problem where players want to see the menu quickly.
I really loved the part where it shows the tower models and details, great job on that! But it also does have a problem where the image seems squished. As I said, remember to try to use UIAspectRatioConstraint It’s really useful. Overall, really nice game.
Thank you very much for the feedback, I appreciate the constructive criticism. I hope you’ll notice the positive changes that are caused in part from helpful people like you!
I love the game - it is super polished and has amazing animations and maps! I especially loved how the strengths and weaknesses are laid out for you before you buy/equip them. No more Google searching for “how to deal with this enemy.” I do have a few problems though:
Your main menu kept dropping my framerate like crazy. It looks super pretty but it lagged my computer even at low graphics.
On the main menu UIs, the tweening of the UIs is a bit slow. Consider lowering the time for them to move across the screen.
The Shop/Towers buttons are confusing. I thought I would buy towers in the shop and equip them in towers.
Make it clearer to the player how many slots they have open. I had no idea there was a slot limit until I tried to equip my 3 towers.
In the game, the UIs are a bit tedious to go through. When I upgrade my tower, I didn’t know exactly what I was upgraded to. I saw the descriptions of the upgrades but there was no indication that the upgrade I was buying was for a certain listed item. To fix this, I’d just add an “Owned” tag over the upgrade description. Also, when I’m upgrading my tower, I don’t want the upgrade screen to just close. I want to continue upgrading. Also, when I have to Target button open, maybe it should close if I also press the Upgrade button.
I love the game and it looks super pretty! I really hope it does well and I hope to see this game get the attention it deserves!
I tried playing your game for a little bit to get a bit of idea of the mechanics and gameplay. I think your sound implementation and design are fantastic. The visual feedback is very clear and well executed.
I agree with some of the previous comments about the interface being a bit cluttered. There is way too much background visuals in the lobby which makes things look busy
Why do you have to wait 15 seconds before being teleported to the labby after losing a round
It feels weird only having one unit at the beginning and then having to replay the game to get more units.
Why is there a tower limit if you keep accumulating points throughout the match. The tower limit prevents you from spending coins…
Upgrading tower UI needs work. I have no idea which part of the gui to click or even if my tower got updated.
You can fall off the map in the ice world by swimming down.
Wow! This is such an amazing game! It has alot of potential. To be honest, I actually got addicted to playing it after a few hours, the gameplay is awesome.
And as some other people have, the UI is indeed cluttered, it makes the game abit hard to navigate.
One thing you should consider is perhaps some nerfs and buffs to certain enemies? For example, after playing a few matches, I noticed that I would always lose to the, “dark prophet”. Its ability to heal all troops is perhaps a little too OP.
Anyways, a great game. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Balance passes are done pretty often to make sure metas, strategies, towers, and enemies aren’t unintentionally overpowered. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
)