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How does your game fit the theme?
My game is all about making quick decisions before chaos hits. The currency system in my game forces you to choose between saving and spending, which if done incorrectly or at the wrong time can pose a risk later on. All of the interaction with the game also happens before the 'storm' and during it you are left to hope you made the correct decisions. The game tries to make that 'calm' before the storm just a little less calm and the storm itself just a little more intense.
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
Yes, the code, assets and sound effects were all made by me completely from scratch (outside of some sound effects coming from Pixabay).
The music used was taken from the YouTube Creator audio library.
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Comments
Very well polished, I really liked it!
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
One of the only games in this jam that I played until the end. My first couple runs I would die on the first wave. I then stopped using the spear and bomb towers entirely because it got frustrating watching them miss and replaced everything with furnace towers. The game became MUCH easier. Great game!
Yeah the spear and bomb towers have some issues with their targeting and projectile speed leading to those misses. Furnaces are absolutely the meta at the moment haha.
Thanks for playing and I'm glad you enjoyed playing the game!
I love the sfx; it’s really satisfying to hear your enemies being demolished. The early game balancing is great too although I must say after the first 10 or so wave I never really felt threatened, up until wave 27 or so.
Oh damn I see you made it to wave 30, that's amazing! haha
I'm glad you enjoyed playing and you can be sure I enjoyed playing your game too when I was playing it earlier. Thank you so much for playing my work!
I absolutely LOVE TDs!!!
What I liked:
Liked the transitions.
Minor improvements and feedback:
Note that the above feedback doesn't take away from my experience playing, and are just minor pointers should you be looking for feedback. Overall, it is a great game and I really enjoyed it. Good job!! :)
Upon reading your entry, it seems it was an intentional design to force the player to decide to build or save. Nonetheless, I had already given 5 stars on game design as I felt it was not a major issue and didn't impact the rating in the first place. I do think maybe this could somehow be clearer communicated in-game.
Okay so first of all, longest feedback I've gotten so far and I'm all in for it. I'm trying to take in all the feedback I'm getting and then I might be updating the game with everything I have gathered after the game jam so a comment like yours GREATLY helps me out.
You have a lot of cool ideas that I hadn't even thought of myself before, such as the tower tooltips, having upgrades be in a tree instead of in order, hover tooltips and the damn speedup being toggle and not hold (I have no idea why I designed it to be that way..). These are all changes I'm probably going to make if I have the time. A complete overhaul of the upgrade menu would maybe be something that I could work on. This would also allow me to add stats and other nice elements to know to the upgrade menu and just generally clean it all up a bit.
I have had the suggestion to make some kind of popup so you know what's coming during the next wave so that's definitely on the list too. The lightning tower was also one of the more forsaken towers if I can call it that, so I'm going to give it some more love in the future so it's actually clear that it can hit everywhere. (Also you are correct about the bomber, don't place it, it's incredibly weak. Mainly because of how targeting works right now)
Good idea about communicating the not being able to build in the storm thing. I might just put that into the tutorial too, it's only one extra line for Bert.
I'm really glad you enjoyed my game it really means a lot to me to see people play something I made and enjoy it to the fullest! Thank you lots for this big feedback comment. I'll put your feedback to good use to become a better gamedev (and maybe make my life in uni easier so I can gamedev more TT).
Cool! Nice to see a fellow developer who intends to update their game after the jam, because same here! I have consolidated all the feedback and have applied them progressively, just waiting for the rating period to end to push the update! And yeah I really appreciate when people leave me detailed feedback so I do that for the games I play too!
If you're making the speedup a toggle, probably have that as a small button somewhere in the UI, not just to indicate if the game is sped up or not, but also having a button is better as not all players will read through the really long tutorial texts (or they may forget even if they read it, so the button reminds them of the feature existing) haha.
I felt the arrow and bomber were weak. If I may give further input:
I would also caution against putting too much text upfront. It's better to ease players into information where possible - I know, easier said than done and my game also could benefit from this tip - people who start just want to play and long tutorials, they tend to skip. haha
The bomber stunning is a pretty cool idea I'm sure to implement. I hadn't even thought about that haha, so thanks! Making the arrows go faster could also be a fix for them missing so much, though I was also planning on putting in some more advanced logic for targeting instead of, oh there's the enemies current position i'mma throw my stuff there, you know what I mean.
Cool idea about the debuff too, could be one of the upgrades in the extra pierce path for example. The speedup having a button is also a good idea so that might be something I add in too. And some more indications about the interest system because the amount of people I've had that just completely ignored it is crazy, and then they said the wave rewards weren't high enough... That's what the interest is for TT
Anyways, thanks a lot! I've gotten quite a few ideas from you now that I'm going to use. They're all written down and when I feel like it I'mma definitely start work on them!
To be honest, interest is quite weak. The mechanic is a nice idea, but it isn't obvious admittedly or easily understood at first glance - only perhaps to veteran TD players, but not a casual audience I suspect? Anyway, since interest caps out at +10, it doesn't scale well late game when each enemy already gives +7 each, and enemies come in huge quantities. Killing two enemies basically gets me the max interest lol. And at 5000 gold, whether my interest is +0 or +10, doesn't make or break endgame.
As for early game, just my opinion but I feel it's not worth saving up for that minor interest because the early game is where every tower and damage matters. In fact, as Admiral Ackbar says... IT'S A TRAP!! Saving up for that slight interest cost me lives, which is a permanent loss for the entire game with no way to recover from (unless you add % chance to lifesteal tower). I'd rather not have skimped on a tower if I could place it in early game.
So while an interest-ing (pun intended) mechanic, it falls short in execution. Removing the cap will make it interesting for endgame builds, but can easily lead to a broken mess if unbalanced. It also works better for games where the towers with higher costs that can scale much further.
Yeah I get where you're coming from and uncapping it would ask for just content increases in all sides really, more towers, more upgrades and making them cost more too. The whole thing really, which is very hard to do in one week. I'll definitely put some more thought into how to incorporate it way better after the jam is over.
Oh I also wanted to add that I just checked out your game and I realized I played it on the first day of the jam I believe. Absolutely amazing game and I played it for a rather long time if I remember correctly. I probably didn't leave a review as detailed as yours but that's because I'm generally not that good in writing out my thoughts about someone elses work, I try but it's pretty hard sometimes to come up with stuff haha.
Haha that's alright and cool, I appreciate that you played it and left a feedback, and I remember it now!
And no worries totally understandable, never feel the need to force yourself to do it! I think that ability will come eventually as I also was not such a person. Maybe it comes perhaps when you gain experience or become more critical of your own work haha X_X
Yeah I looked through your profile and saw you already had a full commercial game under your belt, and a pretty succesfull one at that with the 1000+ steam reviews. This is my first gamejam so it's all pretty new to me, so I'm mainly here to learn and improve on every aspect basically. The more skills I build up now the more chance I have to go indie or maybe work in a small studio instead of a big corporation when I finish uni in 4-5 years, because that's always been my dream and I'm ready to do everything to accomplish that. Thanks for all the kind stuff I really appreciate it!
That's a really awesome and wholesome goal, indies and small corporations are my preference too! I wish you all the best in Uni too (I'm assuming it's game dev related?).
Also wanted to add that for your first game jam, this is really really good!
I'm doing a masters in computer science so not really game dev related but just more like programming in general (and math a lot of math). Thanks for the wishes and the compliments haha :)
Excellent! Really fun, well balanced and rewarding experience! Congratulations!
Thanks a lot! I'm glad you enjoyed.
How you made this in just one week is beyond me. Awesome game, probably the best i have played yet!
Damn, thank you! It means a lot and I'm glad you enjoyed what I made :)
Great and well polished game!
Thank you!
Very good tower defense game, and the interest system felt very rewarding.
Thanks a lot! Glad you enjoyed it :)
I've rated yours, can you also rate mine
Game: https://azeemdesigner.itch.io/ghostlygraveyard
Rate Page: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-12/rate/2961613
I already did a few days ago :)
I think this is one of the best games, I will enjoy the evening!
Could you are the performance of our team?
https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-12/rate/2968642
Thanks a lot for playing!
As one of my favorite games of the jam, here are some stray thoughts:
Some brighter ones:
I just really enjoyed my time playing this. I got until wave 25 where it really spikes and I got owned.
Really wish I could play it on my phone on my free time or something. You've got something that great.
Damn first of all, thanks a lot for the bigg feedback, I'll try to say something about everything you adressed but I'm sorry if I forget a certain part.
The visual upgrades were something I experimented with on the last day because a playtester asked me, and I kid you not I spent an hour or so testing out representations for the spear and bomb tower. But every time I found soemthing it felt rather off, so in the end I just went with the corner thingies because of lack of time. It is definitely something I'd change after the jam though!
I do agree that the start of the game is rather slow, I feel like this has to do with the interest cap being +10 and it just being too easy.
Definitely have been seeing that in others comments so I've already written that down as something to start experimenting :).
The lightning actually has an animation if you look really closely, but it's interaly my bad that it's so unnoticable. It's litteraly just the ball glowing, so it's super confusing indeed.
More enemies is the first thing I'd have added if I had more time. I'd have never thought about making things come from the beach before until you just said it, such a cool idea! Initially it was just meant as decoration, I was even gonna draw little crabs for it but I didn't get to that point..
As for the positive points, I'm reallt glad the optimization was good. I don't really know what I did but I guess it did something good haha. I'm glad you enjoyed the core mechanics of the game. It indeed spikes at 25 (because that when enemies litteraly double) so 25 is actually really good.
I'm sorry that there's not an android version. I had thought of doing more than HTML, windowds and Linux but didn't come to that. I feel like it wouldn't have taken that much effort if I look back at it now, but oh well.
Thanks for playing and leaving such a great in-depth comment! 🫶
Just a solid tower defense game with a cozier arty style and color palette.
The balancing does feel off sometimes, especially with the bomb tower being outclassed by the spear tower and furnace tower. I also feel like spending upgrades in order instead of freeform is a bit annoying, but I can see it as a balance choice. Additionally, I found it off-putting that there's clear feedback when an enemy gets killed but doesn't have any when simply hit outside of a subtle number change that can be missed when speeding along the path.
I'll be writing down more hit feedback as soemthing to add in the future after the jam! The updates in order was a decision I made very early on in the jam and now looking at it, it might've indeed been a better idea to make them like you said.
The balancing was the biggest issue for me and I tried a lot of stuff but still couldn't get it right enough.
I'm glad you liked the game though!!
Very good tower defense game, the intrest system felt very rewarding. One issue I came across was the bomber tower only seemed to damage the fast enemy while doing nothing to the rest.
Thanks for pinpointing that annoying bomber bug! I've had some people saying it doesn't damage enemies properly and now I have a little better of an understanding why. I'm glzd you liked the rest of my game though! :)
Nice and cozy tower defense game, cool entry! The art is really easy on the eyes and cohesive overall, I especially liked the minimal enemy weather designs and the animation on the crossbow tower. The SFX add to the experience. I liked the idea of the investment mechanic but I found that it didn't factor in to the gameplay too much, the pros of saving money were far outweighed by the cons of not having extra towers on the field to me. The theme application is a little lacking as its just the genre of tower defense, but overall I think this is a very solid td game with easy to look at graphics and a fun gameplay loop, nice work!
Thanks a lot for the feedback and playing! I agree with you aboutthe investment mechanic, it's rather overtuned to the saving side instead of the spending and that's mainly because 1: interest is too high (+10 right now should maybe be +5) and 2: the game is too easy early on.
I'll take your concerns into account for next time. Glad tou liked it m!
Pretty fun and cool! The art especially looks amazing! Great job!
Thanks a lot! I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
Very nice game! The graphics and especially animations were top of the line. After a few tries, I was able to beat the boss. Really awesome job!
Good stuff! Thanks for playing my game, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Nice Tower Defence game with nice pixel art and animations! The interest rates are a cool touch.
I encountered a bug, where the bomb thrower suddenly did no damage against the blue blobs/raindrops. Otherwise it was pretty polished!
Oh damn that's the first time I've heard that about the bomb tower. Thanks for notifying me!
Glad you enjoyed the game :)
I had a lot of fun playing this game. Tried endless and died on wave 30, not sure if my setup was not good or it is impossible with current towers and upgrades, maybe I made a mistake when I changed one of the towers at wave 29. No matter, great game!
Wave 30 is like a new record for what I'm concerned, the difficulty of the endless mode ramps really hard so at some point it is indeed impossible. I'm surprised you got that far so congrats!
Thanks for playing and I'm glad you enjoyed!
Yeah, I would say it is the last possible wave if I indeed made the mistake to change a tower in the last second. If not wave 29 is probably the best you can do rn.
That was super fun! Well done!
Thank you! Glad you had fun.
Typical tower defense game with a little uniqueness, that's very nice! Really impressed on how much you've done in such short amount of that, like full with upgrades and which to attack and all of that!
I had troubles tho the towers are missing their shots constantly, like the enemies are too fast or something??
It was a nice game made it to wave 5 I think with the 700$ build, I didn't got much money from killing enemies (maybe also put the reward higher).
The towers missing is a known issue that I didn't have time to fix before the deadline of the jam. It would take a whole overhaul of that system to actually fix so I just did other less big things to make the game more polished.
A tip for making it to later waves is to save a lot of your money in the early game and then start to spend it when you have over 1000 gold. This ensures that you take the most out of the interest system I built into the game. More info on that is on the game page and in the ingame tutorial.
Thanks for playing though and I'm glad you enjoyed it.
I enjoyed the game. well done!
Thank youu!