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A jam submission

Protect the ElementsView game page

An elemental tower defense game that's fun and challenging!
Submitted by MyPingO, creativetherapyco, cachitostudio, Quissy, ICEYNDERP — 3 hours, 37 minutes before the deadline
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Protect the Elements's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#1173.5933.593
Innovation#1183.3053.305
Overall#1513.2643.264
Game Design#1543.2033.203
Fun#1653.1193.119
Art Direction#2303.1023.102

Ranked from 59 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Viewing comments 42 to 23 of 42 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+2)

I spent a lot of time playing this one. Good tower defense. A lot of options and enemies. Really fun. Nice job.

Developer (1 edit)

Really glad you enjoyed it, thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Hello, very nice new concept of tower defense game. Good job!!

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much!

Submitted(+1)

Really hard and challenging, the music is nice, tho I find the enemies assets a bit off place, but they do its job. 

Developer

thanks for the feedback :)

We'll be improving the games art and difficulty after the jam!

Submitted

Nice game, though a bit too hard for my taste.

I think that the main focus of the game should be rapidly connecting the right type of tower in the right sequence in the right place (for example making enemies wet with water and then attacking them with ice) rather than getting the money to add more tower as in usual tower defense games: I would make the tower way cheaper (especially the air tower, that more often than not took forever to aim at a target and either missed or never even fired) so that you place more of them and then focus on activating them in the most efficient way.

For the same reason I would remove the middle click and just have left click to select in the store, place a new tower or quick connect and right button to sell a placed tower.

Developer

I think making it so that the tower's fire rate cooldown goes down while inactive should solve most problems with air tower/other towers not shooting right away/taking too long to aim.

The overall game balance will be adjusted after the jam, unfortunately, we ran out of time to test the game balance, but reducing the difficulty is a clearly needed change so thanks for your feedback!

Submitted

Very nicely done. Tower defense game restricting you to a single tower is pretty cool. The game play very solid. No bugs, and no real frustrations. except for the wind power up missing enemies! lol I made it to wave 13 before quitting out, so it held my attention for quite awhile. The only real criticism I have is the look of the game felt very early flash game-ish lol Nothing wrong with that per say, just not my cup of tea.

Developer(+1)

Hey, thanks so much for playing and the nice words! Yeah, the wind tower missing is something I need to work on/adjust, I too found it a bit annoying at times.

Also if you could expand on how you think this game could look better, because you say it's not your cup of tea, please do so! I'm not too sure which art direction to take this game after the jam so I'm open to suggestions :)

Submitted

Maybe the resolution of each item was a little too small for what you guys were going for Also the sprites felt a little incohesive, possibly due to the small yet detailed enemies, yet the world environment was fairly empty and basic looking in comparison which gave it a disconnect.. Some more defined features with a cleaner color palate I feel like could really help this out. What you guys have would definitely be good enough for an old flash game or place holders for a prototype (essentially that is what this project is since it's a jam project lol)

Submitted
Deleted 342 days ago
Developer(+1)

Dang, thanks so much xD

Really happy you liked it and thanks for crediting Cachito, I really liked the way the music came out too :)

Submitted(+2)

Loved the concept the only downside is the difficulty as other people said.

nonetheless, Great job!

Developer

Thanks for playing :)

Submitted(+1)

I loved the game the idea of the game it is amazing,i think if you work of the assets it will be great

Awesome job!

Developer(+1)

thanks so much!

Submitted(+1)

A good old fashioned tower defense game with a couple of interesting twists! I really like the mechanic of needing to prioritize which cannon to use at a given time, which is both because of distance to the battery as well as the element that's most prevalent in the oncoming wave. Really cool!

To be honest though, I think this game may be too difficult. I don't mean to sound ridiculous or anything, but you really don't get a lot of money in the first couple of waves at all. When wave 3 comes around and the fire elementals are there, if you don't have water guns, there is no way you're going to get through their health. From there, it continues to spiral, where the other elements are more expensive despite not necessarily doing more damage outside of the elemental weakness they're associated with. It's hard to earn money, and you can't prioritize which cannon fires at what, you have to hope it will aim at the right element. This feels less like a situation where a strategy is needed to overcome a challenge, and more like unfair design. 

I think something that could help remedy this is if there was a way to have multiple cannons hooked up to the battery, but at a cost. For example, if each cannon attached to the battery reduced the battery's maximum "capacity" (or health, as it were) by 10 or something, not only would this mean you'd only have so much firepower to work with, you'd also need to decide how much extra damage is worth reducing the battery's health for. Obviously you don't have to take that advice or anything, just an idea. 

Either way, I think this was a really interesting game with some great ideas, great visuals, and I enjoyed it overall!

Developer(+1)

Like many others, including myself, have pointed out, yes the difficulty is too hard, for that I'm sorry. It was a huge oversight on my part that will be fixed after the jam ends! And yeah, I'll be making the battery upgradable to hook up to more towers. Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed the game!

Submitted(+1)

I think it makes a lot of sense to make a tower defense game about connecting to towers / to a base. I liked the different elemental effects - I thought that added some flair that a game like really benefits from. I was initially a little confused about the controls, even after reading the "How To Play", but the video tutorial helped a lot to get me started.

I think the controls were good, but they could be even more intuitive. It would be nice to be able to drag a tower from spot to spot (by holding down LMB, like a chess piece) rather than pressing LMB to remove the tower and selecting the tower again and then adding it to a new place. I would also like the game to save the tower I last clicked or last removed, and next time I click a spot, I would like the tower that I most recently selected or removed to be placed there. I think just these two changes would make the game a lot easier to pickup for new players.

I would have liked the towers to reprioritize to aim at the targets closest to the battery (if in range) rather than just the targets closest to the tower itself. Another approach is to keep the tower aiming / targeting the same, but introduce a slo mo mechanic where the game slows down whenever you are choosing your tower placement, which allows you to slow down and respond to incoming enemies and have just enough time to make a decision to switch the position of a tower without getting a disadvantage in battle. Of course I am biased, I made a slow mo game, and I love slo mo in games, but I genuinely think it could take this gameplay to the next level.

I wish there was more to do with the actual mechanic of connecting to towers. It doesn't have to be, but it would be cool for their to be some strategy around that, more than just which towers to activate and not to activate. I think it's still a very solid job for a game jam, but I could see it being expanded. Maybe you can connect two towers (can you? I missed that) and then the connection between the towers becomes a laser, so a long laser is good, but the longer the laser, the slower the tower each fire bullets? You are more the expert than me at tower defense, you will have better ideas.

I think you did a decent job with the art, sound and music. I think since this is an action game, you could really benefit from adding particle effects, hitstop, and camera shake. Unity has a great particle system, and if you are not familiar with it, there are plenty of tutorials online. You can also look for free or cheap assets that have particle effects for hitting things / enemies. 

  • A particle effect that plays each time you hit an enemy 
  • and another particle effect that plays each time an enemy dies
  • both would go a long way to make the action feel more impactful, even if they are very simple effects. 

Hit stop is when the game stops briefly whenever an action happens. You can code hitstop using a coroutine like this:

IEnumerator hitStopRoutine(float hitStopTimeScale, float duration)
{
     Time.timeScale = hitStopTimeScale;
     Time.fixedDeltaTime = (Time.timeScale / (1f * Screen.currentResolution.refreshRate));
     yield return new WaitForSecondsRealtime(duration);
     Time.timeScale = 1f;
     Time.fixedDeltaTime = (Time.timeScale / (1f * Screen.currentResolution.refreshRate));
}

And you can call this coroutine like so:

StartCoroutine(hitStop(x, y));
  • I would do a hitstop whenever the player bullet hits an enemy with x = 0f and y = 0.02f, to make it feel like you are really doing damage to the enemy.
  • I would do the same when an enemy dies from a bullet, but with x = 0.1f and y = 0.3f.
  • I would do a hitstop whenever the enemy hurts the player, with x = 0.2f and y 0.15f, to make it really feel like the player got hurt.


And you can do camera shake like so: https://imgur.com/a/rWEMD0U

  • I would do a short, small camera shake each time you launch a bullet
  • and/or each time the bullet hits an enemy
  • Do a bigger camera shake each time an enemy dies from a bullet
  • and a short camera shake each time the player gets hurt. 

Sorry for the long message and please don't take my feedback and suggestions as harsh criticism, I genuinely enjoyed playing this game and I think things like this, from me or other players and commenters, could help take this game to the next level.

Developer

Don't worry, I love it when people give me feedback that's honest and constructive, so I thank you for taking the time to write this up.

To address some of what you said. No, currently you cannot connect to more than one tower at a time, but it was a feature I wanted to get done, sadly though, not enough time. The goal was to have upgradable towers and an upgradable battery. Upgrading towers would increase their damage and speed, while upgrading the battery would give it more power, therefore more connections to towers. The aiming/priority for the towers was not finished as I was going to refine it a little because I agree, that sometimes towers don't target what seems most important to target, again just not enough time.

Some things I'd like to ask/follow up with your feedback. I don't think that adding a hit stop/screen shake would be a good idea, to be honest. Why? Let's say you are using the electric tower that shoots around 10 times a second. You will be pausing the game briefly every1/10th of a second and that seems way too annoying. The same goes for screen shake, your screen will always be shaking. I personally don't think it fits into a tower defense game because those effects are usually for combat-style games.

Could you clarify what you are saying in your second paragraph? I think I understand what you mean by "remembering what was the last selected tower", but when you say "rather than pressing LMB to remove the tower and selecting the tower again and then adding it to a new place", I'm not sure I follow. You don't press LMB to remove towers and I'm not sure what you mean by "selecting the tower again". Also, dragging a tower from spot to spot takes away the thinking required for where to place a tower in the most efficient spot, therefore also having no point in having a currency system since you wouldn't have to sell towers, only reposition them.

I really like the slow-mo idea, I think it's perfect for the fast-paced game that it is, to slow down time while placing a tower because I see no reason to punish the player for trying to purchase a tower mid-wave/level. Thank you very much for the suggestion!

Submitted (1 edit)

Yeah, I am not definitely not a tower defence player typically, so you will know better. These are just the suggestions I give to most action games if they don't have those elements. I think the particle effects could help you without getting too noisy, if you just keep the particles to a minimum. For the camera shake and hit stop, I totally see what you are saying. One way to do it is to reduce the fire rate but make each bullet be worth more, and then at least the camera shake might work. The hitstop maybe you do only for when an enemy dies or when player takes severe damage. If you take a look at the twin stick shooter roguelike enter the gungeon, you will notice that they have a subtle screenshake each time you fire a bullet, and the bullets fire pretty fast, and in that game it doesn't get repetitive, though they only shake when the bullet fires, not when it hits. It still may not work, but I feel its worth a shot to reduce fire rate and add screen shake for the bullet fire, and then minor hit stop in those two situational cases.

For the removing towers, let me correct myself, what I mean is that - in order to remove a tower you select it with LMB and then remove it with RMB, then if you want to place that tower elsewhere, you have to again select it from the shop, and then place it in the new spot. If there is a net cost associated with buying a tower and selling it (I apologize I didn't pay attention to that part as much), then I understand the game design and I agree with your decision on making the purchasing and placement of towers important. In that case, yeah the slow motion does make more sense as an option for you.

I would be happy to playtest a future build if you make one. Feel free to reach out to me, at any time, even now. I'm @rsaamar on the Lost Relic Games Discord Server. It's good to have fellow indie game devs to chat with on topics and for feedback.

Developer(+1)

I think I'll compromise with this " The hitstop maybe you do only for when an enemy dies or when player takes severe damage." After thinking about it, I think it's a great idea to use some sort of screen shake/hit stop when an enemy hits the elemental battery. Great for making it feel more important and like the player took some damage! I think this is the best way to approach this.

Correction, you don't have to select a tower in order to sell it, you can just RMB it.

And yes, I will be adding some particle effects as well as status effects to enemies to know when they are slowed/frozen/etc.

Thanks so much for the feedback. I will add you on discord, you seem like a nice guy/game developer. Look out for MyPing0#6370

Cheers!

Submitted(+1)

First tower defense I have seen on the Jam. Well executed, well done. Loved the play through video and thanks for being remarkably generous on the hearts.

Developer

Thanks so much!

Submitted

Nice work. I join other commentators. From myself I will add that it was worth making a "pause" in game.

Developer

wow I think you're like the first person to notice the pause button.

Thank you for actually looking around xD

And thanks for playing the game, glad you liked it!

Submitted(+1)

Nice implement in a tower defense game. The concept is fun. It needed some juicy effect (to see if we use the good weapon for example). Godd job.

Developer(+1)

Yeah will definitely add something like that after the jam! Thanks for the feedback, glad you liked it :)

Submitted(+1)

Great tower defense game. It is quite different from the typical tower defense where you place and forget. This one is slightly difficult at times, but the trick is to combine the towers with the weakness of the enemy. Well done!

Developer

I think I made the levels too difficult, but thanks for the feedback!

Submitted

Cool game! Personally haven't played a tower defense in years. Fun throwback for me. Pretty impressive you got so many different towers in too. 

Developer

hehe thanks for the praise, I actually started 3 days into the jam cause I couldn't come up with an idea. Stayed up till 5am some days just to get the game looking good enough xD

Submitted(+1)

I love me a tower defense so I already was having a ton of fun. I think this game has a huge potential to become something more if that's something you wanted to do.

- I like the difficulty of only having one tower ( I think this adds some tension to the game and keeps you active)

-I like how progress feels with the cash flow, what I mean is by the time fire starts coming around you have a water tower ect.

I think most of my gripes with the game comes with the UI, its hard to tell when I am buying a tower/placing a tower.  I also found the text on the UI for tower descriptions very small. Along with having scroll bar.  I think the text of the towers could have been more consistence to not have colors clash within the UI boxes like how water tower text is blue can make it kind of hard to read on the green.

I really feel what would help with this game a lot is more visual aid with damage. Such as water slows tiles down, maybe they change a color to indicate they are slowed because besides movement speed I wasn't sure if I should be switching to the ice tower a lot of the time.


I do like the potential that is here.  I like the idea a lot of taking a mechanic away from the common genre of game by forcing you to stay active and only use one tower at a time, promotes smart decision making and planning ahead. Great work and keep it up!

Developer(+1)

It's rare to find such well made constructive critisicm. Thanks a lot for the feedback.

Yknow it's funny you bring up the blue text on green background because I also thought about this but just wasnt sure if it was just me or not / how big of a deal it was.

The effect indicators were also part of the plan but not enough time to implement it unfortunately.

I am definitely planning on working further on this game. It's been an idea I've had for a long time and I want to officially launch this game one day on something like Steam or the App store. I have so much I want to make better and so many ideas I want to try!

Could you please elaborate further with your comment on buying/sling towers? I made the tiles dim in color when you hovered a tower over them if you could place it down,  and it colored red if you couldn't placed a tower down,  either wcause of not enough money or because a tower is already on it.

I think I could have made it more clear which towers you can't afford currently but I want to hear your thoughts a bit more.

Submitted

I must have not noticed the dimming of the tower, like visual feedback you don't have the right amount of money. Sometimes its hard with the quick thinking the game wants from you to be able to look at money at the same time as where the enemies are. 

Developer(+1)

perhaps a quick fading message when an enemy dies showing how much money you gained when you killed it could help with that visual feedback aswell as giving the player an estimate in their mind how much they have. Same could apply when you place/sell a tower

Submitted(+1)

Seems like a good idea to me!

Submitted(+1)

This game has a lot of potential but there are some aspects of it that really bring down the enjoyment level for me. The first thing is, when pausing time I can't change anything in the UI, like clicking on a different tower or something. The second the bottom UI bar is really small, so you have to scroll to be able to read what the description of the tower is, which is annoying, and combined with the first problem means that I have to waste active time while enemies are advancing just to read what a tower does. It would help if maybe there was less text too. I feel like you could explain a lot of that stuff with less words. The third thing is that the idea of only being able to connect 1 tower to the battery kind of gets old and doesn't really allow for any major progressions. Maybe you could keep the original idea of having 1 tower connected to the battery but then be able to daisy chain multiple towers together, and each consecutive tower could be weaker because it has less power or something. But overall I think that if you worked a bit on fixing these issues the game could be a lot more interesting and fun, because there is something here.

Developer

Wow, great feedback! Thanks a lot :)
The idea with the pausing was so that you could take a look at your situation and be able to read the descriptions of a tower you chose (scrolling works when paused). It didn't occur to me that being able to select towers while paused is a much better idea than clicking on a tower and then pausing the game.

To address the battery, yes we did have the idea to upgrade both the towers and batteries but ran out of time, unfortunately. We'll be working more on the game after the jam to implement all these things!

I really like your feedback, very insightful, thanks for playing our game :)

Submitted

Very challenging game, as you have to keep micro managing the towers to fight all the different elements. However, this gives the game a lot more depth and requires skill to win, although sometimes a bit of a hassle.  Really cool concept!

Developer

Yeah the difficulty needs adjusting, but I'm glad you liked the concept. Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted (1 edit)

One of my first ideas was to make something like this but didnt know how to implement, and all of you make it work really well.

Really good game! a like a lot the mechanics and the one tower at a time make you think where you have to put it to maximize the damage and not only that what of the diferent tower its better in that place. sorry for my bad english hope you can understand what im saying haha 

Developer(+1)

Your English is very understandable xD

Thanks for the like! Really happy you enjoyed the game.

When you say you had an idea like this, was it the "tower defense with a connector"  part or the elemental "tower defense game" part? Either way, it's really cool that you also had this idea and liked what we did with our game. Good luck in the jam and have some fun :)

Submitted

My idea was of connecting or power  a  few towers at the same  time or to have some batery that i can move and power some tower that are close or like you can connect a lot of towers to a power source but for each tower they loose some damage or something like that  but I couldn't decide how to do it and for doing it on my free time alone its gonna be hard so I discarded it haha  and im glad to see something like that so well implemented. Thank you so much and good luck to you too! ^^

Viewing comments 42 to 23 of 42 · Next page · Last page