I think the concept is amazing. I'd love to see this expanded further
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SkyTD's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creative use of art assets | #122 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Overall | #313 | 3.053 | 3.053 |
| Engagement | #344 | 2.960 | 2.960 |
| Overall polish | #409 | 2.600 | 2.600 |
Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Yeah I don't really understand how to play. Even after that horribly long intro. I know I'm supposed to combine the base and gun parts to make a turret but no idea how. Tried moving them on top of each other and pretty much everything but no luck.
This "LMB to continue" made the intro text even more annoying. Yeah everyone probably gets it after continuing once and it shouldn't be the same size as the normal text either. Just confused reading it. Also, uneven spacing between letters and words and loads of typos didn't help either.
The control scheme is super awkward too. Your chosen time control keys are buried under alt (plus shift too on mac) key press on Finnish keyboard at least. As far as I'm aware it's the same for quite a few other European keyboards too. The zooming is dumb because it always pinpoints to just top corner. It should have been focusing on the cursor position just like it does on pretty much every game and application ever. The movement speed is also very slow at least on the "mouse on edge" way. Dunno really if the mouse wheel drag would be better since I'm playing on a laptop and don't have such. And the edge scroll doesn't work at all when the game is paused.
Okay, now I finally understood how to combine them. You need to draw a square to the ground before placing them on that spot for them to actually combine. Makes no sense at all. Dunno if anything like this was mentioned in the intro. If it was, it's a perfect example of how to not just front load the player with a bunch of information on how to play before the game has even started. There is no way to remember all and might be some crucial pieces of information getting lost or maybe even worse by forgetting some nice features that make the game better but still playable without.
It actually has some fun and new (I think at least, I pretty much hate tower defence genre) things. I don't quite like how the RNG can completely screw you over. My last run after few nice rounds, I only kept getting bases and those mods, no gun parts at all. Obviously couldn't go on for too long like that. And now I started a new run and I think two out of the first three chests either were empty or the drop went somewhere outside the map. And now I'm only getting bases...
This text is positioned in an awful place btw.
And now the game actually froze on me. I was moveing these turrets to more right side and trying to pick up this curse mod. Nothing works anymore.
Yeah the game just doesn't want to give me balanced drops. How am I supposed to survive with just two guns the whole game? Would also be cool if somehow you could move the completely kitted out turret with one move instead of dragging each part separately.
Well, looks like I don't need to survive at all because the game froze on me again. And this time I wasn't even doing anything, just watching my two turrets do their thing.
Anyways, good job! Some neat ideas but suffered from some clunky controls and imbalance. Not only the heavy relying on RNG to get balanced drops but you need to get good enough things to beat imbalanced mobs like the ghosts too.
Thank you for playing the game!
The left mouse button to continue text is not the best, and I do think that your suggestion for it not to be displayed after the first few initial texts would make a lot of sense.
The uneven spacing is a font issue, which I wanted to fix but it is not quite simple with the engine of choice here. In general I do want to redo the font quite a bit after the voting period.
If you notice any types please do report them to the game's github page. English is not my native language and I might miss spelling errors here and there.
I am sorry for your poor experience with the controls. I have never seen a mac keyboard, neither have I seen a keyboard with the [ and ] keys under an alt key. I do think that an option to remap the controls would be good to have.
I completely agree on your zoom to mouse cursor/center point.
The movement of the camera by corner scrolling is somewhat slow, and I do think it could maybe use a speed-up key feature, but it unfortunately just can't be as flexible as a mouse panning system. The edge panning not working when the game is paused is definitely an oversight.
I kinda disagree about the tower placement. In my experience allowing parts to just attach to each other when dropped close by enough would lead to random towers being accidentally created and because they don't create a particle effect when in their tower stage they would easily get lost. Creating a specific place for a tower gives the player a clear spot to click, and is always visible, thus being not all that easy to loose on accident. It was described in the intro, and I do agree that the tutorial is pretty bad and definitely needs a rework.
The RNG is always a tricky thing to balance. As the game is built around the player discovering things I thought that having the game give you guaranteed drops for certain would limit this sense of discovery a bit and thus make the game less exciting in its primary aspect of gameplay.
If the chests are empty you don't loose any gold that was used to generate them, it is stored for the next wave and so on. I have never had the chest drop spawn off the map, but I do see how it could be possible in theory with very bad luck on the random. Others have already suggested repositioning the chest giver, so that is probably what will be done to resolve this issue.
While I do agree that the text positioning is not the best I honestly couldn't find a better spot for it. Maybe a decent solution would be to have a button that would allow the player to hide it?
I am sorry that you have experienced issues with the game freezing. Based on your attached screenshot I can't see what in those arrangement would cause the game to freeze, as all of them had been tested. Unfortunately I can't test it myself as I don't have a mac but you might have experienced an issue with the mono build redistributed with the game, or an opengl/engine issue.
I do agree that it would be nice to have a feature that would let you drag the entire tower, but it would need to be implemented in a way that the players wouldn't accidentally trigger, yet easy enough to do.
The ghosts are not imbalanced, they are just fully immune to physical damage, any other damage can kill them just fine, and the chances of getting a decent drop that deals with them are decent enough by the point they show up in big enough quantities to end the game. At least during the testing of the game they were rarely an issue.
Thank you for your great feedback!
It's still somewhat an extra unnecessary step to lay down the squares in the beginning of each try. Doesn't the turret base function like enough for a snap position for other parts?
I don't know if even the whole zoom and pan thing is even needed. Since it was so awkward, I played completely zoomed out all the time after trying it out in the beginning. The map could be condensed a bit so it wouldn't need to be so zoomed out (for bigger sprites) and obviously having fullscreen option would help here too. And definitely moving the chest spawn point is a good idea too.
Dunno if somewhat more controlled RNG would be better. Something like maybe having 50% chance of getting part types in order like first base, then gun and finally mod before repeating. Sure it still would be random but way less likely to get snuffed out for guns for example (which is the worst). Dunno what would be considered end game but on one of my tries, I think I got a round of pretty much only ghosts and handling those with just two turrets due to their speed (and physical immunity) is not great.
In my opinion the incoming enemies text could be on the right side where effects and chances are too. It wouldn't be in the way for primary real estate for turrets (in the beginning at least) and it even is related to the information on the right side somewhat. But a button to hide it would be decent enough I guess too.
Freezing is most likely not just a mac issue since it's a browser version. Didn't come to mind to check the console for any errors though.
3 years ago(+1)
Thank you for playing the game!
I wanted to have some music in the game, but unfortunately it is just not that high of a priority with a limited time, especially considering that for a game like this it would need to not be repetitive.
If you don't mind could you please post an issue to the game's github describing what component exactly caused you to crash?
Thank you for your feedback!
3 years ago(+1)
Thank you for playing the game!
Both of the features you have requested are available in the game, though not explained in the in-game tutorial. You can speed up/down the game with the ] and [ keys and you can skip to the next wave with the Backspace key.
Thank you for playing the game!
Reworking the tutorial was on my todo list, and still is.
I kinda wanted to have no interface at all initially but I came to the conclusion that it just doesn't work for a game where the player is supposed to discover things by their obscure descriptions, and a TD game that doesn't tell the player what the waves will have in them and when they'll come just won't work as a fair game.
Thank you for your feedback!
3 years ago(+1)
Thank you for playing the game!
Yes, I do agree that it is pretty complicated and that was the initial intent of mine. However I do see how many mechanics are not intuitive/described well and could be improved to be more player-friendly.
Thank you for your feedback!
3 years ago(+1)
Thank you for playing the game!
The difficulty is quite tricky to get right if you don't have a QA team available, but I do agree - there is a learning curve that makes the game feel easier once you understand the mechanics that are not obvious/not explained in the entry tutorial section, but as a developer who had made the curve and got used to it this is quite difficult to see.
I was planning on making the tutorial better and more interactive and after the jam is over I do plan to revisit the game to improve some features, fix some bugs and work on the code. Thanks for leaving valuable feedback!
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