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AgrMayank79 days ago

Hi hythrain! Thanks so much for taking the time to play and review the game in such detail! I’d love to see the VOD of your playthrough, please share the link when it’s live!!

On the narrative side, the prophecy and tagline were more of a reflection of your moral choice, as different playstyles will give different prophecy. Like if you choose to help your units by saving your population or use them as meat shields while attacking from behind. But I guess I made that too cryptic while aiming for a medieval feel, and is something I definitely need to revisit so it makes more sense.

I can’t believe I missed such a major issue related to the gameplay loop!! That’s straight up broken and kills any little strategy elements that the game had. Thanks for discovering that!

I do need to optimize the unit balance as well. I was aiming for something like, say you’ve unlocked the knight (which is slow but a tank), you can then drop scouts after he engages in battle to do quick attacks, as they are fairly cheap but weak. I calculated the DPS after seeing your comment and as you said, they are actually high (1x, ~3x, ~7x). TD is hard and it was my first time building such a game, guess there’s a LOT I need to learn about the genre and game balancing.

I completely agree on the smaller points you mentioned as well. I haven’t worked on the game a lot after the jam, apart a few builds fixing the issues mentioned during that time. I submitted this game to get these brutally honest feedbacks as I was not sure in which direction to take this ahead. I’m a tad less confused now, but yeah it does need a TON of work.

Again, a massive thanks for all the feedback and sorry for the late reply. I look forward to the playthrough once it’s live. Thank you :)

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hythrain79 days ago(+1)

"On the narrative side, the prophecy and tagline were more of a reflection of your moral choice, as different playstyles will give different prophecy. Like if you choose to help your units by saving your population or use them as meat shields while attacking from behind. But I guess I made that too cryptic while aiming for a medieval feel, and is something I definitely need to revisit so it makes more sense."

I wanted to respond to this because there's a bit of an issue here I feel: until you unlock the king, there's no difference in play style. You're just making units to try and defend against the inevitable.

With that in mind, I can now see how to correct this problem. First, make the king playable from the start but weaker than what the king ends up being later on. Second, make it that all units are available from the start. Now, shift the upgrades from being static and always available to being more random and based on how many enemies the player defeats (Not enough kills? No upgrade for you). Now you shift these upgrades into three categories: the People, the Enemy and the King. Upgrades about the People will do things like improve your population and reduce the cost for units (doesn't need to be just this). Upgrades about the Enemy will do things like reduce their population per wave and make them weaker. Finally, upgrades about the King will do things like make the King stronger or give and upgrade abilities that affect either the soldiers or the enemy. From here, you can now more clearly define playstyles using the various upgrades.

Another thing I'd suggest as part of this would be to change how waves work. Instead of each wave just coming, make it that a wave has to be completely cleared out before the next can begin. Also make it that the damage enemies do to population if they get all the way to the end is percentage based and that each wave will always have more than enough population to win in a single wave, even if you get all the Enemy category upgrades. 

These should help make the playstyle thing work and help shape the narrative stuff better.

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AgrMayank78 days ago(+1)

First, make the king playable from the start but weaker than what the king ends up being later on. Second, make it that all units are available from the start. Now, shift the upgrades from being static and always available to being more random and based on how many enemies the player defeats (Not enough kills? No upgrade for you).

That actually makes a lot of sense. So the units/characters will have EXP in way and only give upgrades once you’ve collected enough. So the users will also have the choice of how to use each unit and have their own unique “build” of the army.

Now you shift these upgrades into three categories: the People, the Enemy and the King.

I actually really like this idea! It kind of gives the card system a meaning, instead of just being there as another system in the game. It’ll also fix a lot of the other gameplay issues like you mentioned.

Another thing I’d suggest as part of this would be to change how waves work. Instead of each wave just coming, make it that a wave has to be completely cleared out before the next can begin.

I was actually thinking from a while to split the zones into different parts. An idea I had was to show multiple layers of the castle walls, each showing a layer of the society - king, ministers, knights, general population, slums. Each of this zones will have their own playable unit unlocked from the start. The units can explore the ruins outside of the castle walls during the day to find ways to defeat enemies, hunt for resources, progress the story, etc and then switch to a TD during the night to fend off waves of enemies. But again, I’ll have to do the balance between them right so it doesn’t feel like two games forcefully joined together.

Again, a massive thank you for taking the time and effort to playtest in depth, along with giving such helpful feedback, which is impossible to get during a normal jam. Really appreciate it :D

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