itch.io

Hello! This is Ikiru from oldflowergames with some comments on your game. Overall I had fun with it, and there were a few neat spins on the tower defense genre that I appreciated. That said, here are some notes from my time with it:

• I felt that the lumber camp wasn't clearly a “building”, and my eye was drawn to the guy running to the left, so it took me a minute to get to the right place. Adding a little shack in the open space could fix it.
• “Wood not unlocked” error was confusing, especially since I didn’t notice the tower appearing above the main building button when I clicked it (due to the black background).
• I was confused by the lumber camp tutorial, specifically how it says you’ll have to collect it manually. Because there’s also a collectible tree on the ground at the start, I kept looking for more trees to click, instead of the “Collect All” button on the UI. I think that button could definitely use something to draw more attention to itself, given its importance.
  • EDIT: There WERE trees on the ground, but they weren’t very visible because of the shadows...
  • In general, I think using some sort of glow or highlight shader to accent things that you want players to notice would be a good tool to have in addition to the glowy particle thing you have now.
• Why is there a free option to gain +200 gold at the store, which you have to click to finish the tutorial?
• The diamond store is a neat idea for creating interesting upgrades. But it wasn’t clear that I would only be able to select one option per row.
• Similarly, there was nothing indicating that you had to buy the Handsaw before the Chainsaw. The UI in general is too samey, and it all blurs together – try making the clickable objects more distinguished from the options that are just informational, and make things like pre-requisites and limited upgrades more apparent.
• I thought the internal time tracking loop of the Money Doubler + the Loanz shop was fun to keep up with. That sort of time-based min-maxing scratches a certain itch that you don't see often.
• I kept looking for the place to unlock the mage tower, thinking I must be missing something. Perhaps show it as greyed out on the tower menu, showing you when it will appear? Or hide the upgrade options that indicate its existence until it’s available?
• The flexible mage tower is neat, but the fact that you can only build 1 feels like an arbitrary limitation. Making them way more expensive than default towers, but ensuring that their effects can’t stack to the point of being totally broken, would make for more compelling choices, imo. I know your focus is on the resource management, but a bit more tower variety would be much appreciated. Per-tower upgrades are also a classic way to create more interest.
• While the very efficient exchange rates at the Local Market are a generous choice, I feel that they trivialize resource management and planning. Since you can so freely exchange Gold and Resources, I never really felt compelled to plan or spend carefully after the first era. Like the UI, it all blurred together, and I stopped thinking about where each currency was coming from or what I should focus on getting at any given time.
• Possible Bug: For some reason, the Dark Mage boss never showed that it was taking any damage. It suddenly stopped moving, then eventually just disappeared, but always showed at full health.
• As Hythrain mentioned, the lack of music is a bit disappointing. But it wouldn't take much - if you do add music, I'd definitely lean toward a more dynamic but spacious track (thinking of Warcraft 3, specifically) rather than heavy "war" music.
• Aesthetically, I’m confused by this game. It starts with what feels like a kind of serious narrative, but quickly becomes anachronistic. Jokes like the building names could be fine, as they feel like a deliberate choice, but unlocking chainsaws and propane tanks while “greek soldiers” are attacking the gates feels jarring in a way that doesn’t quite work.
  • After finishing the demo and seeing that it was inspired by an AOE custom map, the sense of humor made sense to me. However, I still think the opening sequence (everything before the gameplay) feels mismatched with the rest. In my opinion, people aren’t looking for a story in a game like this, and trying to add one at the start just makes it feel more confusing.
  • Also, having the tutorial guide the player into buying the chainsaw early accentuates this oddity.

Despite the lack of UI clarity and fairly overwhelming introduction of mechanics, this was still fun to mess around with. It’s clear that it draws from the RTS custom map aesthetic, and I would suggest leaning into that as much as possible to find your audience (See: Element TD on Steam, which literally just kept the name to keep the audience). I encountered very few bugs, and other than the animations in the opening cutscene it didn’t even feel too janky

The main question I have is: How will the full game be different than this demo? There aren’t that many things that are blocked off, and the demo goes all the way to the modern era. Since there are so many things introduced so quickly, it’s hard to imagine how it would develop further. Will you add more tower varieties to keep the early eras more interesting on repeat plays? Will there be more maps, or different enemy types? Is there a future era? These are the kinds of questions that still lingered for me, and I would recommend finding a way to more clearly telegraph your plans for the full game when the player reaches the end of the demo.

Regardless of future plans, great work so far! For your first project this is definitely impressive, and shows a lot of promise.