played it again, its nice. very simple. if it was me i'd make the turrets as powerful as your weapon, so they both have equal importance. I liked the balance of maybe leaving walls left open to harvest money for turrets.
To clarify, I haven't modified the game yet. I just updated the exe to fix little bugs.
Currently, leaving walls open doesn't give you more money, because the number of enemies is fixed per round, but changing that is one of the ideas I have to make the game more strategic.
The problem with making turrets stronger is that they accumulate, so quickly your attacks would be meaningless relative to the sum of all your turrets'. A possible solution would be making turrets breakable (with a health bar, but repairable), so then the game would become more about channelling the enemies away from the turrets and managing your time and holes to ensure you don't get overpowered. For example, there would be a manequin "turret" that attracts monsters, and turrets that apply typical buffs to monsters (slow down, poison, etc.). Since time to build would become so important, there would be ways to buy more time, and maybe buffs or special attacks that stop time in the middle of a round...
interesting ideas. i was actually saying that weapon does nothing in comparison to turrets. It feels like you're making a CODzombies type thing, so a survival shooter with some basic strategic choice added in. In that case id do more to level design and weapons, plus some more to give each run a narrative, like bosses, weapon upgrades, path choice upgrades..etc. Just an idea. You need to really hone in on what you're trying to make with this, and look at other models that have worked :)
Oh ok. Thanks as always for your comments. I agree the game will need some kind of long term choice path affecting your abilities or your weapons, and that could be done in many ways. However, I think weapons should be kept rather simple, since I suspect the most interesting part will be the turrets and building/repairing stuff, so emphasis on weapons would take away from that. I think bosses without turrets would be very fun, and again I should figure out the best way to integrate that with the core gameplay.
Can you explain what you mean when you say that you'd "do more to level design"? Like more complex room layout? I also agree I could benefit from looking at similar games. Did you have any specific ones in mind? I did play COD zombies, but don't know many more in the "survival shooter" genre.
just look at arcade survival shooters online and tower defense where you put turrets along a path. Your game is those two genres combined.
Levels i mean basic variation on the empty room. maybe four pillars, maybe a small dividing wall in the middle, maybe an area of lots of little rocks, any little variety which adds a bit more strategy. That's the tiles i added to still not dead, it just adds a little more thought about how to approach the fight, and incentives to use different weapon types, movements or tactics.