Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags
A jam submission

Key DefenceView game page

Tower Defence, but you can't place any towers. Instead you control were the path will be.
Submitted by Mika la Grand — 1 hour, 58 minutes before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

Key Defence's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Innovation#223.8223.822
Game Design#343.7923.792
Overall#1443.2713.271
Fun#1493.3173.317
Graphics#1673.6343.634
Audio#2033.1783.178
Theme#7641.8811.881

Ranked from 101 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Viewing comments 60 to 41 of 71 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page
Submitted

Good concept.  Not would be better to put the Help/Tutorial for the first level, and also make the mouse visible, or with the enter start the level. Overall very nice idea and great game design. Don't forget to play and rate my game :)

Developer

Thanks for the feedback. I'll show the help when you play the game for the first time. The mouse should be visible in the game, did you play the standalone build or web build?

Submitted

The web build

Submitted

Great game!

Developer

Thanks! Could you elaborate on what you liked and what you thought could be improved?

Submitted (1 edit)

I reaally liked the art and concept. I don't play many games but as far as I know there aren't many "tower deffense" where control the attack  (at leat the first i played XD) and I really enjoyed that. Not sure how you could expand the game tbh... Maybe upgrading the enemies? Maybe  the enemies are able to take over towers and make them attack other towers they don't control? Anyway, I really enjoyed playing it! :)

Submitted

Great game, but I don't know what it has to do with the theme of the jam

Submitted

A good submission with a very creative hook. Using the keys feels good and the CRT effect is fun. You already know the game has no obvious connection to the theme but personally I think the theme promotes bad game design, so whatever. I could be critical on many thing but this is a game jam game and judging from that standpoint is important. More juice would help make the game feel much better. I would love to hear a heavy synth wave track and see particles bursting on key clicks and enemy damage. Since the game takes place  in a computer there so much potential for juicing this game up. Thanks for sharing your submission!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback Josh! I'll try to add some particle effects to juice up the gameplay.

Submitted

Awesome. Certainly the most inovative game I've seen in this entry. Only flaw it has is that the music's a bit annoying. But otherwise it's fantastic

Submitted

Really cool idea, I liked the changes to the levels towards the end. It took a bit for me to get what was going on, but I got it eventually. The graphics looked nice and the sfx was good. It might have been good to have an effect when you take damage. The pathing worked well and the idea of routing levels was really unique. Great work!

Developer

Thanks for the feedback. I did forget to add a sfx for when the player takes damage; I'll add it in the post-jam version. Though, I'm not sure what you mean with "routing levels"; are you referring to the unlocking of the next two levels each time you complete a level or how each level builds upon the lessons learned in previous levels?

Submitted

I was talking about the main mechanic of building the paths that the enemies traveled on, I don't think I've ever seen it done before. I'm sure there are plenty of cool things you could do with it, like add options to slow enemies or add portals or something. It's really creative!

Submitted

A very interesting and fun little puzzle/tower defence game. Love the music and visual style. Perhaps the game difficulty could have been a bit higher. Overall a very good jam game. Well done.

Submitted

Overall very good game. I like the idea of using the keyboard to choose the path for the enemies. Unfortunatelly I had to use the mouse, because of my QWERTZ keyboard, but I like it very much that you put the option for the mouse into it. Clever game design ;)

The graphics and audio are really nice. It's now the second game in a game jam that I see using this tube tv shader. I know that you can create some of the effect with the post processing package in Unity, but I don't know how to get the line effect. Is this just a transparent overlay? Do you have any tutorial for this effect?

Unfortunately, I have to cut some points for the theme. I read the theme description on your game page, but that is not enough. Sorry.

I think you can really build up on your game idea for a full fledged game, but I'm not sure if you should stick to the keyboard level layout. It's a nice idea, but it is also resctricting you with the level design.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the feedback. The keyboard level layout is indeed quite restrictive on the level design and puzzle possibilities. I'm using a shader to create the crt effect. If you look for "Unity crt shader", you'll get some helpful results. Yeah lot's people mentioned that the theme integration is lacking, but I didn't want to sacrifice the user experience to better fit in with the theme.

Submitted

Thanks for the shader Information. Will definitely have a look into that.

You already played our game and I think your rating for theme was also a little lower, because we went with the same approach. We had this awesome game in mind but the theme was not the main focus. So we chose to follow the game idea and work on something we enjoy.

Developer

I didn't mention the theme in my feedback about your game, but yeah I didn't think you integrated it well into your game. However, I would rather play a game that gives me a good experience than a game that is obscure and confusing ;-). After you've fixed the issues I mentioned in my comment, I would love to play it some more.

Submitted

I will inform you when I fixed the issues you mentioned, but I can for sure not fix the point, that you got not past the section in game :D I could say "Git Gud" but I know that our game is a little bit on the challenging side. Maybe the future version will have different difficulty options ;)

Submitted
Deleted 4 years ago
Developer (1 edit)

Thanks! Could you elaborate on what you liked and what you thought could be improved?

Submitted

Rated - Wow what a cool idea, and what a fun way to control the path with your keyboard!  I would take this idea and fly with it.  Example:  make different environment keyboards, a jungle keyboard, a moon keyboard, desert, etc.  Super awesome, 5 star innovation for sure.  Please check out my entry when you have time~ good day!

Developer

Thanks for the feedback, glad you liked the game. What did you mean with different environment keyboards? Do mean that instead of towers, astroids strike at certain keys on the Moon and trees drop coconuts in the jungle. Anyway, I'll check out your game in a minute.

I like tower defense a lot and its idea reminded me a lot of the first one I played in my life that was one on a desktop. Simple and fun. It deserves more stages. I really liked the music, which although simple, helps us focus.

Congratulations!

Submitted

Well very innovative i never thought a tower defence game using the keyboard , i liked the idea of setting the path having to press the keys! 

Nice visuals and audio, cool concept.

p.s. on level 4, the arrangement I tried to use caused the first tower to not shoot the enemies.

it kept shooting here rather than at them, is it because the turret shoots ahead of the targets?

Developer

Thank you for your feedback. The turrets calculate were the enemies will be in the time it takes for the bullet to reach them (at their future position). However, this breaks down when enemies are about to change direction. I'll fix this issue in the post-jam version. The turrets will then ask the enemies were they will be based on their pre-programmed path.

Submitted

Dude, that's what i call a concept! Very cool graphics btw

Submitted

Really interesting concept, I like how it is different from the usual tower defence sort of games! The use of the keyboard as the playing field is ingenious!

Submitted

I am impressed that someone finally makes the tower defense game. It's one of my favorite type of games. I had an idea of TD game that players can decide the path of the enemies which different from normal TD game. It will be very interesting if the players could build towers and making a maze. I see a lot of potential in this game. That's incredible that you made the game in 45 hours. 

I'm curious if you also wrote the pathfinding algorithm yourself within the time?

There is still some issue in the game. The BGM is a bit short that it loops very often. Also, it is a bit boring after that level started. Maybe some upgrading on the tower key? Or Implement the fast forwards? IDK.

I hope you could give me some feedback on mine ;)

Developer

Thank you for the feedback. I did write the pathfinding during the jam, but I already had some experience with making pathfinding systems from before the jam. It works similarly to tilebased pathfinding, but it's a bit more complicated to determine the valid adjacent keys.

The pathfinding system calculates the distance between the edges of nearby keys to determine which keys have a valid connection, it then find the shortest path between all of the connected keys. Then the enemies just move from the centre of one key to the centre of the next key. Which works well, expect for the space key XD.

Regarding the music, I know that it isn't great. This is because I'm still quite new to making music. However, this music is already much better than my previous music track. Lastly, I will also add a speed up button in the post-jam version. So that you don't have to wait so long during the simulation. I'll have a look at your game as well.

Submitted

I have also some experience on A* pathfinding when I was making the TD game mentioned before. It's so sad that Unity AI doesn't support for 2D games. The algorithm is not very hard to understand. The difficult parts are how to determine the neighbour nodes and to re-path automatically, to me.

Submitted

Very, very clever. I enjoyed it enough to want to get all the trophies! Solid execution. I also enjoyed the theme and consistent graphic detail.

Submitted

I really enjoyed playing your game. Clever game design, nice and simple graphics and audio.  I wish the game was longer.  

Submitted(+1)

Clever game with clever puzzles. I did go for a few trophies as well as they were interesting. The most interesting aspect was managing the turrets' behaviours, in the sense of how they would approach the enemy movement. As straight as possible was my strat.

Graphics are excellent. Obviously the game looks somewhat simple, but it's consistent in its abstract look. And it's colourful too, which helped give it a personality.

Let's talk execution. I think you should have implemented a different colour for the start button, as it's the same as the enemy spawn point. Maybe Black BG and white text, to indicate it's a special key. I would have also tinted the text red, if you were not ready to go, and green if you were. This would move the path validity test from clicking the button itself to adding or removing any key.

Would have liked a special key for "undo" and "redo" (that's a lot to ask), and one for "reset board" (that's not a lot to ask).

My least favourite aspect of the experience was the music loop. Short, repetitive, and not particularly enjoyable from my perspective. The SFX were fine.

I don't see how the game hits the theme in any way.

Great entry, I enjoyed playing it.

Developer

Thank you for the feedback. Your suggestion for the colour of the start button text changing is a good one, I'll add that it the post-jam version. Regarding your request to be able to reset the keyboard, this can be done with the F2 key. The art is somewhat simple and the music isn't great, because my area of expertise lays in programming. Though, I am improving my art and music skills.

I agree that the theme isn't integrated well into the game. However, I didn't want to deliberately make the game confusing and unfriendly to the player, just to fit into the theme. Unfortunately this has been a populair choice among many of the games I've seen so far. I'm looking forward to playing your game and seeing how you implemented the theme.

Submitted (1 edit)

Hey Mika,

You know when you said "I didn't want the theme to turn my game terrible"? Yeah, that's where you and I should have a beer together. A lot of that in this jam. And your game is enjoyable because you didn't decide to make clicking on letter A activate the Space key, because the game is a liar, trololol.

With that said, the rating system is there and I have to use it as it was designed. So it scores low on theme. My own game also has the theme expressed in an unintrusive way. The premise is our protagonist, Hank, wants to demonstrate the Earth is not a 3D spheroid by digging down. His reasoning is, "if I can't get to the other side, then it cannot be a sphere". What a shame that the game is endless, so he will never find an answer either way. So the game lies to him. Most people who evaluated the game can't know this, so they marked it as not matching the theme. No fault of theirs really, but the philosophy for me is: games are supposed to be fun and enjoyable. No theme is going to get in the way of that.

Also, all jams don't have a rating for Function / Polish / Execution. So, I could give somebody a 5 star in Game Design, but their game crashes 100% repro rate on level 2. There is no rating for "my game actually works". Your game would score 5 on this category, which doesn't exist... yet, it's all important.

Also, all hail programmer art! May it live forever.

Cheers.

Submitted

I liked try this game. The idea of a tower defence where you build the path and not the turrets is cool. Don't understand how the game is actually embrassing the theme btw... Also since you only place your path, you're very passive watching the enemies getting destroyed. I mean, that's how the usual TDs are but at least there are some stuff to do usually (managing the turrets, upgrading, activating perks like bombers...). Here, it's super slow so after a few levels I started to be bored.

That's a cool entry btw, good job on that.

Viewing comments 60 to 41 of 71 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page