Planetary Defense Force

huvaakoodia 2017-04-30 07:39

"interactive tower defense game", games are interactive *by default*, just FYI.

Impressive graphics and the audio ain't bad either. The idea of rotating your turrets to face your adversaries is fresh, if only the controls weren't this finicky.

Selecting a planet zooms in on it. I'd rather keep an eye on the enemy at all times, zoomed out as much as possible. The rotation input is reversed. Pressing right (D) rotates the planet **counter**-clokwise, i.e. *left* in relation to the sun! Having to manually collect metal from the fallen enemies means that there is little time to sell and buy better turrets. This makes level 3 near on impossible to complete. I had 1400 metal, but the sun just died in a few seconds...

Tweaking the controls would be a start, then re-balancing the waves to said controls.

Fine work otherwise. Have a :sunny: :globe_with_meridians: :earth_africa: :globe_with_meridians: :globe_with_meridians:

samurai-spark 2017-04-30 14:41

Pretty cool idea guys!

Best tower defense of the jam :smile: Graphics are fine and the sound is good. Loved the planets movement in their orbits :grin: Catching the loot is also fun and you got a nicely done death animation. ^^

Great work!

jojocanard 2017-05-01 00:43

Really great solar system, beautiful planets with well chosen colors. Funny take on the tower def style with nice visual and sound. I like the idea of moving the planet around and the sun as an objective for the ennemies. Great job all around. But is it really possible to beat the 3rd wave :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

amnonlevi 2017-05-01 04:18

Great use of low poly graphics! looks really good! using the planet orientation to control location of turrets is very creative too.

slimabob 2017-05-01 04:47

Nice! Very difficult, but I love me some tower defense games, so I think I'm going to be putting some real time into this after judging is over. ;)

gurbx 2017-05-01 09:57

Nice game if not a little bit too difficult. You quickly run out of planets to put your turrets on which basically means you have to scrap turrets to build better ones, which is kind of difficult to do in the middle of a wave of enemies. Because of this I didn't get very far. Other than that, the feel of the game is kind of retro and cool, and I still enjoyed playing it.

lugdumdare-team 2017-05-01 16:21

Strong entry! Nice graphics and interesting mechanichs ! I only wish I could pause the game or removing collectible but it is kind of hard to handle that many thing, especially after the first boss when ennemies are coming from everywhere. Appart from that, I really enjoyed it! Congratulations !

mooncalf 2017-05-03 04:12

Great tower defense game. Was genuinely fun to play. I would have loved to have seen more orbital mechanics. It did get difficult rather quickly but ... thats a jam game =D. Yours is a great example, well done!

joyfired 2017-05-03 04:34

Really fun game, and the graphics are astounding. The difficulty did seem a bit much at first, but eventually (like 4 tries) it got much easier and more fun. Sound is pretty nice overall, the voiceover is really great lol. This might be a peeve of mine but it seems that the sound mixing could use some work, important sounds didn't seem loud enough and minor sounds too much. The scrap collecting mechanic is plenty satisfying, but in later rounds where you have scrap surround you from all directions with ships everywhere they are a bit of a disturbance. An interesting mechanic might be to have planets able to collect scrap as an upgrade or something to alleviate the annoyance, as beyond having all your planets with railguns there is not much. The controls really did not bother me that much to be honest, so that was also fine.

All in all, really great game, and one of the best tower defenses I've seen this jam

tuteupaituamae 2017-05-03 12:41

Nice game art bro

Please hate us on https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/deep-bottom

spinaljack 2017-05-03 12:56

Nice tower defence, would have preferred a more top down perspective especially when positioning planets.

wilfredthepig 2017-05-04 00:24

I personally enjoyed the music.......

nuebomundo 2017-05-05 02:45

I like the idea, but once you installed a turret in each planet, the game ends. I would have liked that you could install one in the satellites, or that maybe other planets came to your solar system, and because of that, being able to be more creative in how you arrange each planet in each moment and what weapons you give to each one. I see the most potential in the ability of moving a planet to a certain location freely, and how it could combine with other planets positions and weapons/powers, and possibly, a 360º battleground instead of a 2D one (enemies and configurations in all directions)

My favourite part was when the boss appeared and the music changed, great staging!

meaty-mclazerpantz 2017-05-05 14:01

Nice! Loved being able to rotate the planets around in their orbits to position defenses. That seemed pretty original, at least to me. The graphics and sound are pretty cool too.

Things to improve on... Collecting scrap on level 3 and beyond gets a bit busy, maybe make it so you can build a scrap collecting machine that does most of it for you? Or make the scrap pieces worth more and produce less of them as time goes on. There were points where I was just rapidly waving the mouse back and forth because there was so much of it everywhere. Also, the rail guns were making scrap off the screen so I couldn't collect them.

Level 4 seems impossible just because of the sheer volume of ships. Maybe make it so you can upgrade the one gun on a planet to like a multi-gun battery of some sort? I had railguns and missile turrets on every planet and didn't even come close to keeping pace with the volume of ships incoming.

Awesome game though overall! I played this like 5 or 6 times.

teammonumental 2017-05-05 19:20

Thank you all of your feedback! I am aware that stage 4 is impossible :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:. The scaling of waves just was way off, causing the waves to increase in difficulty, but honestly, we just wanted to show everybody what there was for us to offer you in a short and manageable time frame. Our idea was that we wanted the boss to come in early so you could see it and not let that be a waste of production.

I totally agree that the collecting mechanic was flawed without some way of automation. I think we all wanted more planets and different type of units to place on them. We focused on the aesthetics and little details so much that we didn't see the "big picture" or how to balance it.

Again, thanks for all of your feedback! It helps to know what we need to focus more on.

appl3 2017-05-14 05:34

Quite a fresh take on the tower defense style of game, I liked it. I like how it becomes more difficult quite quickly but the main problem was that there weren't enough planets to put turrets on despite having plenty of scrap to use. Maybe being able to upgrade turrets or creating orbiting turrets around planets could've solved this. Either way, it was still a fun game, looked great too, liked how cool the boss looked!

rjhelms 2017-05-15 02:49

Great job! I'm normally not a huge fan of tower defence games as I find they often don't have much depth, but the orbital mechanics element here make for a really fresh take on the game.

I don't have too much to offer as far as constructive feedback that isn't already covered by other comments. I think putting the boss in early was an excellent choice. We all know that getting balance right during Ludum Dare is pretty much impossible, so making sure that we all can see as much content as possible is a good call.

impiaaa 2017-05-15 03:06

Way cool! Not a big fan of tower defense and I died on wave 2 (going too fast for me maybe?), but the limited re-positioning mechanic is a really neat idea. Great graphics and sound.

davidrico 2017-05-15 07:46

Cool twist on tower defense games! Made it to wave 3 but then I got crushed. Graphics are spot on, sound is good, game is damn fun... One thing I didn't quite like is the camera. I didn't even notice the boss until it was almost on the sun! Other than that, really good job! Looking forward to a post-jam version with better wave balancing. Keep it up!

fingamer 2017-05-15 08:32

This is a cool tower defense game. I managed to play until round 3 but after that it was too hard for me. I love the low poly graphics so much and the audio is also very spot on. Overall this game was a cool entry and well made tower defense game.

namrog84 2017-05-15 09:14

A lot of fun! Neat defense game!

pietptr 2017-05-15 09:44

Nice defense game, looks really good!

liamlime 2017-05-15 09:59

The graphics are amazing, but the controls leave something to be desired. I feel like the game would play much better if you could just use your mouse - for example drag and drop the planet into the position you want it on its orbit. Zooming is also not necessary and only makes it harder to see what is going on, which may be the point of it, but I don't think it feels good.

The other bit of feedback is that enemies are difficult to see against the skybox. I'd consider making the skybox way darker so the enemies pop against it more.

feltip 2017-05-15 20:05

Very difficult. A lot of fun though, really dig it great job :)

camilovr 2017-05-17 12:42

Very good graphic and 3d solutions.

Congratulations!!

jirrev 2017-05-17 21:32

Wow, really fun to play. But very difficult at times. I didn't notice playing for at least ten minutes.

2017-06-09 19:01

Lovely graphics, fun game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1o2f-9mGRU