Meta Defense

antti-haavikko 2018-04-23 11:02

I didn't do too hot since I got bored halfway through the wall of text that was the tutorial and just decided to start instead. So I completely missed the last part about making enemies happy and just tried to kill them all instead. Like you said, breaking the wall of text apart and sprinkling them to the first level to relevant places would be a much better solution. But hey, wall of text in the game itself is still better than only having it in the game description page 😉

I think these should have been in the correct order on which they represent: iconmismatch.png

Hive also had a weird issue where I think the play/earth tower were in wrong places: metahive.png

I think the map was too big which resulted in bunch of waiting in the beginning of a wave and a load of miss clicks when action got near the hive.

It really could have used to audio/animation feedback to make it more clear when a new label/speech bubble appeared somewhere. Not quite sure if having the building/status buttons on a panel on the right side was the best option either. Maybe a radial menu around the selected node (would lessen the unnecessary mouse movement between center of the screen and right edge) but that might just end up with even more clutter and miss clicks near the hive with the current zoom amount.

Good job!

blubberquark 2018-04-23 11:07

I like the idea, but the balance of waves, feeding, mob movement speed combined with the UI makes this rather clunky. Unlike most games in this LD, which have clever ideas that could not sustain a longer game, this could be a fun mobile game if expanded upon and developed further.

kirill-nepomnyaschiy 2018-04-23 12:22

Kinda hard to micromanage manage all towers at the same time when you get 4+ of them. I wish that enemies were coming not all at once so there was no idle time and rush time. Anyway, that's very rich RTS for a jam game, good job :)

gemberkoekje 2018-04-23 12:26

I feel like you pulled together a few too much concepts here, and the result is quite confusing. Wouldn't mind a polished post-compo version though!

eddynardo 2018-04-23 12:27

I had to play it for a few minutes to understand how to survive longer, good concept with enough depth but also too much complexity at the beginning, had to read the tutorial a second time to get how I should play it. overall good job :)

shoj92 2018-04-23 12:45

I couldn't work through the art style unfortunately, but I really digged the concept!

ragnta 2018-04-23 20:51

@antti-haavikko I attached help pictures, and my buddy made a gameplay video. I hope it will help for the players of my game in the future.

@blubberquark This canvas is 800x600. I don't know how the mobile works, but I think I need to rebuild the map logic for mobile users. Did you think about it?

@gemberkoekje This is my first strategy game. I tought too, It's overdesigned for 48 hours, but I learned from it. :) and one more note: the one thing, what I designed and the TD mechanic and the virtual pet mechanic don't contain is the element system.

@eddynardo Before nobody didn't read the tutorials of my older game, because it was an another menu. In this case I test how many player read my tutorial if it's in the play menu :) but I got it, my tutorial is too long in this case.

tomdeal 2018-04-24 20:10

Nice entry. The game is much deeper than its appears at first, which I liked a lot. However, I felt it could be faster, and some of the mechanics were a bit hard to understand.

dlowe 2018-04-24 20:33

I love tower defense games. This is a neat take, but I think the complexity might be too high -- I didn't really understand all of the mechanics at work. Still, I played for a bit and enjoyed it.

Thanks for the game!

crimson 2018-04-24 20:35

This is a game you shouldn't judge by the art. The amount of options make this very strategic for a jam game and I love that. If I could suggest something it would be to maybe reorder the options to make it clearer what stat each improves. Adding a way to reduce clicking during tense moments, for example being able to fully feed with 1 click, would be great!

sndr 2018-04-24 21:27

Cool game!! I was gladly surprised by it. Really like how you blended pet simulator and tower defense. It's cute, it's smart and it's fun! Nice entry! :)

ragnta 2018-04-24 21:31

@tomdeal @dlowe it was my cheat at development time. I was afraid of the balancing. I think the most important thing of the tower defense is the balance. So I tought, if I put a complex mechanic to the game, I can avoid the balancing. I think it was successfully a bit, I could save a lot of time. There is a few things in my scope about a the transparency of the game. If I will have time, I continue the development (eg.: campaign and tutorial map)

@Crimson I try to make unique arts for every game. Maybe these pictures are uggly or the the people don't like it, but I think this is the beginning of the art :-) I am sorry, if you don't like it, but I am proud my ugly arts :-)

crimson 2018-04-24 21:50

@ragnta Oh, sorry if that sounded wrong, I did not mean I didn't like it, but from the screenshot you cannot tell how strategic the game is. I actually love the little animations of the enemies and the portraits the enemies and the towers have in the menu. The only thing I found weird is the map, with the colors and shapes I did not understand it was a map in the beginning.

schu 2018-04-27 21:52

The art (particularly on the side panel UI) felt really cluttered and I couldn't quite figure out what things were for awhile. I really like the idea and everything seems to work as intended but overall the game felt pretty slow and confusing to me.

kelbg 2018-04-29 14:04

Seems like a nice tower defense game, but it feels a little too confusing. Even after playing a couple of times I still don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing. A tutorial level would have gone a long way to help players grasp the basic concepts. Altough a bit crude, the art is still charming in its own way. Still, I had fun playing it, so nice work!

gustavo-christino 2018-04-30 14:45

The game was fun, for me Tower Defense games have a brisk pace, so the challenge level goes beyond my initial skills.

Tip: I would suggest putting shortcut keys to access the "towers" created and within them, shortcut keys for acquiring features (for example: the "towers" created receive the names by characters (a - z) and when accessing a "tower" use other keys (0 - 9) to perform the actions).