FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD41 → Brute Force Art Defence

Brute Force Art Defence

By shellfishgames

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall563.9533
Fun593.8832
Innovation1033.8332
Theme1613.9532
Graphics1833.6332
Audio2633.0830
Humor2922.7830
Mood1563.4430

Comments

habeeb-mohammed 2018-04-23 06:30

Awesome concept! really fun to play. I like how each "enemy" becomes a unique painting :)

cincodenada 2018-04-23 07:04

I loved getting the ones that got through as paintings at the end, that's a fun little element. I made it to wave 11, almost made it!

corbak 2018-04-24 07:42

Interesting game. And fun I must say. Love the tower defense game and this plays nicely. I enjoy the system and the fact that you use isometric view (why not?) Anyway had a good time playing it. Well done :)

blinkenlights 2018-04-25 08:05

I really enjoyed that! Although my super-buff sprinkler tower was so buff it shot over most canvases heads XD

mathijsvissers 2018-04-25 08:36

Good tower defense mechanics. I like the idea of bullets actually splashing where they hit, and being able to miss shots that land somewhere in the level, that's a nice addition. Well made game. If I had to point out something that isn't quite up to par with the rest I'd say the graphics, but they work good enough. Awesome job on this, original stuff.

mainghia95 2018-04-25 09:23

It was a really fun game to play. I like your TD mechanic. We also make a cinematic game with pixel art. Mind to check it out: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/daxua

nash 2018-04-25 14:18

Surprisingly fun game! A lot of different tower mechanics kept the game interesting for a quite long time (for a marathon game).

One thing I would have improved was the card mechanic. Now it just feels more like a gimmick where random abilities you draw are cards. Card element would feel more integrated to the game if player had more ways to manipulate deck.

But overall, very nice game and I enjoyed it quite a bit!

ovidios 2018-04-25 17:06

I liked it! Tower-defense games in general are fun to me and the idea of procedurally painting the enemies was great. Throughout playing I kept thinking it would be great to get to look at these images afterwards. Only found out you *could* do so after finishing the playthrough (on my first try that is!) The game felt very easy, maybe because the cards I got were really good? Idk. I would have enjoyed being able to scroll around with the mouse (dragging or moving to the edge like in Sims) and the upgrade slot mechanic was kind of frustrating.

shellfish-games 2018-04-26 07:54

Thank you for your feedback everyone!

@Ovidios I too felt the game turned out relatively easy, but thought it was probably OK this way. Often its the other way round, and when as the developer you believe the game is just right, it actually is too diificult for other players who are not as used to all the mechanics. There's definitely luck involved though with the cards. The upgrading mechanic was my attempt to stop players from too easily putting *all* their upgrades on one single tower as this would ruin the balancing (upgrades improve towers in a pretty much exponential way). Making it frustrating definitely wasn't inteded though, so sorry for that.. :)

@Nash Can you go into more detail of what kind of deck manipulation you were thinking about?

nash 2018-04-26 14:01

@Shellfish-Games I really cannot say this quickly. The point I'm trying to make is that the abilities/turrets you get could easily be anything else but cards. Now they care just called cards and look like cards.

Let's think about other card games, Heartstone for example. What actually makes it a card game? The minions and spells could be something else than cards and it would be the same game, right? Well, not quite. The player is able to design and manipulate his deck before the match begins.

Maybe that would work in this game also. Break the game between X amount of waves and let the player purchase/pick cards to his deck. Look at Slay the Spire for example. It lets the player buy cards to his deck and even remove cards from the deck to make it smaller - thus more consistent.

shellfish-games 2018-04-26 17:18

@Nash Ah, this makes perfect sense, thanks for clearing it up. Indeed the way it is right now it's just a plain randomization of what the player can do, and adding more control and planning to the mix would certainly add a lot. As I'll be putting some more effort into the game in the future, I might as well do just that after getting some of the easier stuff out of the way.

eddyneave 2018-04-27 20:06

Really great concept and i found it very fun. Audio could do with improving and graphics didn't really pop at me but the gameplay and concept i loved. I did find it difficult to figure out how to select a tower and place it down (because you have to click so low on the card) and the card tower defence works really well together. Overall i had a lot of fun playing and did enjoy it.

aplite 2018-04-28 13:20

Love the concept. Really cool how you could see the canvases which got through.

jshaffer94247 2018-04-29 03:40

I'm not normally a fan of tower defense, but this kept me intrigued. I especially like the "art" aspect. Very creative.

latrabili-noctu 2018-04-29 14:03

Great game. I would have loved the tower upgrades having different visual effects when they hit the enemy. It would help to elevate the art/creative side of the game. But, as it is, I think it is a really clever idea and a fun game to play. Congrats!

theprint 2018-04-29 15:02

This is a fun take on tower defense. I enjoyed managing the upgrades and positioning along the path - and believe it or not, the clean graphics are a big plus! My only wish: greater variation of cards!

tuomo 2018-04-29 16:28

So that’s how Jackson Pollock created his art.. I enjoyed playing your game. I managed to get all the way through it, with just four regular and the boss passing through to the end. I had to zoom out (about 80% normal view, browser maximized on 1920x1080 res) to fit everything in browser window. Getting extra lives seemed bit overpowered. I had 22 extra in final level. And I used about ¼ of the lane, so I guess it was unnecessary long. Art was well done, maybe you could have used less saturated colors for more harmonious color scheme. Loved the way ground plane become a painting too in the end. Music was fitting but bit short taking in consideration length of the game.

gordun 2018-04-29 16:47

Really artsy game without creating any art. I ended up with all screen yellow, very cool concept and fun game.

kami-86 2018-04-29 17:06

#### Positive - The art it's really cool - Solid Mechanics - Nice control - Easy to pick - Nice paint efect and good graphics

#### Observation - The music it's really loud... - feel like the theme it's almost there.

feels really relaxing and the art phrases inspired alot. (For me)

samurai-ducks 2018-04-29 18:48

The idea you had for this theme was really cool and unique! I think that the graphics could use some improvement and maybe consider placing more space/time between the spawning canvases because some glitching occurs when 2 canvases are too close to each other. However, I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed playing your game!

themonsterfromthedeep 2018-05-04 03:51

This is really neat. A tower defense game where you have generic upgrades that can be applied to any towers is interesting and unique.

Strangely, after my first playthrough, I have to imagine that the best strategy is to lose lives in a controlled fashion in order to get the extra cards. I might try playing this again sometime, as it is very interesting.

I did find it to be somewhat difficult. Almost whenever I upgraded a tower, I would immediately be fighting the enemies that match that tower, which was bad luck on my part. However, it might have something to do with the progression of the game nonetheless.

I do have one complaint, which is that after an enemy was shot a bunch I couldn't tell what towers would be able to shoot it. Perhaps enemies could become targeted by all towers once painted? Something to think about, in any case.

Also, it might be nice to know the number of enemies for the next round before starting it. Before the final round, I created a new tower with a backwards shot upgrade, which turned out to be absolutely worthless for fighting a single enemy. But that's just one nitpick.

Overall I really liked this game. The graphics, although not fancy, are more than good enough, especially when considering the paint splatter effect, which works very well for this game. The card mechanic is innovative and interesting. The audio works well enough in my opinion.

srabatata 2018-05-08 07:42

Very fun, great concept. Liked that when the enemies pass through the gate, you get the same amount of cards to improve your towers. Loved the paintings showed below the game screen. Great entry, good job.

ekkoekko 2018-05-08 10:31

Its a good entry the fun is in the game and the theme.

Negative Part:

--The Background music is a little bit annoying. Maybe because of the 8bit music, the bass is too loud even if my volume is low.

-- The text that show every level is not equally fit to the screen.

game1.JPG

shellfish-games 2018-05-08 16:18

@EkkoEkko Sorry about the background music, it surely could be a bit less in your face. :) Regarding the text, you're right, this actually never occurred to me, but simply putting it in two lines instead of one would have prevented this weird situation where you have to move the camera simply to read it.

@TheMonsterFromTheDeep Thank you very much, very insightful review! I'm not sure if voluntarily losing lives in order to gain more cards is actually a better strategy than to just try to play well from the start, but it's certainly worth considering. Providing some insight regarding the upcoming wave is pretty high on my list of future changes, and I'd also like to change the final round - that single (and immune to everything) enemy is kind of anticlimactic and doesn't work so well with everything the game has built up to till this point.

alchemic 2018-05-12 19:09

Really great game! My only complaint is that I ended up with way too many excess upgrade cards, and I had less than 10 towers out on the final stage. The final boss destroyed me, even though I had been doing pretty well up to that point.

Maybe it's because I made a similar game once, but I love this game. I checked out your source code, too, very clean code! Nice job using pure canvas.

The "sprinkler" upgrade seems kind of useless.

The music is good, but it's a bit too overpowering, some parts of it were kinda loud and distracting.

I love the concept of the paintings already having a color so certain towers can't hit them.

Very nice game!

maysick 2018-05-15 00:18

Interesting idea. I didn't do so well but I had fun creating a super large red sprinkler that didn't actually hit enemies all that often. Music clipped a bit but was enjoyable. Canvas idea is really unique!