Really love it! Spent hours and hours playing until I eventually figured everything out and won. I thoroughly enjoyed it. For a two-week game jam(?) this is amazing. So I'll review it like a full game.
This game has some seriously great design elements which come together and account for a well-exectued roguelike gameplay loop, keeping you engrossed until you can overcome the challenge. Things like the gambling aspect of upgrade paths, wherein you can't back out once the cards are revealed, is absolutely excellent for replayability and encourages the player to try out different upgrade paths every time.
I found the difficulty suddenly spikes at about wave 40-60, this is both good and bad. The good is how it keeps you on your toes and rushing to upgrade down a certain path before the big boi enemies come charging in and that also makes for great replayability. I went through many different upgrade paths before overcoming the challenge. It was what kept me playing and was a lot of fun.
The major disadvantage to that is there ends up being essentially only a couple of ways to surpass the challenge, given how much HP the end-game enemies have (and how many of them there is). You either lose within 1 or 2 waves, or you beat the game. The final wave dependant on how much lag your computer can take before the webpage crashes (ie., gets sick of figuring out how many enemies die when you deal Infinity dmg/second over the whole map). If you don't figure it out, then you can't really get past wave 50-60. If you do, then you don't need to advance in the game anymore. You win when the game freezes.
Further work could drastically improve the game overall, not only by extending the end-game, but also with several QoL features that would be really nice for the player.
For higher waves, it would be nice if the difficulty didn't spike so suddenly (introduction of orange enemies) so there would be more room for experimentation with upgrade paths and different units. Less mass dark-orange waves early on, bascially.
Equally important is addressing the other side of the coin, "winning". Infinity damage is really fun when you achieve it but then becomes hollow quite quickly. Miss Fox needs a counter-play. Potentially by adding an enemy not necessary based off of HP? Necessitating usage of other units like Spider or Cat with debuffing? Fox, Dog and Hawk's exponential damage upgrade paths I think are really good to have in the game, it is a really rewarding experience for the player to acheive that, but once you achieve it, you're set. Some ideas for enemies could mitigate this and spice up gameplay a little:
- Shield-type enemies (shields others, Spider + Cat defense debuffs) - Timer-based enemies (Infinity HP, need to be slowed until timeout) - Unit-disabler-type enemies (temporary)
There are plenty of Quality-of-Life features that could be added to the game. For example, this is a survival game but it doesn't feature a final summary. Sometimes I was so engrossed I didn't even know what wave I ended on! Here's just a few:
- Round summary (final wave, highscore, enemies killed, etc) - Restart button - Music/SFX toggles - 2D-grid overview for unit placement - Credits (what game jam was this from!?)
All-in-all, it's a great tower defense game. Great choice of platform with HTML5. Minimalist design but sincerely well-executed, leading to excellent replayability going well beyond the average session length.
You guys should change the pricing model to allow donations! Seriously, I feel guilty not being able to give something for this game! There are many, many successful games out there 100% more expensive, with 50% of the features and only 20% of the enjoyment-factor. Don't stop creating stuff – this was an awesome one, thank you both / everyone!
Thank you so much for your very detailed and nice review! It's great to see that you enjoyed it so much to figure out the entire currently available meta! ^^
Indeed this was done in two weeks for the roguelike game jam and as you noticed correctly, there wasn't enough time to balance the things that require a lot of playtesting, especially the late game. I agree that the "Almost everything scales exponentially to the infinite" (for both enemies and units) approach needs to be a bit adjusted to offer more choices and tactics.
Along with your ideas, more content like boss variety, permanent unlocks/upgrades, more and randomly generated maps are all things we could add for a complete version.
Great game!
The gameplay loop really sucks you in, making you want to play more.
Although the concept is rather simple, the execution is really well done!
I haven't played many tower defense games, but this definitely is one of the better ones I've played. I invested around 4 hours of playtime and had a lot of fun. Wave 65 is the highest I reached.
I think the Upgrade Roll mechanic is super lovely and does most of the magic. You just really want to exhaust any potential for extremes, by finding strong upgrade combinations.
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Really love it! Spent hours and hours playing until I eventually figured everything out and won. I thoroughly enjoyed it. For a two-week game jam(?) this is amazing. So I'll review it like a full game.
This game has some seriously great design elements which come together and account for a well-exectued roguelike gameplay loop, keeping you engrossed until you can overcome the challenge.
Things like the gambling aspect of upgrade paths, wherein you can't back out once the cards are revealed, is absolutely excellent for replayability and encourages the player to try out different upgrade paths every time.
I found the difficulty suddenly spikes at about wave 40-60, this is both good and bad. The good is how it keeps you on your toes and rushing to upgrade down a certain path before the big boi enemies come charging in and that also makes for great replayability. I went through many different upgrade paths before overcoming the challenge. It was what kept me playing and was a lot of fun.
The major disadvantage to that is there ends up being essentially only a couple of ways to surpass the challenge, given how much HP the end-game enemies have (and how many of them there is). You either lose within 1 or 2 waves, or you beat the game. The final wave dependant on how much lag your computer can take before the webpage crashes (ie., gets sick of figuring out how many enemies die when you deal Infinity dmg/second over the whole map). If you don't figure it out, then you can't really get past wave 50-60. If you do, then you don't need to advance in the game anymore. You win when the game freezes.
Further work could drastically improve the game overall, not only by extending the end-game, but also with several QoL features that would be really nice for the player.
For higher waves, it would be nice if the difficulty didn't spike so suddenly (introduction of orange enemies) so there would be more room for experimentation with upgrade paths and different units. Less mass dark-orange waves early on, bascially.
Equally important is addressing the other side of the coin, "winning". Infinity damage is really fun when you achieve it but then becomes hollow quite quickly. Miss Fox needs a counter-play. Potentially by adding an enemy not necessary based off of HP? Necessitating usage of other units like Spider or Cat with debuffing? Fox, Dog and Hawk's exponential damage upgrade paths I think are really good to have in the game, it is a really rewarding experience for the player to acheive that, but once you achieve it, you're set. Some ideas for enemies could mitigate this and spice up gameplay a little:
- Shield-type enemies (shields others, Spider + Cat defense debuffs)
- Timer-based enemies (Infinity HP, need to be slowed until timeout)
- Unit-disabler-type enemies (temporary)
There are plenty of Quality-of-Life features that could be added to the game. For example, this is a survival game but it doesn't feature a final summary. Sometimes I was so engrossed I didn't even know what wave I ended on! Here's just a few:
- Round summary (final wave, highscore, enemies killed, etc)
- Restart button
- Music/SFX toggles
- 2D-grid overview for unit placement
- Credits (what game jam was this from!?)
All-in-all, it's a great tower defense game. Great choice of platform with HTML5. Minimalist design but sincerely well-executed, leading to excellent replayability going well beyond the average session length.
You guys should change the pricing model to allow donations! Seriously, I feel guilty not being able to give something for this game! There are many, many successful games out there 100% more expensive, with 50% of the features and only 20% of the enjoyment-factor. Don't stop creating stuff – this was an awesome one, thank you both / everyone!
Thank you so much for your very detailed and nice review! It's great to see that you enjoyed it so much to figure out the entire currently available meta! ^^
Indeed this was done in two weeks for the roguelike game jam and as you noticed correctly, there wasn't enough time to balance the things that require a lot of playtesting, especially the late game. I agree that the "Almost everything scales exponentially to the infinite" (for both enemies and units) approach needs to be a bit adjusted to offer more choices and tactics.
Along with your ideas, more content like boss variety, permanent unlocks/upgrades, more and randomly generated maps are all things we could add for a complete version.
arknight?
Great game! The gameplay loop really sucks you in, making you want to play more. Although the concept is rather simple, the execution is really well done!
Good job!
I haven't played many tower defense games, but this definitely is one of the better ones I've played. I invested around 4 hours of playtime and had a lot of fun. Wave 65 is the highest I reached.
I think the Upgrade Roll mechanic is super lovely and does most of the magic. You just really want to exhaust any potential for extremes, by finding strong upgrade combinations.
Very good game!
Alright, wave 109 new record
Wave 123 btw