Tower Defense Played Out?

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Dantevus

Guest
Hello everyone,

I am currently working on a Tower Defense game. I love TDs and I always try any new one I find. I'm hoping to make mine faithful to the genre but have enough uniqueness to not seem like the same experience as any other one they've played.

But it doesn't seem that there are many new Tower Defense games being released on Steam. I'm going to complete the game either way. However, I'm curious as to whether you think what I'm seeing is due to:

-Me not looking in the right places
-Lack of developer interest in making TDs
-Lack of user interest in playing TDs

Thanks for your input!
Ken
 
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Mylon

Guest
I still love and crave TD games. However, the "place a tower down and upgrade it 3 times" mechanic is super played out. You need to think beyond that paradigm to something like gemcraft with it's various systems. Or Bloons City with it's city building as you clear areas.
 
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Dantevus

Guest
Thanks for the response! You've just given me some very good ideas for unique features I can implement, as well as hope that it won't be met with yawns. It's good to know Tower Defense still has its place. :)
 

Genetix

Member
I still love a good TDS also. I am of mixed feelings - I don't want a completely vanilla experience that doesn't do anything different, but i've also played some that are way outside of a traditional setup and they can be a bit hard to get into if not done right. Do you have any specific details or mechanics in mind for your game?
 
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Dantevus

Guest
I have a bunch floating in my head, but the ones I already have coded are:

-No spells, but you do get drones and a robot dog to control if you unlock and upgrade them. The drones apply buffs and debuffs, the dog can be upgraded to build towers for you to cover more of the map. (Towers have construction times)

-You don't have access to all towers. You instead have to use your unlocked Engineering Points to pick between the 50 towers you have at your disposal. The most you'll be able to have at once would be like 16/17 even at the end of the game.

-You can physically pick up a Tower and haul it behind you to be dropped at a new location. And it still fires while you do so, just all stats are less effective. You can also use this to chase down or cut off one last monster that got through your defenses.
 
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Dantevus

Guest
An addition to the engineering points. You can swap out on the fly between rounds. I didn't make that clear I think.
 

Genetix

Member
Construction times on towers is actually a really good idea that doesn't add any unneeded complexity to the game, but also separates it from 98% of other TD games out there, and if done right can add a positive element of strategy to the game. Also a great way to diversify towers if some build faster then others! Great stuff.
 
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Dantevus

Guest
Thanks! I'm hoping to have a demo of at least the first 2-3 of levels done in the next month or so. My goal would be to show gameplay and a 100% accurate representation of the first few levels, but also have every screen available even if you can't do much in them until the later levels once you've progressed. That way people playing the demo can get an idea of what features are going to come into play later on so I can get feedback before I code and implement them.

For instance, I've been toying with the idea of going "off path" to unnecessary levels to earn a sort of "research point" that will open up a system similar to Starcraft 2 where you can pick between two effects at each stage.

That screen would be in the demo to show players, but you obviously wouldn't have the ability to earn the "research points" yet.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I think all idle game genres (Tower Defense, Clicker, etc) are doomed to be fads... there's only so many ways you can do nothing before it gets boring.
 
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Dantevus

Guest
I think all idle game genres (Tower Defense, Clicker, etc) are doomed to be fads... there's only so many ways you can do nothing before it gets boring.
I certainly disagree with your labelling of TD as an "idle" game. They are strategy games. I got much challenge out of Gemcraft:CS, for instance, with all their additional difficulties you could add to each map. This is of course provided you don't use the ridiculous mana combo, haha. Might I inquire as to why you grouped the two together?
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I certainly disagree with your labelling of TD as an "idle" game. They are strategy games. I got much challenge out of Gemcraft:CS, for instance, with all their additional difficulties you could add to each map. This is of course provided you don't use the ridiculous mana combo, haha. Might I inquire as to why you grouped the two together?
I've seen a single TD game that's engaging, and that's the original Plants Vs Zombies. Every other game has been along the lines of "buy the best towers you can access, run wave, get money, upgrade, repeat" in a way that either makes you invincible or get completely overrun depending on if your strategy worked or not. Strategy or not, as long as huge chunks of the gameplay isn't interactible, it's an idle game.
 
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Dantevus

Guest
What would you recommend Tower Defense games do to solve this issue? I'm certainly taking your opinion into consideration and will do my best to come up with ideas to prevent the idle aspect from cropping up while still making upgrading feel worthwhile. :)
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
To take lessons from PvZ:
  • Let the player do stuff mid-wave.
  • Adapting to the enemy formation is going to be more engaging than just watching stuff play out, and having to play through and fail once to learn what the enemies are gonna throw at you isn't going to make anyone happier.
  • Manually clicking on dropped resources to collect them also adds interactivity.
  • Having each tower type have a cooldown before it can get built again means the player can't just spam the 'best' tower, letting you use this to make purposely overpowered towers that can be used in a pinch but can't be used as a reliable damage output.
  • Make sure enemies have different behavior, and visually display how they're different. For instance, an enemy that has twice the HP of a normal one but acts the same way should be a visibly armored version of it.
  • Having stages with areas you can't build towers on but enemies can use (like the swimming pool in PvZ) can add to the game's sense of variety. Things don't need to be symmetrical or geometrically balanced.
 
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Dantevus

Guest
Sounds good to me. I think I know a few ways to adapt some of this stuff to my current framework. The player doing stuff mid-wave has definitely been on my radar though. I want success to highly rely on the player's ability to manage what is occurring on the battlefield. On easier modes it will be less necessary for people who desire a more casual experience, of course.

If you don't mind giving feedback on something I've been tinkering with that might solve your best tower spamming concern:

This TD will be science based. So I was thinking of having a power core type system. Stronger towers take up more of the core. So theoretically you could have lets say 10 Tier 1 towers, 6 Tier 2 towers, or 3 Tier 3 towers at any given point, or a mixture of them all. Those won't be the actual numbers, of course. But that would prevent you from spamming a "best" tower since you won't be capable of having enough variety to deal with all enemy types/weaknesses.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Enemies having weakness and resistances sounds like a fresh idea! Just make sure the player get a chance to exploit them (and feel clever about it). You want to avoid the "XOMG A FIRE SPIDER LETS PUT A FIRE RESISTANT TOWER HERE... wait he brung an earth badger and an ice dentist as well dammit" situation, and also not get the opposite situation "xomg a fire spider <puts anti-fire tower> WIN" either. I guess balancing between those two is why so few TD games (and games in general) uses elemental systems well.
 
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Dantevus

Guest
I just.....I love that you said "Ice Dentist". I don't know why but that had me busting out laughing and it's definitely going to be an easter egg in the game now.

But yeah, I'm aiming to make the weaknesses/strengths less elemental and more tactical. It's not going to be what you hit them with, but the way you hit them, if that makes sense. Although I do currently have a split between Biological creatures and Mechanical creatures that will have a natural resistance to the opposing tower type(also biological and mechanical), with some hybrids of each.

A good number of creatures will have 'powers' as well that will need to be strategized against. One creature I'm putting in the game will be known as a "Pulse Beast". It releases periodic, but not overly frequent, pulses of energy that reflect your tower's attacks that are in range of it and if those reflected attacks hit another of your towers attacks they collide, thus avoiding two projectiles. However, if it attempts to reflect an attack from Tower A the pulse backfires doing no damage but leaving it temporarily more vulnerable to an attack from Tower B. Or something to that effect. You can achieve this by temporarily switching a tower on/off to get the timing right. I'm just hoping I'm not putting too much in to make it overcomplicated and tedious.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
I basically stole that joke from one of Yahtzee's reviews (he pointed out a similar nonindicative enemy type flaw in some JRPG), but I'm glad you found it funny anyway, I guess :p

I like the idea of turning on/off towers for maximum efficiency, too... it adds that interactivity. It also punishes spamming "the best" towers since it might be too hard to turn off all of them before their projectiles get reflected or such.
An idea to go with it: you can build as many towers as you can afford, but your current energy consumption is the cap to how many you can have active at once. And if you exceed the current energy production, all towers instantly turn off. So you need to keep track of that when you manipulate towers on the go. One special enemy type could absorb energy from a range, lowering your accessible energy... if you don't quickly turn off some towers to compensate, it'll knock out your entire system, letting other enemies overrun your defences. You'll need to focus on getting that enemy down ASAP to get your capacity back.
And to compensate for such effects, you could have special 'backup battery' upgrades - in case a tower is turned off, the backup battery will let it keep firing for a while. If you let the batteries recharge and keep turning towers on and off, you can even constantly exceed your energy capacity a bit by having some towers only fire from their backup battery. Just keep in mind that towers whose bullets that can be deflected maybe shouldn't have a backup battery, or you risk having bullets fired from the backup battery deflected if you don't deactivate them in advance.
 
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Dantevus

Guest
Oooh, very good ideas. Will definitely implement if possible.
 
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Dantevus

Guest
I'm going to bug you guys one last time because I've been struggling with this question, and then I'll let the thread die so other people's posts can get more attention.

Birds eye view a la Bloons and Gemcraft

OR

Angled view a la PixelJunk Monsters and Kingdom Rush

Is there much of a strong preference in your guys minds? Top down would be much easier to animate, especially since art is so not my thing, but I don't want to sacrifice aesthetic appeal if there is a general consensus for angled.
 
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Mylon

Guest
I very much prefer top-down ala Bloons/Gemcraft. Side view can give a certain aesthetic, but can come at a cost of strategic value. At the same time, it's hard to make top-down distinctive given the number of games in the field.
 
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