Not good
With so much examples of good denfese games, you just didn't get it.
The wall system is just not good, it's too expensive, almost half a tower, you could make the wall damage tanks or whatsoever. Just not good.
Reviews for "Z-Wars"
upgrade is shit
its fine but the upgrade is SHIT i had 5 towers upgraded 2 upgraded alot and like 15 bots got past really quick after while upgrading is fucked up cant upgrade fast enough to even defend .
Well..
I am going to have to agree with the prevailing oppinion on this one. I don't really see anything special about this tower defense Game. In other words I don't see that it adds anything of particular interest to the genera.
Pros:
Everything seemed to function well. I liked the auto adjust graphics option. I always like the option to turn off music and sound. I like it even more when you can turn them off seperately. I did like the idea of the Gas gun, but given you are fighting tanks you might want to consider something other than poisoning. I do like 'pathing' TD games. I think that it does add a fun and interesting twist to the strategy you use Vs. in fixed path games.
Cons:
The enemies are redundant, all they do is change colors. and they all do the exact same thing (as far as I can tell). The payoff is not enough to maintain a good defence. Yes, there may be a few strategies that work well, however one shouldn't have to chance upon them Well, that is either the money doesn't arrive quick enough, or that the enemy health starts increasing by too large of leaps. Also the build window and other HUD elements are bulky and get in the way of building. When you end up later in the game without real breaks in the waves (one wave is still on screen when the other is comming) this makes it annoying and difficult to build on the fly. I also have to agree with someone who had earlier said that the upgrades kind of suck. The only weapon that really seemed to have a good upgrade was the saw, which unfortunately had a very limiting range, making it only good at the ends of hairpins. I also noticed that weapon tracking was an issue. Weapons would retrack rather than focus on an enemy until it was out of range, or firing on an enemy after it was destroyed. Also the missile tracking on the rockets really seemed to suck, I would have rockets fire at enemies only to watch the rocket just whiz by their position without seeming to turn in the slightest.
Suggestions:
Allow the option for the player to select targets. Along those lines if you allow grouping of allied turrets would be nice as well. So you could group upgrade (would only really work with more money).
Either a) lower upgrade costs b) provide more funds c) decrease the enemy upgrade rate or d) provide more upgrade for the money. A hint with upgrades with the exception of perhaps speed an upgrade should provide at least the equivilant extra damage for the cost. So if a gun costs 50 and your upgrade costs 50 it should do provide double the damage of the original gun, as well as some other benefits like range and perhaps speed. With the shock guns, you should not decrease speed, unless you are proportionally increasing damage and range to compensate. Due to the speed decrease (~18%) upgrading that gun makes it less effective than the prior version.
Add different enemies, even if you don't change their traits at least change the graphics.
Add boss levels, one of the things that helps other games get away with lower per unit rewards is that boss levels greatly supplement the income.
Add experience modifiers to the guns, this is something that is often not done well, but if you can do it and do it well it would be a big bonus to the game.
Confine your pop=up menus to a side or bottom fixed toolbar. This way they won't interfere with gameplay.
Shift is a more commonly used multi placement key than Ctrl. Keeping the key settings familiar make the game more fun. On those same lines (and perhaps the game had this and I just didn't see) hotkeys for functions like build and options menus adds to the ease and enjoyment of play as well.
In conclusion:
Weighing the pros and cons, and also knowing what this genera already has to offer (xenotactic for example) have me giving this game a (very generous IMHO) 5/10. I do think this is a good start, but there are alot of very good games on this line out there. You should try to think of an angle to make yours stand out, right now it really is just another TD.
twistedduck responds:
Thank you very much for putting so much time into the review - it is very helpful! As a little note - you can use SHIFT instead of CTRL, I just didn't say this in the instructions.
:) :} :] :| :[ :{ :( from happy to said
:D wootage i got up to wave 30 from putting up 4 maxed saws in front and one laser near them.
on wave 30 i died though cause i sold the laser and tryed to put up more saws stupid me :(
just another tower defence game
nothing special about it
most towers suck, only the charger coil was something new but it should have a minimum damage, not just starting at zero
i wonder why you made the freestyle mode a easter egg, 'cause of that you will receive lower scores.
the difficulty is way to high. at wave 5 or so the tanks have 150 hp and are very difficult to destroy, at wave 6 the tanks have 200 hp! at wave 15 the hp goes into the thousands making them almost impossible to destroy.
most towers cost way to much and it costs even more to have them upgraded. even the walls cost like halve of a standard tower! not even talking about the efficiency of those expensive towers :(
the music really gets on my nerves, i mean, a 8 second long loop! it was a bit fun for like 30 seconds but after that i turned of the music
the artwork was however fine. the rockets were a but childish but the rocket towers suck so i didn't build them
the only reason i didn't give a lower score is because it was pretty fun for like 10 waves and because of the charger tower (i just like the concept). i also didn't found any bugs so far
3/5
5/10