Good presentation, sound, and general gameplay. Nice big swarms, which seems to be this games thing, along with the style. I like that. Obviously there is a big need for balancing as it’s currently pretty much impossible without spending ages upgrading, re-playing, loosing, then upgrading a bit more. I don’t think I got much further than a few minutes per round, and only a few rounds played.
Map design is a problem. There is a reason most tower defence games have one possible path, with later, more advanced levels with multiple. Knowing where to put towers is hard when there are large numbers of possible spawn points and travel paths, and many of the towers will end up feeling wasted if placed too far out. If you want to get fancy, perhaps the ability to block off some of the paths with walls could let the player make their own funnel/strategy.
The upgrade each tower comes with are underwhelming, but it could just be the towers themselves. I think the first general upgrade given to a tower outside of the rounds doesn’t even given any bonuses. In game, if most units take more than one shot to kill, and a towers base shooting speed means it only gets one or two shots off as units move from one side of its radius to another, all while the swarms are massive, then single shot towers feel pointless. The repair towers also didn’t do anything that I could see, though only the main base gets damaged so I don’t see why it exists. And the slow multi/area towers seem to do the same thing as each other, and neither much of it. This feels like it would be a fun game several hours in, when towers are permanently upgraded enough to ‘make numbers go big’, but it’s otherwise going to lose first time players with its slow power creep. While I didn’t play it for a grand length of time, there also didn’t look to be any verity in the upgrades possible (e.g. upgrading one tower to shoot more often but do less damage, and another tower to do the opposite). Immediate power and success helps shot term player retention, while variety helps long term retention, and this game doesn’t have much of either right now.
Again, great game for its style and presentation, but not fun due to its weak start and inability to implement effective strategies in tower placement. Keep at it, and it should be a great game in no time.
