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Self Defense's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Innovation | #39 | 3.846 | 3.846 |
| Theme | #96 | 3.846 | 3.846 |
| Overall | #232 | 3.442 | 3.442 |
| Game Design | #275 | 3.423 | 3.423 |
| Fun | #409 | 3.192 | 3.192 |
| Graphics | #445 | 3.385 | 3.385 |
| Audio | #545 | 2.962 | 2.962 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
We took the theme of "Calm Before The Storm" and used it as the basis for the constant and inevitable morphing of your player character from a human to a monster. You have the calm, where you can build and prepare, before the storm of transformation forces control out of the player's hands.
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
All code and all assets were written from scratch by one of our team members.
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Comments
At first I thought it was a pretty standard tower defence with a minor twist, but when my character changed I got it. Vey cool idea, and well executed. Great soundtrack as well
Very Cool!
Interesting twist and mechanic where you're the monster! Wish there was a button to skip to the night in case of going all the way to the right and there's still time left (since there's eventually a wall and it's not possible to go any further. Perhaps it should just turn night if you go this far to the right). Nice job on this unique game!
A really cool concept, and pretty good graphics too. When I first read the name self defense I thought it was gonna be some sort of fighting game but wow, I was proven wrong in such a creative way.
Very cool concept! I think having some sort of skip button for all the empty time after setting up defenses would be nice but overall very cool concept!
Liked this idea. Cool seeing all the different obstacles you came up with.
This is such a cool concept. I love the art, and the animation of the player switching into the monster is awesome! The music also has a really nice vibe to it. I think all that needs work is how powerful the traps are, mainly because the freeze trap seemed to be really good at defending against the monster. This is still such a well executed concept, especially for being done in a week!
Great idea and very apt implementation for the theme. Simple mechanics but can become a very complex gameplay loop.
Would suggest adding some activity to do during the waiting time and some button to skip to the night as until the game progressed some days it was just a waiting game for me.
Kudos for making a fun game!!!
We've thought about adding a skip button. You can mine until then but we'd definitely like something more interesting to interact with or just skip lol. Thank you for playing!
What a great idea! You are both the calm and the storm. Never played a game like this before. well done!
Hee-ho. Cool idea. Very good game
Super interesting concept and take on the theme! I've seen this concept in movies, but I don't think I've played a game where you defend other people from your monster self before.
I like how there were a bunch of different tools you could use to stop the monster. The tools' names could be more visible, I didn't notice the names while playing, only afterwards when I went to check if the name showed up.
I think this concept would work in a bigger game as well.
PS. The title is pretty clever!
Tower Defense Directed by M Night Shyamalan
1. One of the most innovating tower defense twists I've ever seen. You need to defendd against yourself, possibly you've outcast yourself from your own village and build defenses so you can't get back in and hurt your own friends so sad :'(
2. building is fun, lots of variety in the types of buildings you get and you keep unlocking them as well as the games go by
3. graphics are good, everything is readable, the background is dark and the foreground is light so you can clearly see what's going on. I wish the monster was a little more otherworldy, bigger, badder and a different color, something to contrast the characters white silhouette, maybe red or orange
4.Music is good, the loop is nice and melodic, you don't get tired of the track
5. the game is too easy from the get go, there's not a lot of decision making, the monster gets stopped easily by just the walls, no need for any other weapons and once you get slow you can take him out pretty easily
6. The game has lots of upgrades which is really cool, but I think it would have been interesting to go along with this innovative game design to have the player ALSO pick an upgrade for the monster as well, so the player gets a choice to how the monster evolves, and make the choices really devastating for the player, give the monster upgrades a lot of power
7. you can gather money from a box, make this item a bit more apparent, its a little small and white and tucked away, make it at least two tiles tall and yellow to really stand out to the player
Great game, liked it a lot! keep jamming
Thank you for the detailed post!
1. Yup, we would like to flesh out the story if we do more with the game, def a tragic boi
5. Yea we tuned it on the easy side although I swear the monster can get some mean upgrades that can be crazy. It depends run to run and our design being multiplicative means the monster sometimes is running through the game at the speed of light but can't get past a block or it can barely walk but everything dies in 1 hit.
6. We thought about this direction. Ultimately we went with trying to make a system where the monster's upgrade adapts to what you built. So if you build too many slow turrets, it resists slow turrets, etc. It's not working as well as it could but I think that is the better direction overall if we can fine tune it.
7. For sure, I needed to get a sound in there for it too but didn't get that in in time (also couldn't get my brother's voice acting in) but that's jam life.
Thanks again!
oh that monster adapts? thats even cooler
Interesting twist with you being the monster. Tho the section is not big game feels unique each run. Pleasant artstyle too!
I loved the creative twist you put on the tower defense genre! The concept is really engaging, and I found it fun to experiment with different tower combinations. It would be exciting to see this game evolve further, maybe with more levels and an overarching goal. Great job!
A good use of the theme and an instresting way to do a tower defenes game. Would be good to see this be developed further
The concept is genius. In the preparation phase i was thinking about how the enemies would look like, not realizing it was me! Hahaha, that's a good twist. I played the pacifist route, only used barricades and the push back thingy. I played until level 10 to see if something would happen, an end goal would be nice. Also when i stacked two of the pushback towers on top, my character got hurled out of the map. It was a very fun experience, figuring out all the combinations of towers you could place.
I'm really happy you had that experience, thanks for playing! If we expanded the game I think we'd add more story and an end after however many nights.
you gave a word self defense a different meaning in the new way!
Really nice concept, and clever name ;)
Some suggestions / bugs:
Really needs an in game tutorial and descriptions for the turrets.
The game is easy to cheese. You can just make a horizontal line of walls or freeze turrets and never loose.
The prices of turrets don't seem to match what is shown on their icons, with many turrets being completely unpurchaseable even when I have 2x or 3x the money required (this is after obtaining the efficient engineering perk)
And when I remove a block I cannot place a new block in the spot where it used to be.
Otherwise, a really fun and clever game and I played for about 30 minutes!
Thanks for the in-depth review! We definitely agree with the in-game tutorial suggestion. I don't think we've encountered the price matching issue or unpurchasable turrets- we'll definitely look into it. Good catch on the removing block/placing issue.
Glad you enjoyed and played for so long. I think it depends a bit on what monster upgrades you get how well you can cheese the game with blocks and freeze traps as there are upgrades that make it powerful enough to break blocks in one swipe or give it near immunity to freeze, but it is true we tuned the game on the easier side and could improve our system that adapts the monster upgrade to what you're building. Great suggestions.
Nice game, cool concept but I could understand what was happening during the night
At night you lose control of the character and become the beast who you are trying to stop from escaping.