Play game
Towers of Survival (PICO-8)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Authenticity (use of resolution) | #15 | 4.792 | 4.792 |
| Gameplay | #89 | 3.542 | 3.542 |
| Overall | #112 | 3.802 | 3.802 |
| Audio | #138 | 3.375 | 3.375 |
| Graphics | #147 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Did you work in a team?
I was working alone. Making this game was a lot of fun and learning for me :)
Was the resolution a challenge?
The main difficulty was to come up with tiny sprites for towers and enemies. But thanks to that I had to make the game simple (just 3 tower types for example), which in result allowed me to submit on time :)
What did you learn?
It was my first game in which I reached PICO-8's codebase characters limit. The game itself isn't big, but my usual approach to coding appeared very expensive in terms of chars used. I had to adapt myself a little bit, also decided to not implement some of nice-to-have features :)
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
This really does the job. Satisfying gameplay, good lowrez graphics and a hummable theme tune.
thanks for playing! 😀
So I nearly gave up on this game, but sticking with it made me glad I did. Really nice use of 64x64.
Only a shame it ended. Wonder if you couldn't have just kept increasing the strength of the enemies or something.
But hey. Still loved it. Really good job :)
Thank you for the feedback! 💛
Victory \o/ that was tough ^^ Glad I saw this on stream yesterday I might have missed it before rating ends, I love everything about it! Just wish it had more levels cos I'd play it all day haha. Great game :) pico++ <3
thanks for playing! 😀
This game feels like a complete package, although more levels would be nice :) I feel like there's room to juice some of the interactions which would really underline existing gameplay, but it doesn't feel unpolished at all. Great job!
Thanks for the feedback and yeah, more levels, more juicyness is something I left for after I get a complete releaseble version and if have more time (which I didn’t 😄 )
Thanks for playing!
I really really like the spritework here, they are super tiny, but look very 3 dimensional somehow, like a circuit board perhaps. The game was a bit too easy for me though.
thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback! 💛
gameplay was fun, i love tower defenses. The music was a bit repetitive, but i was having fun playing it
thanks for playing!
Congratulations on making this game ! I've played your game during a live that you can watch here :
The live is timestamped so you can go directly to your game.Thank you for being here during the live. I hope the feedback and live reactions will be useful. Keep it up !
And thanks again for playing it live! 💛
Your welcome !
Really fun.
A countdown at the start would have been nice, and it starts out way too difficult.
Plus a way to sell towers would have been appreciated.
Thanks for the feedback!
a countdown or a need to press a button to start, totally agree!
I see this opinion repeats, so 100%
hah, it was my deliberate design decision to not grow scope of the project to implement tower selling. I assumed it’s not a big issue if the game is short, so the cost of starting over and building in other places is low 😄 But I see, this is something people expect from the tower defense game and I understand it. I think ability to sell towers would be my first bigger feature to add if I have more time.
Thanks for playing!
Understandable.
Selling wasn't hugely important, but I hadn't realised the laser tower was vertical only and required line of sight, so it would have been nice being able to remove some towers to make space for it.
This was really fun! Reminds me of Defense Grid. Very hard at first, but eventually you find the right combos. This would be a fun one to expand on for sure. Missile Turrets!
thanks for playing! 😄
It was hard but once i started placing my torrets in a cross with a power up thing i was able to beat it.
Great! Thanks for playing 💛
Nice little tower defense you put up. Pico can bring it’s own challenges, just tell me :P Plays quite well and poses some nice challenge. Nice job!
Thanks! 😀
A good looking and good sounding game! It's very difficult before you understand everything, then it swaps over to too easy. What would have been nice is a title screen just so you're not flung into the game without a choice. And obviously more maps would be lovely but I understand you had limits in PICO and that I imagine was a whole new challenge you didn't expect! :P
Nice work!
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback! 💛
The only choice I imagine is whether you already want to start or not start yet. Is this what you mean?
I initially planned to do 4 maps, but then I started to get dangerously close to PICO-8 token limit. Moreover, I was at the point when I wanted to wrap this up, submit, and focus on other priorities outside the jam. In other words: I decided to narrow down the scope and call it a day while I had time and motivation, but I totally agree with you point 🙂
It was a lot of fun - it was interesting to find good strategies with the three tower types… Graphics and sounds are also great - Good job!
thanks! 🙂
Great game! The result of using low-res art in a tower defence worked better than I expected.
Took a few attempts to get the hang of the controls and a few more to get a hang of the mechanics, but I managed to win.
nice! Thanks for playing! 💛
I really like the simple visuals in this! It works really well for the game!
thank you!
A pretty great take on a classic genre. The first game I've gotten hooked on this jam, and the funnest pico-8 tower defense I've played.
The balance is really good, and had me thinking one strategy was clearly the best at the beginning, then realizing I was totally wrong.
thank you for those kind words! 🙂 And thanks for playing 💛
Great game. Graphics work well, gameplay is fun for a tower defense, good visual clarity.
One suggestion would be to increase the time before the first wave. There's not enough time to set things up and it took me several restarts to get going, especially if one wants to beat the first wave without losing any cores.
Also, not sure if it was just me, but I feel like the v-tower is not worth it because of the 'no other towers' rule. I think stacking the line with lasers is more efficient.
hey, thanks for playing and for the feedback! 💛
I agree with your observations, as in general I could spent more time on overall balancing: both in terms of waves’ length and breaks between them as in terms of towers’ DPS and cost.
When I was playing it again and again in order to beat all 10 waves, I also found it easier to just buy a lot of lasers. I was buying v-beams probably mostly because I wanted to hear their low pitch sound and, kind of, to prove myself that I need those 😅
Yeah, my strategy for a damageless run was to stack some lasers near the exit (to buy me extra time to get money for an extra laser). Then stack a ton of lasers, with boosters around them. I also put one v-beam just to see how it works, but I don't think it was worth it.
By the way, do boosters stack? Can you make a hyperlaser surrounded by boosters?
yes, they do stack 🙂 But it’s not indicated in GUI in any way.
Laser shoots for 0.1s and charges for 0.9s. Each surrounding Booster increases Laser’s shooting time by 0.1s and decreases charging by 0.1s. In other words, you may boost a Laser with 8 Boosters to achieve 0.9s shooting and 0.1s charging.
I will mention in game description that they stack