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Shadow Heart Defender's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #653 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Cleverness | #755 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Playability | #804 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Artistic Style | #1697 | 2.000 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Super awesome idea! The towers are really fitting of shadow theme. Alchemy a little less so, the idea is neat but would like to see more of it as an element of comboing towers together or some sort of combination to bring that aspect into the game a bit more. Love the light idea!
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
Shadow Heart Defender is a tower defense game where how the towers attack depends on how they cast shadows on walls. The player strategically creates towers (spending bronze or gold) and repositions the light source to defend wall-bound hearts against enemies.
Extra Notes
Thanks for checking this out :)
here's the gdd link again: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dohugkvp0mPHBVcJ36x0zw8UA02Jq7TNQuPFbyGnibI/edit?usp=sharing
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Comments
This is such a crazy creative take for the jam's theme!
The way it works gameplay wise is technically simple, but the cleverness of having the shadow projection of the towers be the ones to actually shoot the enemies is superb!
Having the orb not be able to coexist in the same place as a tower was also an interesting move, as it means you have to always take in consideration if that position you're giving to a tower won't possibly get you in a tricky situation later down in line.
Having part of the music's instruments only show up when an enemy's near a heart was an awesome touch!
I can definitely see some really fun ideas coming out of this one. It can go to so many directions!
The cleverness opened my mind to new possibilites. Awesome game!
Thanks so much for playing and your feedback! I’m really glad you liked the mechanics and design—it means a lot! Tons of room to explore with this concept, so I’m looking forward to that. Glad you appreciated the game and design so much! :)
This game is pretty clever. I actually thought it was going to be boring when it was described as a tower defense game, but the idea of having the shadows determine where towers actually shoot was really, really cool.
I’d like to see where you go with this further; it’s something I don’t think anyone has really ever thought of before.
Thank you! :)
Wow, that was so clever! I don't know if I've seen a game do something like this.
The tower defense mechanic was super fun. I loved the idea of placing once but by moving yourself, you can change the layout. Very cool idea, especially regarding the theme!
I thought the sounds were very nice, and the music while simple, was a very nice addition.
The graphics looked great too!
I will add that I had to play on a Windows computer as I couldn't see the actual shadows/hearts on the walls with Mac. I was so confused at first but then I realized it might be a Mac related issue.
Thank you so much for making this, it was super fun!! Great job!
Thank you so much! Very glad to hear you liked it! Also good to know about the issue on Mac. I'll try to look into it for after the jam (or at least upload downloadable builds that hopefully don't have the same issue).
That sounds great! Thank you again!!
Such a creative game for a tower defense game! This seems like the most basic thing you could do with this concept, so it seems like it's such a nice base to keep improving upon. The controls felt a bit clunky (idk if you can move the towers, I wasn't able too), but you really should. There should also be a way to see everything at the same time, like a minimap, or give warning icons to where ghosts spawn.
But polish aside, unique and creative and thinking outside the box, that's the best way to describe this!
Nice one :)
Oh and please don't add a volume slider if the music is so quiet, I couldn't even hear it xd
Thank you! Yeah, there's a ton of room to expand on this! Agreed with the controls, and there's probably some clunkiness from lag too which I want to fix post-jam, but yeah you can't move the towers so no worries there (they're permanent for now, might have something in the future for moving/removing them). And yeah, agreed on more warning/seeing everything at once--I need to test some different ideas for this and figure out what works well, something interesting to work on for sure :)
Sorry the music is quiet haha! It was something I didn't spend too much time on so I erred way too much on making it quiet :p
Thanks again for playing!
Looked quite unique and fun, but sadly doesn't run well for me at all, (like 1 FPS) running linux mint, same result in both chromium and firefox. Best of luck to you!
Thanks for trying it anyway! Useful to know. Going to try to get some performance improvements out after the jam (hopefully enough to at least it make it playable for the really bad cases lol)
I wouldn't worry too much about it if you plan on continuing this game mostly has a download option. I find browser versions can sometime be fiddly, maybe just also add a downloadable version :)
Thanks again! I also found out that having hardware acceleration/graphics acceleration off in your browser can make the game completely unplayable :(
Just mentioning in case you did want to check it out (or I'll update the game files with downloadable stuff after jam anyway, so if you're still interested you can check out then too :))
Neat concept for a tower defense game! I felt the music and sounds were perhaps too quiet, and I was expecting to be assaulted from multiple sides perhaps a bit sooner than Round 7 rather than being swarmed so early. That said, neat game, neat concept! Good job!
Thank you! The music was super last minute so I erred on the side of making it more quiet in case it was annoying/didn’t fit well haha! And yeah I agree, the way rounds progress could use a bit of tweaking. Thanks again!
After realizing I couldn't place my light on the same tile as the tower, I started taking off. This was a really neat game that unfortunately gets hit hard by the limitations of a web game. For me, the camera was super slow and jittery when looking around.
Other than that, this game is a super neat tower defense game.
Thank you! Yeah, the performance seems inconsistent across different setups. Still not sure what factors make it inconsistent, but there are definitely a handful of things (like the camera movement) that I know have issues that I should fix. Hopefully I'll get it working better overall post-jam! :)
What a cool idea! I liked that you have to keep in mind to leave space for relocating your light while placing your towers.
Would be cool if you can make the enemies and projectiles have all the same shade like the tower's shadows, making it look like you are fighting invisible creatures by observing their shadows.
Thank you! Yeah, I was originally thinking of letting people remove towers, but when I was testing some stuff early on it seemed more interesting to make them permanent so you'd have to think about leaving space for the light too. And yeah--plenty of room to explore for visuals with this game, and even gameplay-wise having more mechanics based on casting shadows could be super interesting!
Ok, this is really cool! Very creative idea for a tower defense game.
For the camera, I found WASD more intuitive than dragging with mouse. But I think it might have been better overall if the camera was top down, and the walls and towers made taller for visibility. Or maybe just a really wide angle camera.
Another feature I kinda wished I had is the ability to destroy towers. Because once they take place, you can’t place your light there anymore, and its possible to fail just because of tower placement.
I would love to play a fuller version if you ever decide on building on this idea.
Thanks for checking it out! Very much agree (honestly I'm tempted to edit my game's description and just exclude mentioning the middle mouse camera controls outside the game lol). I didn't even think about the camera fov but that's such a good point--worth messing with for sure! Yeah definitely intended on destroying towers but didn't get around to it. Thanks again!
This is tricky. It's very hard to keep your eyes on all four walls at once.
The idea is cool but the performance is also very laggy, I'm presuming due to being a 3D web build. It makes placing and moving the light and towers far more difficult than it should be.
The concept is good and I'd like to get further if performance was better.
(duplicating message I sent on discord):
Thanks for testing and the feedback! Yeah I think it's pretty inconsistent for people. What browser were you using? Or any other info on your system? I want to know if that affects it, if you don't mind sharing. Thanks again!
I was using Chrome on a desktop. My PC is fairly powerful without being nuts.
Thanks for responding and thanks again for checking the game out! I did find out that while there definitely is a decent amount of lag, you can end up getting unplayable lag if you have hardware acceleration/graphics acceleration turned off. Thought you might want to know if you wanted to check it out more. Thanks again :)
My Heart once spilt, into multiple places when my GF, broke up with me.
Now it split again, but this time its fun!