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Joshua Galecki4 years ago

I got stuck on the second level of the tutorial. Here's some thoughts:

During the first level, some of the Tutorial dialog pages were blank.

I wasn't really sure how the Block towers changed the nearby arrows. Sometimes they would add arrows to adjacent blocks and sometimes they would remove it. Never figured out a rhyme or reason to it.

In stage 2, wave 1, I placed a block tower in the top right corner and then a tower to the left (top middle block). This created a path from the start to the goal tile, and the instructions said that the monster needed to go through 3 tiles (including S / G). The monster went through 3 tiles (S, in between S and G, and G) but I was informed that it didn't count because the monster still had HP left. I think that the S tile isn't getting counted in those '3 tiles' - the UI should be updated to reflect that.

I think that casting this as a Tower Defence game is confusing the terminology a little bit. Are we trying to get the monsters to the goal? (If so, then why does it matter if they have HP left?) Finding a different theme or just different words would clear things up. For example, I think you could replace HP with "Steps" (as in "this monster can take three steps before it dies") and things would be much clearer.

It's an interesting idea for a puzzle game. Keep on game dev'ing!

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Sven Hollesen4 years ago

Hello Joshua

Thank you for your detailed feedback!

The blank tutorial pages are a pretty major issue I thought I had fixed. This bug only appears randomly, and no browser errors or warnings get logged. It's really frustrating. I think I found a solution though. By manually checking the content of the tutorial SVGs, the browser seems to realize when it messed up, and silently loads the content again. But let's not ramble about technicalities :D It hopefully works now.

The tutorial is the part of the game that took by far the most work to do. But I'm not very good with non technical explanations, so it apparently needs more work.  I had hoped the animations would be enough, but maybe I need to hire a professional writer...

The 'Block' tower blocks tiles it points at. Meaning if you put it on a tile with an up-arrow, it will block the neighboring tile above it. Since monsters can only move along arrows, 'blocking' here refers to 'removing all arrows', i.e. making the tile impassable.

All other neighboring tiles will get 'unblocked', i.e. made fully passable, i.e. receive arrows in all directions.

As for the HP thing : HP is a mechanic that would get introduced in the 4th tutorial level. It is hidden at the start to make it easier for people without the tutorial to figure out the mechanics. Any solution to the first 3 levels should always result in acceptable amounts of damage for a perfect score.

The problem is, the failure message should preferentially display the 'You didn't take enough steps' message over the 'You didn't deal enough damage' one. I fixed that! 

Your solution (top right + top center) is perfect for the first wave. Could it be, that you cleared the first wave, but didn't notice it, and landed in the second one? That one needs 7 steps, and the former fail-message would have (confusingly) been what you described. I have added a 'You cleared Wave X' message to make success more apparent.

Again, thank you very much for your feedback!

Best regards,

Sven

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