I think it makes a lot of sense to make a tower defense game about connecting to towers / to a base. I liked the different elemental effects - I thought that added some flair that a game like really benefits from. I was initially a little confused about the controls, even after reading the "How To Play", but the video tutorial helped a lot to get me started.
I think the controls were good, but they could be even more intuitive. It would be nice to be able to drag a tower from spot to spot (by holding down LMB, like a chess piece) rather than pressing LMB to remove the tower and selecting the tower again and then adding it to a new place. I would also like the game to save the tower I last clicked or last removed, and next time I click a spot, I would like the tower that I most recently selected or removed to be placed there. I think just these two changes would make the game a lot easier to pickup for new players.
I would have liked the towers to reprioritize to aim at the targets closest to the battery (if in range) rather than just the targets closest to the tower itself. Another approach is to keep the tower aiming / targeting the same, but introduce a slo mo mechanic where the game slows down whenever you are choosing your tower placement, which allows you to slow down and respond to incoming enemies and have just enough time to make a decision to switch the position of a tower without getting a disadvantage in battle. Of course I am biased, I made a slow mo game, and I love slo mo in games, but I genuinely think it could take this gameplay to the next level.
I wish there was more to do with the actual mechanic of connecting to towers. It doesn't have to be, but it would be cool for their to be some strategy around that, more than just which towers to activate and not to activate. I think it's still a very solid job for a game jam, but I could see it being expanded. Maybe you can connect two towers (can you? I missed that) and then the connection between the towers becomes a laser, so a long laser is good, but the longer the laser, the slower the tower each fire bullets? You are more the expert than me at tower defense, you will have better ideas.
I think you did a decent job with the art, sound and music. I think since this is an action game, you could really benefit from adding particle effects, hitstop, and camera shake. Unity has a great particle system, and if you are not familiar with it, there are plenty of tutorials online. You can also look for free or cheap assets that have particle effects for hitting things / enemies.
- A particle effect that plays each time you hit an enemy
- and another particle effect that plays each time an enemy dies
- both would go a long way to make the action feel more impactful, even if they are very simple effects.
Hit stop is when the game stops briefly whenever an action happens. You can code hitstop using a coroutine like this:
IEnumerator hitStopRoutine(float hitStopTimeScale, float duration)
{
Time.timeScale = hitStopTimeScale;
Time.fixedDeltaTime = (Time.timeScale / (1f * Screen.currentResolution.refreshRate));
yield return new WaitForSecondsRealtime(duration);
Time.timeScale = 1f;
Time.fixedDeltaTime = (Time.timeScale / (1f * Screen.currentResolution.refreshRate));
}
And you can call this coroutine like so:
StartCoroutine(hitStop(x, y));
- I would do a hitstop whenever the player bullet hits an enemy with x = 0f and y = 0.02f, to make it feel like you are really doing damage to the enemy.
- I would do the same when an enemy dies from a bullet, but with x = 0.1f and y = 0.3f.
- I would do a hitstop whenever the enemy hurts the player, with x = 0.2f and y 0.15f, to make it really feel like the player got hurt.
And you can do camera shake like so: https://imgur.com/a/rWEMD0U
- I would do a short, small camera shake each time you launch a bullet
- and/or each time the bullet hits an enemy
- Do a bigger camera shake each time an enemy dies from a bullet
- and a short camera shake each time the player gets hurt.
Sorry for the long message and please don't take my feedback and suggestions as harsh criticism, I genuinely enjoyed playing this game and I think things like this, from me or other players and commenters, could help take this game to the next level.