Having played more, I can say I like your tower system. The guys are pretty useless unless there's a lot of them, which is probably the point. They're just meant to cover up your openings.
They're a good addition because they make other kinds of builds viable. I think I like this a bit more than your other game. It's an incredibly fun game.
Do you have any thoughts on how the towers could be integrated into the gameplay better? I'd like to eventually add the wizard and knight towers as well, so you could stack the lines with melee in front of ranged. At that point though, I worry that the game would just become confusing because it's straight tower defense in the middle with vampire survivors on the outside (although maybe that's ok).
To give you more time to build up a defense, I could actually have the waves pause completely for a minute before the big rush starts. That would also address you other issue with spawns at the obelisk you just activated.
Well, you could spawn more bosses who would heavily encourage the use of these towers. The AI could make them always prioritize a tower first over chasing you.
There could be optional treasure caches where you rob the evil wizard's coffers to get more tower guys. They spawn on the map, and it's a handful of strong guys defending them. They drop coins.
It gives the player the choice of hunting down the obelisks or building up their defenses. It seems the longer the game goes on, the bigger the waves become? So there's a reason to try to finish things quickly.
The towers could patrol an area or be set to follow the player, or chase down and engage enemies within their range.
IE, you drop a knight, and he'll step into the melee to scrap with some imps. Perhaps his special ability enables him to body block people, so up to 5 imps are stuck on him and can't progress.
Then you're looking at an army simulator where you can respawn your guys when they die.
That's a genius idea, by the way. I love the fact that the coins are refunded when your guys die. It makes the tower system not frustrating at all, and you're free to create strategies. To plan. To make mistakes.
And in the future, you could make a boss who swallows towers when he or she defeats them, so that the coin disappears until the boss is killed. It would keep the player from just repeatedly using them over and over again.
There's also the idea of adding in synergies.
Like if firing an arrow at a knight meant you could bounce it off his shield, and then it'll ricochet into a different direction. Firing an arrow at a wizard's fireball will create a flaming, exploding arrow.
The player gets some tangible bonuses for using the towers and is encouraged to create and use them.
And then you could have another option that lets you sacrifice coins for EXP. So if someone wants to, they could get more personal power and forego towers. It creates an alternate route and play style.
Likewise, if you had a monster tamer character or mechanic. If you could drop coins and non-boss enemies walk over them, then maybe they become your towers.
The monsters could have their own advantages that put them above usual towers, but maybe the coins don't come back when the monster dies. Possibly it doesn't need a drawback at all? Potentially, it's better as a character class option, and that class has no access to normal towers.
You could also have upgrading towers as an option. The tower gains EXP just like you do, and they'll walk over and collect points. Then they grow stronger.
If you made a cleric or paladin main character, they could have more interactions with the towers via buffing and healing them. Some of their upgrades could focus on improving allies and making them harder to kill and thus ensuring they can survive long enough to upgrade.
You're welcome. You've got a concept nobody's ever done before. This is a brilliant take on the genre. It's very exciting.
As you know, Vampire Survivors has different ways of implementing stuff like attracting coins and exp that's on the ground. In that game, you just walk over the orb power up, and it sucks everything up. Or you buy the item that makes you attract stuff.
Since you seem to be using an alternate upgrade scheme, you could attach these abilities to towers.
Like having a very fast thief who goes and collects stuff for you. They'll run over EXP and keep a portion to upgrade themselves, and the rest goes to you. Coins too.
Your tower system could let you achieve many of the common effects for this genre in ways that haven't been done before. In ways that fit the identity of your game and the universe it takes place in.
Also, the mere fact that you actually have teammates in a genre where it's one against endless waves of enemies is astonishing.
