Post by Gedig in Poker Tower Defense comments

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Wow, what an excellent jam game! Very cool idea and nicely executed :)

You mention that you'll keep working on it after the jam, so I've got some suggestions that might help (though I fully understand that it's a jam game and you've probably got 1000 things that you wanted to put in the game)

Speedup would be great, especially early on.
- So would music/sfx volume control/muting, and
- range indicators on the towers.

For design itself, something I noticed is that because the towers retain the same power over the course of the game, the stakes can get really low if you get some good hands early on. I have some ideas that would help with that.
- Adding gold to the monster drops, and allowing the player to:
  - Wager money after seeing their initial hand, to power up the turret. Amount of gold could directly correlate to multipliers on that turret's power. So players could save up gold for one big tower or spread it out among all their towers.
  - Make all of the different towers more similar in power, but allow the player to wager coins to play a different card game (blackjack?) to upgrade them later.
  - Letting the player spend a certain amount to redraw cards in any of their hands.
- Adding the ability to "mulligan" their first hand, as I found it was often just worth restarting the game if I didn't get a good hand to start with.

Sorry for the unsolicited feedback, I had a lot of fun with the game and I'm excited to see where you take it :)

BelindaMakesGames5 years ago(+1)

Thank you very much for your great feedback =D

I will implement speedup, sound control and range indicators. I also want to add gold to the monster drops, but currently i'm not sure how the player should use the gold. But i really like your ideas for that! I think I will implement some of your ideas.

I am very glad that you liked the game so much =)

com2kid5 years ago(+2)

Ideas for gold:

1. 'Nudge' a card up or down by 1

2. A second discard/draw chance

3. Move a tower

BelindaMakesGames5 years ago(+1)

Hello com2kid =) Moving a tower for gold is a really good idea =) I think the other two ideas would have to be expensive, because it is much easier to get good towers.

BelindaMakesGames5 years ago

Hello com2kid!

Thanks again for your feedback =)

I have now released the next version and have included your idea of "nudge a card" and a second discard/draw chance. In the version here on itch.io you can do this both twice each game. In the mobile version you can get special items, which allow you to do this, by watching a rewarded ad.

I would love it, if you try the new version out and leave your feedback again =)

com2kid5 years ago(+1)

The ability to make those small changes is great! A bit buggy on desktop, the points never reset even between games.

The speed change button should use more than just color to differentiate speeds, right now the orange/red is hard to tell and I'm on a good quality desktop monitor. With night mode on a phone with low brightness, orange and red are going to look very similar. Doing what other games do, having the button change from 1 arrow -> 2 arrows -> 3 arrows to show the speed up would probably help.

I think you have a really solid core game play. The next obvious step is to differentiate the towers some, right now there is a straight forward progression and skill point unlocks just make everything obviously more powerful. What if instead you kept with the gambling theme and for example had unlocks that made a certain pair special. 2 aces -> snake eyes, long range but super slow to fire, or triple (lucky) 7s making surrounding towers occasionally fire an extra shot.

Not necessarily those ideas, just something that makes spending skills feel meaningful. Right now unlocks feel like "oh yeah, I'll do better because math" but there isn't anything to really explore in terms of strategy.

Loving the updates so far though, great job!

BelindaMakesGames5 years ago

Thank you very much, that you have taken the time to write such perfect feedback!

In the next Update on itch.io i will include, that you have 2 of each "Cheat Item", every time you start a new round.

The speed change button is a really good point, i will include this in the next update.

I'm thinking a lot about how i can implement a more interesting strategic part by making some towers more special. In some of the next updates there will be new possibilities like frost, poison or area damage. But I haven't decided how I'm going to implement it yet. I want to give the player more choices without weakening the poker part too much.

com2kid5 years ago (2 edits) (+1)

Also, the ad being random item or skill point is kind of... bs.

Successful ad strategies are what other games do often. Offer to increase skill point gain by watching an ad after the player has lost. At the beginning of a game start the player with 2 of each item. At the beginning of a game, let them watch an ad to start with 2 more of each item .

Do that and people will be encouraged to watch an ad at the start and end of every game.

Right now, with benefits from ads being RNG, the user needs to spam ads to get back to where they started on first install! and at some point the ad network is not going to allow back to back to back ads, and even if the ad network allows it, the player is not going to watch ads repeatedly when they don't know what they will get.

BelindaMakesGames5 years ago

Some people i have talked to, liked the possibility to get es much cheaty items as they want, during the random reward. So i will leave this in the game.

I tried in an earlier game your mentioned monetization strategy, by giving the possibility to get extra coins and/or live when watching an ad. This was not really successful, and most people haven't used it. Anyway, i think i will test your idea in a future version and look how it works in this game!

I plan to include other ways how you can get the cheaty items. For example as daily login reward, reward for completing quests or you can buy them with diamonds (I want to offer the diamonds as in-app-purchases, but you can also get them through playing).

I am very grateful for your advice regarding monetization. I find it incredibly hard to make it not pay-to-win, fun to play, and at the same time to be able to finance my life through my games at some point. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to monetise the games.

com2kid5 years ago

(In the past I've been on teams working on user motivation and behavioral changes, so I hope the below isn't 100% me talking out of my rear!)

The ad rewards have to be sufficient. I personally hate watching ads, unless the benefit is great enough.

The key is motivation, like for example in the rogue-like card games that are super popular right now, there is a clear path of exp or coins get you something that lets you do better next run, and the grind isn't *bad*, and at first the ads aren't even worth it.

For example, if in a game I need 1000 coins to unlock, and for beating level 1 I get 20 coins, and I am offered to watch an ad to double, I am going to decline. But if after beating level 10, and it may take me a couple days of game play to get that far, and I get 200 coins, and I get an offer to double that if I watch an add well now the ad becomes worth watching.

(I've even seen one game that doesn't even bother to show you an ad offer to respawn after death if you haven't gotten that far in the game relative to your previous best!)

But I am only going to watch those ads if the benefit I get is going to clearly help me see more game content next time.

The card games with unlockables are great at this. Get XP, unlock new cards. The first few levels of XP and card unlocks are easy, But at some point those ad boosts to XP become super valuable to keep up the pace.

FWIW I've only done work on behavioral changes for health and fitness, but the same general ideas apply. If the user is motivated to accomplish something, they will voluntarily take some action they normally wouldn't do (e.g. watch an ad) if it gets them closer to their goal!

And of course if the game is good enough, people will at some point pay to ditch the ads. I have a fair # of games I've paid the $5 to in order to unlock permanent 2x bonuses and ad removals, but it is typically only after a week or more of game play that I bother spending the $.

Void Tyrant, Night of the Full Moon, and Dungeon Tales are all great examples of what I've described above with offering ads for bonuses. Leap On is another game that, besides being remarkably good for a one button game, only has 1 ad offer, to respawn, and an IAP to remove the ad for respawning. Despite being such a simple game, it is addictive, and after ~3 weeks I spent the $2 on IAP.

> Some people i have talked to, liked the possibility to get es much cheaty items as they want,

The items are not cheaty, they are the opposite of cheaty! They are the only way a player to manipulate odds just a little bit in their favor. Making them limited each game means choosing to use them becomes a serious bit of strategy!

(Check out Void Tyrant, it uses an RNG heavy deck of cards draw mechanic. As the player levels up one of the primary things they gain is the ability to nudge that RNG in their favor just a TINY little bit. The game starts off super frustrating, but after gaining a few card value modifiers, it becomes quite nice.)

As an example of why the items are nice, it is likely that during a run an opportunity to use a single value change item to get a 4 of a kind will pop up, but getting to a straight flush requires just the right set of circumstances, and will probably require using more than 1 skill, though I am way too lazy to run the numbers on it. (might be a fun simulation to write though!)

So, if I am given 1 of each modifier, how do I want to use them? If I can watch an ad and get 2 of each modifier, well now all of a sudden getting a really good tower becomes *much* more likely. I can wait out that straight flush, or go for full house pretty early on. If the items are limited, that adds a lot of tension and decision making to the game!

Under the current scheme, if I want to beat my previous best, I need to watch some random # of ads to get modifiers at least equal to what I had last time and I am relying on RNG for the card draws.

That is fun at first, but the strategy is lessened, and all of a sudden starting a new game can mean watching ads for 5 minutes, which will quickly burn through the user's motivation to play, increasing churn.

(I mean right now the game doesn't have enough unlockables to keep up long term gameplay, but you'll be adding those soon enough :) )

BelindaMakesGames5 years ago(+1)

Hello Gedig!

One more time: thank you very much for your great feedback! This had motivated me a lot to move on with the development!

The new version is now released and from your feedback i implemented the following things:

Speedup
Musis/sfx control
Range indicators
Monster now give gold when killed, which you can use to upgrade the tower
Faster restart, when your first hand is not that good

I still have your idea of wager money and/or play an extra round in mind, but haven't decided yet, if and how i want to include this.

I would love it if you take again the time to write me some feedback, what you think about the current version!

Gedig5 years ago

Awesome, I can't wait to check out the changes!!

Gedig5 years ago

This is really excellent work :) The way you blended traditional tower defense elements like gathering gold to upgrade your towers, without taking away the core poker mechanic is fantastic.

Thanks for the work you put in, the game is a lot of fun!

BelindaMakesGames5 years ago

I'm very glad you like it and thank you very much for your support =)