Clever game with clever puzzles. I did go for a few trophies as well as they were interesting. The most interesting aspect was managing the turrets' behaviours, in the sense of how they would approach the enemy movement. As straight as possible was my strat.
Graphics are excellent. Obviously the game looks somewhat simple, but it's consistent in its abstract look. And it's colourful too, which helped give it a personality.
Let's talk execution. I think you should have implemented a different colour for the start button, as it's the same as the enemy spawn point. Maybe Black BG and white text, to indicate it's a special key. I would have also tinted the text red, if you were not ready to go, and green if you were. This would move the path validity test from clicking the button itself to adding or removing any key.
Would have liked a special key for "undo" and "redo" (that's a lot to ask), and one for "reset board" (that's not a lot to ask).
My least favourite aspect of the experience was the music loop. Short, repetitive, and not particularly enjoyable from my perspective. The SFX were fine.
I don't see how the game hits the theme in any way.
Great entry, I enjoyed playing it.
Viewing post in Key Defence jam comments
Thank you for the feedback. Your suggestion for the colour of the start button text changing is a good one, I'll add that it the post-jam version. Regarding your request to be able to reset the keyboard, this can be done with the F2 key. The art is somewhat simple and the music isn't great, because my area of expertise lays in programming. Though, I am improving my art and music skills.
I agree that the theme isn't integrated well into the game. However, I didn't want to deliberately make the game confusing and unfriendly to the player, just to fit into the theme. Unfortunately this has been a populair choice among many of the games I've seen so far. I'm looking forward to playing your game and seeing how you implemented the theme.
Hey Mika,
You know when you said "I didn't want the theme to turn my game terrible"? Yeah, that's where you and I should have a beer together. A lot of that in this jam. And your game is enjoyable because you didn't decide to make clicking on letter A activate the Space key, because the game is a liar, trololol.
With that said, the rating system is there and I have to use it as it was designed. So it scores low on theme. My own game also has the theme expressed in an unintrusive way. The premise is our protagonist, Hank, wants to demonstrate the Earth is not a 3D spheroid by digging down. His reasoning is, "if I can't get to the other side, then it cannot be a sphere". What a shame that the game is endless, so he will never find an answer either way. So the game lies to him. Most people who evaluated the game can't know this, so they marked it as not matching the theme. No fault of theirs really, but the philosophy for me is: games are supposed to be fun and enjoyable. No theme is going to get in the way of that.
Also, all jams don't have a rating for Function / Polish / Execution. So, I could give somebody a 5 star in Game Design, but their game crashes 100% repro rate on level 2. There is no rating for "my game actually works". Your game would score 5 on this category, which doesn't exist... yet, it's all important.
Also, all hail programmer art! May it live forever.
Cheers.