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Haha yeah... we didn't quite get around to theming the towers exactly. Very vague head canon at best, feel free to interpret them as whichever form of virus destroying cell you please. White Blood Cell, Killer T Cell, Macrophage... you name it.

Definitely agreed, if we'd had more time I think having a placement preview would've been top of the list of things to add next .

Love the questions!

1. Because changing the sides independently created problems that, to solve, fell out of scope for the Jam. It creates problems where you have to define where the "center" of a tower is, meaning that you could effectively move the towers by scaling different sides at different times.  This is bad because:...

2. Being able to sell or move towers completely trivialises the scaling mechanic. I do think that if we had more time we would've made "how you're meant to place towers" more obvious/accessible to the player, like letting them preview how the tower scales before confirming placement. We experimented with selling towers but it turned the game more into just "Another Tower Defense" rather than leaning into the scaling theme of the Jam. Part of the interest/appeal of the mechanic for us was the puzzle-piece element of trying to fit your towers into awkward shapes.

3. They aren't technically useless but the game as a whole did not have much time for balance or conveying this mechanic as well as we would've liked. The size of enemies directly correlates to their health value, and the Bigcraft you earn (the scaling resource for towers) is directly related to the enemy health at time of death. This would force the player to try and use the big pools to earn more resources against easier waves so that they could successfully scale their towers to do enough damage in the late waves. On the flip side, if the player DIDN'T scale their strength enough, the small pools would work like a panic button where they could weaken enemies (at the cost of earning less scaling resource) if they were being overwhelmed by a wave.

 We only had the finished playable product in the last few hours and tried to make sure the game wasn't too hard. Luckily the pools were incredibly simple features to include and so it's not like we lost time including them over balance.  We just ran out of time.

thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, tried a couple of times, no luck. Although I only tried the in-browser version, so maybe the downloadable version might work better

Yeah I wasn't touching multiple boxes, I was the square, but the right box just would NOT move.

Played on web. I couldn't get switching to work. Tried mashing the e key and every other key on keyboard but I was only ever controlling  snowflake.

Downloaded because I loved the artstyle too much to miss out and had a great time <3 I would die for snowball.

When in doubt, lean in to the chaos! Really solid effort and submitting anything is better than not. I had a fun time regardless.

Suuuuuuper zen. I could see myself zoning out to this for hours. Loved it.

Yo this is sick!!!! got up to level 24 before getting stuck but the premise is so simple and effective, extremely well done!

Was really excited by the concept but I got stuck on level 2, couldn't move the right box at all.

Great concept and I can see it getting really fun once you've learned the different types of traps and upgrades! Also love the art style too.

This is fantastic! Loved the idea and everything about it. My date didn't go well because I was too excited to pick weird options and see how the game handled it (which it did brilliantly!)

Some confusion over how emphasising words would work but the results were funny so I all the better.

Sorry mate, wasn't able to try it. Kept getting this error after multiple downloads.

"The code execution cannot proceed because UnityPlayer.dll was not found. Reinstalling hte program may fix this problem.

Katamari but with wistful epic vibes? Very strong. Camera is definitely a bit finnicky but hey, when the vibes are that strong what else do you need?

Totally fair, it's not immediately apparent and a single line on the help screen probably isn't a clear enough instruction on how to do it.

Glad you enjoyed!

ten billion percent. Once everything was finalised we only had a couple of hours for playtesting and balance and erred on the side of making things too easy rather than too difficult, which unfortunately trivialized some of the more interesting mechanics. But also number go up!!!

Yeah, the goal is to scale the towers a bunch! It's probably way too easy to do so. If we had more time to balance and tweak we definitely would've leant more into the economy side of things, making it more difficult to earn the scaling resource and forcing players to use the big/small pools.

But thanks for playing!

This was a great little time.  Was absolutely destroying my opponent and then their income suddenly went to like... quadruple mine? not sure what they purchased but I was so far ahead in donations to dad that I won anyway.

Eyyyy got the good ending first try. Reminded me of those old point and click adventure games you'd find on cartoon network. 

Really fun! obviously super basic gameplay wise but the commitment to the theme was on point. My only criticism is why you put the kitchen guy such a long windy walk around from the starting location. 

That's very strange, hasn't happened on our computers. Maybe just "run anyway"? I assure you it is a tower defense game and not a virus.

Felt like success was hugely luck based, I also think I was getting some really weird interactions between blocks that didn't seem like they would affect each other but then they did.

Liked the idea though.

I think movement was really bugged for me? Character would only move while jumping so I had to really slowly hop all the way around the level. But I still got to the second button puzzle before I couldn't actually play anymore. Cool idea!

I couldn't figure out how to scale the orb? But regardless I had a really good time. I started stutterstepping to try and take advantage of the radius only moving when you stop and it made for this interesting interplay between safety and danger. Really wish I could figure out the scaling mechanic and interact with the game more.

Really solid mechanics and a clear visual style. Wish there was a little more info/feedback on your shots so you could get a better idea of how strong you were shooting.

Great music for sure. really hard to control the little dude and I was getting quite a few weird camera bugs and wasn't quite sure how my size was affecting things.

There were a bunch of settings on my screen that were seemingly changing/cycling at random? Did not understand what was happening but I shot a bunch of sausages.

How I wish for a  speed up button... It felt like I was hamstrung by the health/stamina the entire time, while Mood was constantly at max so the gameplay was me just waiting for Gus to drop the floop so I could click it.

Still, really cute and a chill time.

Took me a few tries to get off the ground but once I did it just snowballed from there. Fun game! I was able to successfully tank the framerate by spawning so many enemies/bullets which is always a good sign when "scale" is the theme.

Very unique idea,  love how it plays with the theme and scale on such a massive... scale! Didn't exactly *enjoy* myself but I was intrigued the whole time. Almost beat the two star level but then the camera starting bugging out and I couldn't see what I was doing.

Had a lot of issues with the controls. Constantly fighting the camera. Tried kbm and controller but both were awkward in their own way.

Really great idea and execution of the core idea, I just with that I could interface with it better.

hahaha yeah... I am no artist but I cobbled together what I could. "Existent" was the art/sfx brief.

We actually discussed the idea of moving turrets back and forth a lot, but ultimately decided it trivialised the scaling mechanic which we wanted to be the focus. 

I agree that it feels bad to be limited by placing towers too close to the path (which is what you do in normal tower defense)

Re tower count, you just get an extra slot every couple of waves.

They make pools that change the scale of enemies, affecting their health and speed.  You can even shrink enemies down to nothing! (they also do really cool things to the music) 

You earn the resource to scale towers (called Bigcraft)  based on the enemy health, so bigger enemies reward you more Bigcraft, so you're incentivised to make the enemies more difficult so you can scale your offense faster, but not so unmanageable that you overwhelm yourself.