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TCTD - A Puzzle disguised as a Tower-Defense game ( Web / HTML5 )

A topic by Sven Hollesen created Apr 13, 2020 Views: 452 Replies: 4
Viewing posts 1 to 3
(2 edits)


Hello potential feedback-person,

First of all, thank you for considering to play-test my game.

If you are a game developer yourself, please feel free to drop a link to your game in your feedback, so I can review it in return. That seems only fair.

Having said that, the title should really say all you need to know about my game. Here's the link :

https://shollesen.itch.io/tctd?secret=u2aohBOcPAreoKPjlXOOZaSWM

Best regards,

Sven Hollesen

I got stuck on the second level of the tutorial. Here's some thoughts:

During the first level, some of the Tutorial dialog pages were blank.

I wasn't really sure how the Block towers changed the nearby arrows. Sometimes they would add arrows to adjacent blocks and sometimes they would remove it. Never figured out a rhyme or reason to it.

In stage 2, wave 1, I placed a block tower in the top right corner and then a tower to the left (top middle block). This created a path from the start to the goal tile, and the instructions said that the monster needed to go through 3 tiles (including S / G). The monster went through 3 tiles (S, in between S and G, and G) but I was informed that it didn't count because the monster still had HP left. I think that the S tile isn't getting counted in those '3 tiles' - the UI should be updated to reflect that.

I think that casting this as a Tower Defence game is confusing the terminology a little bit. Are we trying to get the monsters to the goal? (If so, then why does it matter if they have HP left?) Finding a different theme or just different words would clear things up. For example, I think you could replace HP with "Steps" (as in "this monster can take three steps before it dies") and things would be much clearer.

It's an interesting idea for a puzzle game. Keep on game dev'ing!

Hello Joshua

Thank you for your detailed feedback!

The blank tutorial pages are a pretty major issue I thought I had fixed. This bug only appears randomly, and no browser errors or warnings get logged. It's really frustrating. I think I found a solution though. By manually checking the content of the tutorial SVGs, the browser seems to realize when it messed up, and silently loads the content again. But let's not ramble about technicalities :D It hopefully works now.

The tutorial is the part of the game that took by far the most work to do. But I'm not very good with non technical explanations, so it apparently needs more work.  I had hoped the animations would be enough, but maybe I need to hire a professional writer...

The 'Block' tower blocks tiles it points at. Meaning if you put it on a tile with an up-arrow, it will block the neighboring tile above it. Since monsters can only move along arrows, 'blocking' here refers to 'removing all arrows', i.e. making the tile impassable.

All other neighboring tiles will get 'unblocked', i.e. made fully passable, i.e. receive arrows in all directions.

As for the HP thing : HP is a mechanic that would get introduced in the 4th tutorial level. It is hidden at the start to make it easier for people without the tutorial to figure out the mechanics. Any solution to the first 3 levels should always result in acceptable amounts of damage for a perfect score.

The problem is, the failure message should preferentially display the 'You didn't take enough steps' message over the 'You didn't deal enough damage' one. I fixed that! 

Your solution (top right + top center) is perfect for the first wave. Could it be, that you cleared the first wave, but didn't notice it, and landed in the second one? That one needs 7 steps, and the former fail-message would have (confusingly) been what you described. I have added a 'You cleared Wave X' message to make success more apparent.

Again, thank you very much for your feedback!

Best regards,

Sven

Hi Sven,

I played through again. This time I got up through Level 5 (Let there be light). More thoughts:

The tutorial did explain how the block towers work (more on that later). I was able to figure out the first several levels. I think part of the confusion comes from just how many different things the arrows can mean. For instance, a Block tower cannot be placed on a tile with more than two arrows. A better way to show this in the UI  would be to make illegal tiles red and legal tiles green when the player selects a Block tile. Likewise, there are blue arrows even on the longer paths, with different shades showing the first path and the alternative paths the monsters could take. It might be easier for the player if the current "best" path was emphasized more - maybe a blue line going through all the tiles? - and 'possible path' was shown some other way.

I understand the Block towers better now, but I think they are a bit confusing at first. The problem is that they do two very different things: they remove arrows from an adjacent tile if the tower is placed on a tile pointing towards the adjacent tile, and if the tile is not pointing to an adjacent tile, they add arrows instead. The overloading of functionality makes them difficult to understand. I'd recommend splitting this tower up into two different separate towers - one that blocks on tiles that it's pointing to, and one that adds in arrows on tiles that it's pointing to. (This would require rejiggering the early puzzles at the very least, but it would keep the concept cleaner.)

The tutorial slides seem fixed, but I did find more blank slides after hitting the 'prev' button and then 'next' button on level 4, slides 1 and 2.

On level 1 (I think?) placing your first tower shows the entire tower and not just the 'roof' of it. Minor graphical glitch.

It's a little unintuitive that monsters keep going when they reach O hp. I see what you're going for with the 'overkill', though. I'd recommend adding some feedback when the overkill happens in game - maybe some tiny popup that reads "Overkill!" or something to let the player know instantly why their solution isn't optimal.

On Level 5, my first solution was placing the four towers symmetrically, first one tile away from the middle edge and then one more tile away from that. I pressed play and the first monster made it to the goal with too much HP, so I failed the wave. I hit the reset button near the play button and half the level disappeared. 

I was unable to continue at this point. I tried to go back to the main menu and use the Level Selection buttons to return to this level, but clicking on those buttons only triggered the level title to appear at the top of the screen. The Continue button also led me back to the same broken level.

The message board wouldn't let me attach an image, so here's a link: https://imgur.com/D5u42Nl