General Demo feedback

[Mashee]

Really fun little take on tower defense.

General Fun

• Visual style was fun
  
• The between-wave selections were fun
  
• Currency/resource costs/expense and earnings systems were fun.
  
• The total breadth and content of what's available; even limited in the demo, is quite staggering for a Tower Defense.

Notes on playthrough

• The Reaper-Cannon upgrade on the Sturdy-Bunker doesn't show tracer fire and is visually mute. The player cannot determine if the placement is doing substantial damage to any significant targets or not. (Heuristically) This might be the case with other firring types as well.
  
• As above, I can see visual upgrades to each building, but they're incredibly SUBTLE. I really feel they're TOO subtle. If the visual-upgrade-arrow toggle didn't exist, I'd have a hard time keeping buildings up to par.
  
• Flyers Z-axis is too low IMO. They always look like surface mobs that are simply ignoring the pathing. Given the awesome 3d-engine with full rotation, I'd like to see some more altitude on the flyers.
  

• Most Importantly:

  Fully acknowledging the caveats of the demo and that it only lets you play Difficulty-1 with three heroes, it is radically too easy with an overwhelming number of unlocks. Two brief plays got me familiar with the game, then I completed each of the three available characters in three more games. Yes there are remaining achievement-unlocks... But overall there was no difficulty, just splash down anything and you're fine.
  
• I did not once re-roll a ground tile. Sure I could have. Sure it might have been more optimal to do so, but it was irrelevant. I was tactical in my placement of what was available...however see my note about difficulty.

Good fun. Looking forward to release.

[Bartosaure]

Thank you for the detailed feedback and the kind words!

- Reaper cannon shots: I opened a ticket to ask the artist if he can do somthing :p
- Visual upgrades sometimes too subtles: I confess, it's my fault. I asked for visual upgrades everywhere, and then... 42 differents towers, 6 upgrades each. It was a daunting amount of work for our small art team (2 people ^^). So, some upgrades are "simple".
- Flyers too low: I'll ask the artist what can be done.
- Difficulty: We've got datas, a large amount of players struggle to win a game. I suppose you have experience in gaming and tower defense games. ^^ Difficulty 1 / One path, is meant to be an introduction to the game.
- Reroll: Yes, it becomes more and more important as difficulty increases.

[JackThejil]

It... kinda' feels like maybe rerolls should have a (persistently) ramping cost, instead of just a flat 25?* First 0 or 5, second +5 from base, third +10, etc. That would encourage some usage, without making it trivial to spam them. Combine that with a tier 2 or 3 doctrine to either reduce or cap the cost, and you'd have something nice for builds both wanting to lean into them and builds that don't really care.

*E: Uh, assuming it is a flat 25, I've also just never used them yet over the course of... somewhere over a dozen demo wins at this point, ha. Recon's too hard to come by and scout towers too good to pass up on diff 1, heh.

[ShawnBW]

Don't suppose there'll be an endless mode in the full release, will there? I like the idea of the multiple characters affecting things in different ways, so there's a way to go through it with a sense of progression, but I'd also like to see a mode that doesn't have a wave cap, so I can sit back and see how far I can get. One of the things I liked about the old Flash TD games of the past, which this is the first I've seen that almost perfectly replicates the ones of those I liked the most, was the endless waves some of them had.

[Bartosaure]

@ShawnBW,
There is an endless mode. And there is even more than that in this regard. ^^

[ShawnBW]

Originally posted by Bartosaure:

@ShawnBW,
There is an endless mode. And there is even more than that in this regard. ^^

Awesome. Looking forward to seeing how the full release turns out, and I have it on my wishlist so I remember.