I want to love this game, I really do, because I find the concept of a "Tower defense but you need to program your towers" to be really interesting.

In execution though, I can't help but to find it lacking. The control scheme with WASD felt clunky and unintuitive, and I feel like the game would have been better served by just letting the player mouse-click on the plots and turrets.

For the turrets themselves, anything that isn't "Shoot" felt like a waste of a cycle, especially with the basic turret. The Auto-turrets should have been better in principle, but given it takes them a cycle to aim at their intended target, by the time they actually get to shoot, the target has already moved on. That said, once I got to play with the more advanced turrets  I feel like the game became more fun.

With that criticism out of the way, I still enjoyed the game enough to see it through, and I'd love to see this concept polished up and expanded upon. I've love to see more turrets that give you meaningful secondary things to do, like the Tesla tower charging up. As I said, I find it to be a very compelling take on the "loop" idea (especially when you're throwing it to a crowd of game creators after a game jam ;) )

As promised, ill had a look at your game.

When I opened the game these things came to my mind. I would have liked if the game did start with a very very low volume instead of the full blown volume music. Chiptune music is quite hard on your ears at that volume, so I would have liked to change that. The volume slider could have also been in the main menu instead to directly tweak it, it could be in all menus if you still want it in the level select. It was weird that the music didnt loop, so while writing this, I could not know what the correct volume for me is. The choice for soundeffects is good, they fit the rest of the game and aesthetic of the game. The sprites also work out pretty well.

For the tutorial, sequencing the individual steps would work better. I was overwhelmed with the amount of information that I was presented with. Also the white text blends in with the Health text underneath it.

The first time I played it was not clear where the game starts so I placed the towers at the wrong spot (the end instead of the beginning). The programming aspects of towers also was not explained at all to me so the first time I had just towers shooting at nothing.

Quite frankly, I had not fun playing the game. It was very tedious arranging turrets, it felt more confusing and frustrating than it felt fun. I am also a programmer, so I have background knowledge. Anyone without basic coding knowledges will not understand the looping mechanic. I could not even beat the first level after 3 attempts, I gave up and ragequitted initially.

I feel like the gameplay loop needs refinement. If you want to stick to the programming loop, it needs to be much clearer what the individual actions do. I also think a more generalized programming for your round could be more interesting. For me the game felt like an unnecessarily complicated tower defense game, where the twist or spin didnt feel rewarding at all. It did not feel like I got something from being smart with my programming or tower placement. I had no agency. Tower positions were predefined by you, so I couldnt try out more creative solutions. When retrying this became very apparent as there was most certainly a dominant strategy, I couldnt find it yet tho. The tesla coil felt incredibly overpowered. I soloed stage 2 and stage 3 with it as you had enough HP to just ignore the fire spirits. Generally I could mostly ignore special enemies as the HP pool is so high. The auto turret felt very buggy, the aiming made no sense and it often perma missed unfortunately.

I feel like the player should be able to place turrets anywhere to give them more agency, to make it more interesting. Yes I am aware this is a gamejam game and its a very decent entry considering time, but that is what I think youre missing. Give the player more control over the game. Give them the possibility to influence the outcome more. I want to place turrets in dumb spots because i want to code this really stupid loop for my turrets. I appreciate handholding initially but afterwards I want to just do my mistakes.

Hope this feedback can help you.

Edit: I hope you can understand that the way I wrote is mostly because I am German. I still think its great that you pulled off such a game is such a short timespan. Its just the way we Germans are with feedback haha. Gl on your gamedev journey.

I really like the idea of programming your turrets, but in practice all of the single shot turrets were un-practical. Moving, then shooting made it miss every time. The tesla, poison, and flame turrets were great though. Enjoyed playing a lot though!

Amazing! I love tower defence games and the concept for this one was implemented great, very polished with great visual effects.

love love love the old tv effect when u get hit. made it feel real but not like scary or anything too dire. very fun time

I am so bad at tower defence games, and its even more apparent here lol but thats on me! 

I like the visuals, gameplay is smooth and the music is nice. well done :)

Good old tower defense with extra steps (in a good way) very nice!

I got a chuckle when I realized I had to program the towers rather than just drop them and forget about them like in most tower defense games. The art and music is charming, it makes the game feel less stressful.

A fun idea to implement the theme as a sequence of action for towers. The variety of enemies and towers makes levels interesting. It would be cool if you could do more with the money you get or if towers had more different looping options.

Such a creative concept! I was thinking about something involving while loops at the beginning of the jam, and this concept is improved to such a great mechanic by your game!

First up: I really loved the visuals and the feedback overall. The game feels extremely well polished and the effects & post processing is just amazing. I really loved the camera effects.

I really liked the while loop concept and it played out really nicely. However, on some towers, the while loop feels a bit unimportant. I think the tesla shock tower is a good example for future towers rules because the balance of the power ups and the shots matters a bit more---that means I have more control by using the loop.

Great job!

I like this interpretation of the theme. Using programming loops to program your turrets feels really unique. That being said, I wish it had been explained a little better; it took me some time to figure everything out, and even then, I was struggling a bit. I think a better tutorial would go a long way. I really like the cute little art and the SFX.

Keep it up!
7/10 ^^

This game is eeeextremely polished. Great job! Loved the game, although it was a little confusing at first!

I love the UI design in this, very satisfying!

Fun game!  It took me a while to figure out the mechanics but once I had them it played great.  I would love more levels though, I was just getting into the swing when it ended.

Turn-based tower defense... brilliant!

Nc