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A jam submission

TowerBits8 (Free Demo)View game page

8 bits, Tower defence + plataform mechanics + boss battles
Submitted by zatomeisis (@zatomeisis) — 8 hours, 13 seconds before the deadline
Rated by 7 people so far
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TowerBits8 (Free Demo)'s itch.io page

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Ai Usage

Human made

Genre

Action

Shooter | Platformer | Slasher | Beat em Up | Base Defense | Survival | Racing

Rating

Family Friendly

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

This is an interesting combination of platformer and tower defense. The movement was fairly easy to control. The controls felt a bit odd. I generally prefer WASD movement, so ended up starting the first wave by accident when trying to move. The controls are on the web page, but instinct took over. I was able to use them, but they make me wish for input remapping.

When I first started playing, I did not realize the level went up beyond the screen. I just expected the enemies fell from the top, so the long delay after the wave started was odd. Once I was able to purchase a tower and learned to pick them up to move them, I jumped up to put one on the upper platform, and then learned it went up. I tried various placements, though found the towers had bad aim, generally shooting at falling enemies where they were and missing them. You had to place them so the are under where the enemies fall, or where they have to walk into them and not fall into their range, but also be able to be hit before falling off the next edge. The towers and/or level design could use some work to allow more useful placement positions of the shooting towers.

Having the spot to purchase towers does allow for popping up the message of which key to press to do so, but it is annoying having to go all the way back down to buy a new tower, when placing multiple up higher. It would be much nicer if pressing S or Z was a toggle for the shop, and the tower was placed next to you, or even started with you carrying it.

It wasn't always clear which projectiles were yours vs the enemies. A different color for the different projectiles would be helpful.

I played the boss fight once. I got hit a few times learning its pattern, but then was able to beat it on the first try. As a first boss it works well. It has a learnable pattern, with clear indication before its move, and is fairly easy.

This seems like it could grow into a fun game. There are some good mechanics. As a proof of concept demo, it works.

Submitted(+1)

Hey I gave the game a play.  There's definitely something here, but the package is a bit rough.  You don't really have any onboarding for the player to tell them how to play the game (you've got to look at the itch page for the controls).  And it's not super apparent how the tower buying works at the start.  But once I figured that out, the gameplay was pretty fun.  I definitely would like to play more levels, and experiment with more towers.  Here's a few more notes I have:

--No feedback when the player takes damage.

--Sometimes the buttons don't seem to respond to the mouse clicks.  This happened in a few different places, like after dying in the boss fight.  Would have to just restart the game.

--Would need to do some balancing as you get your levels and enemy waves set, because as of now it seems a bit too easy.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

I think I forgot to connect something in this version of the game, that's why the buttons don't work. Thanks for telling me!

Submitted(+1)

Hi  zatomeisis,  this was a fun little tower defense demo!

I have to admit I did get a little confused at why the wave was taking so long to find its way down after I started it, until wave 3 when I jumped up and saw the scope of the level. Unfortunately though (and this might be remedied later on in the game) it felt to me the optimal solution was just to put everything on the bottom of the map next to the tower and just sit there and assist with shooting myself.

I don't mind the game being played totally on the keyboard, but having to switch over to mouse controls to purchase a tower felt a little jarring and I thought something had broken at first.

The boss felt a little disconnected from the other level, it felt fine per say but it really felt like I had stepped into a different game, maybe adding some options for the player to throw some towers down would help?

This sounded way more negative than I intended and I definitely did have fun with the game. And just finally wishing you the best for the rest of development!

Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot for the feedback! I'm okay with this kind of feedback—I know I have to answer a lot of questions about how the game works, especially with the bosses and their relationship with the tower defense levels. That's why I need as much feedback as possible, and I appreciate all I receive!

Submitted(+1)

A unique take on the tower defense genre! This genre is not really my cup of tea so I mainly tried out only stage 1, but did notice a couple of things which I hope could be helpful

  • No visual feedback when the tower got hit.
  • when I entered the shop, I could only pick my purchase using mouse, which is non-intuitive given the keyboard as main form of inputs
  • After i bought 2 towers they stacked. The 'S' button prompt to move them appeared at the same time, which felt weird
  • Took me half way through my first run to realize I can climb higher the tower. I ventured up mainly because it felt weird to have enemies dropping from above and not from the sides
  • Not sure if there is any incentive to move up, instead of just stationing around the yellow tower
  • Felt weird that enemies do not damage player on touch. Also green slimes hp increased in later waves while looking the same, which felt off (I'd be ok if maybe on top of enemy head there is some sort of Level to indicate stronger units of same species)
Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

just in case the next level after stage 1 is just a boss fight because the idea is also have a little bit of boss rush in the game

Submitted(+1)

I had fun with this. I'm a big fan of anything that combines base defense with another genre. I think for me, the weakest area was meaningful choice over the towers. I am sure there are lots of tactical variety that comes from the choices you gave but it's hard for the player to see at face value why you should pick a normal tower over a slow tower, etc. I think some of that is just wording and presentation. The towers are abstract which fits the current style, but it makes them harder to understand at first glance both in terms of function and flavor. Adding a bit more determinism would also help, like some tooltips or ui that gives info about stats or something to hint at the intended use of a specific tower. 

The act of buying towers feels good, but why do you buy it from the statue/tower thing instead of just your tower? Is that its only role and the player never has to think of it again? Maybe the player should have to protect this or maybe you don't need an extra building for this? Maybe you have more in mind that isn't obvious from this build as well.  

The art is really cute and feels very fitting, but the controls I found frustrating. If you hadn't had the pop ups I wouldn't have been able to keep them straight at all. For me personally I'd prefer the standard WASD + E and Space, with click to attack but adding some alternate controls if not bindable controls would be nice.

I think you got some good stuff here and could already find some fun in the experience, great job and I hope you keep polishing this gem!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! I know I have to work a lot on the UI to add more info. It's just that I'm focusing on the gameplay, which is why it doesn't have SFX or VFX yet.

The idea with the slow tower is more damage for a lower rate of fire.

The store building is in case I make a bigger map later and can add a second store higher up, so the player doesn't have to walk back down again and again.

As for the controls, the game was originally point-and-shoot with the mouse, but I thought it could be more interesting to simulate an 8-button controller like old consoles, it was designed more for the boss arenas.

Submitted(+1)

Yeah, I really think its coming along and understand wanting focus on gameplay before UI,  etc. I often get frustrated when people giving me feedback focus on little UI things instead of gameplay haha. I definitely think you are on to something!

Submitted(+1)

Surprisingly solid tower defense/ platformer hybrid, once you  work out that the towers are stupid and will deliberately try to shoot at things their bullets are too slow to hit, like falling enemies.

Once I realized that, I put "Long" towers on either side of the objective, directly underneath the spots where slimes would fall from the ceiling. Then I started jumping and releasing Long towers to stack them. By the end, I had 6 long towers, 3 covering each drop, firing their bullets straight up into each enemy as they fell. 2 Normal towers on the inside just in case anything slips through, and a third Normal tower I carried around the level with me during the attack wave.

I hated the boss, though. It feels like it belongs in a different game. It uses mechanics the normal game doesn't even have., like Player Health. Don't make me fight a boss. Or let me build towers to fight the boss for me. I didn't come here to do timed jumping puzzles with the keyboard on pangs and penalty of death. 

I came here to defend things with towers.