Hello everyone, this is our very first greeting. We are the Dark Lord Defense Team.
First of all, we sincerely thank all players who are following Mawang: Dark Lord Defense. As we prepare for the September demo and Tokyo Game Show, we would like to take a moment to share how this project started and how it has developed so far.
First, let us introduce Zoe, who is working on the amazing pixel art.
Zoe: Hello, I’m Zoe, the main artist. It feels exciting and surreal to finally be able to share my story with you through this Dev-log. I would like to tell you how Mawang: Dark Lord Defense came to have its current concept and art style.
The project began at an in-house game jam.
Two programmers started the project under the name Dark Lord Defense. Since there was no artist back then, everything was built using assets only. Before I joined, it was difficult for them to create original art, so they relied on available assets.
The game received positive feedback at the jam, and as the project naturally transitioned into full development, I joined the team as the artist.
This was my first pixel art project.
At the beginning, I reused existing assets to practice and adjust the bright and cute style into something that matched the darker world of Dark Lord Defense.
As development continued, I realized that the existing assets alone had clear limits in fully expressing the concept we wanted.
So I started retouching them and creating entirely new buildings and characters, gradually building up our own art style.
Since tower defense as a genre naturally has many enemies appearing on screen, flashy effects may look appealing at first, but they easily tire the player during long play sessions.
To solve this issue, I analyzed roguelike-style games. Many of them used simple monochrome or geometric effects for common enemies, and reserved flashy colors and animations for bosses or special enemies.
Based on this, we applied simple yet intuitive and high-quality effects in our game.
Boss unit skills are made the flashiest and most noticeable.
While preparing Dark Lord Defense, I often shared concept sketches with GPT to work on character designs. By feeding GPT with details about Lua, we worked together on visualization.
The results were surprisingly satisfying, and received positive feedback not only within our team but also from others in the company.
After trying out different versions of Lua across various ages, we finally arrived at the current design.
Currently, since the project is at a resource-intensive stage, instead of perfecting every detail from the start, we are focusing on producing a large quantity at a solid quality baseline. Later, we will refine and enhance the details step by step.
This approach is a strategic choice to balance development speed and overall quality.
We also plan to continuously add new decks, units, and presentation elements to raise immersion and completeness of the game.
That was the journey of the art design. Now, let us bring in our director Jiwoo for more about how the gameplay mechanics of Dark Lord Defense came to be.
Jiwoo: Hello, I’m Jiwoo, director of Mawang: Dark Lord Defense. While Zoe has covered the visual evolution, I’d like to talk with our developer Haon about how the game mechanics came together.
Our company held a game jam alongside our other project, PengPong. Every developer dedicated themselves fully to creating their strongest mechanics in their strongest genre. Among the ideas, I thought a defense game about the war between a Dark Lord and heroes could be developed within the short jam period.
The core gameplay mechanism was:
Building construction creates paths around it.
Monsters spawn and follow the paths around buildings.
Towers placed by the player attack the enemies moving along the paths.
If too many enemies follow the paths, they attack the building.
I thought it would be fun if players could freely shape paths by constructing buildings, while also managing to prevent overwhelming enemy numbers. Since I was also very interested in the theme of Heroes vs. Dark Lord, it naturally fit into the game.
Originally, players controlled the heroes fighting against the Dark Lord’s army. But since the game’s name was Dark Lord Defense, it felt odd to be on the hero side. So we switched perspectives to the Dark Lord’s army, which gave us more creative opportunities. That set the foundation for the current concept.
Haon: I’ve always enjoyed tower defense games, but what really attracted me was this idea of “paths forming around buildings and enemies following those paths.” Building strategic paths and managing resources to withstand overwhelming waves of enemies was great fun. It also received good feedback from testers, so we developed it into a full project.
Compared to the simpler jam version, the final development expanded enemy and tower patterns, and we spent a lot of time ensuring players could combine and experiment with these systems. We wanted players to think, “If I place this tower here, I can make the perfect kill-zone!” or “Doing this makes me stronger!” We even spent half a day debating specific details.
We’re also very excited about upcoming features: new monster types, towers of various races, growth systems outside of battles, stage-specific gimmicks, and more!
Jiwoo: Through this Dev-log, we hope our sincerity reaches everyone waiting for Mawang: Dark Lord Defense. We’re preparing the following schedule, and we look forward to meeting you both offline and online:
September 2025: The first closed test of Mawang: Dark Lord Defense will be held via G.ROUND, and we’ll meet many players from East Asia through the Tokyo Game Show Indie Area turnkey booth.
October 2025: Official release of the Mawang: Dark Lord Defense demo.
December 2025: Sponsor booth at Taiwan G-EIGHT, meeting Taiwanese players.
March 2026: Updated demo at the Steam Tower Defense Festival.
We always prioritize communication with players, and actively reflect your feedback in the game, both offline and online. Please visit our Discord anytime and share your thoughts, we’ll reply directly.
See you next time.
All the best,
Team Magye
Did you enjoy reading about our development journey?
Then try playing our work for yourself in the future!
Add Mawang: Dark Lord Defense to your wishlist and check out the latest updates on our main page: