The Demo Must Be Played!
Today was supposed to be my first day of reaching out to streamers, but it seems like some of them beat me to it! To my absolute delight I spotted this yesterday night:
There's a few more vids out there from smaller channels as well and I'm already knee deep in analysing the commonalities on stuff they enjoy, pain points, balance, etc. Spoiler alert: Everybody is super terrified of archers. Rightfully so.
The Game Must Be Patched
Since I didn't really expect any videos yet, yesterday's first major patch already addresses a bunch of the issues I've seen. Here's a list of what just shipped:
Content:
There’s an end boss for the demo now. What the boss also ends is the viability of super wide towers. >D
Bugs/Glitches:
Skill tree tooltips no longer obstruct clicks (also resolves the annoying rapid tooltip flickering)
“Leftover” projectiles and debris from last run should now always be cleaned up on restart
Fixed: Block/weapon unlocks would sometimes not take effect on the first build phase of the game.
Balancing:
Fixed a few issues that made archers a little more oppressive than intended
Cannons unlock earlier and are significantly cheaper
Ranged enemies now have small range variations so they clump up less
Experimental: Build mode now slows the game rather than pauses it
Art/Juice:
UI switched from placeholder to pixel art assets
Slightly more detailed backdrops
Subtle hit feedback on enemies
Subtle speed variation on enemies
Quality of life:
Impatient players can now start shooting enemies on the splash screen already
Default music volume decreased due to popular demand
You can now take screenshots that get saved to your Downloads folder
The Road Must Continue
That leaves us with what's next. I'll keep this somewhat vague as I want to give myself enough wiggle room. I'm just one guy doing this, so bear with me here.
The basic gist is that I'll first fix some of the more pressing issues/requests I'm seeing now that the game gets a bit of traction. And then I got two larger priorities that I'll chip away at to hopefully ship the game later this year.
Up next (short term):
Improve the (still extremely basic) RNG so it’s less likely to doom your run early
Improve tower targeting so that building high becomes more viable
Improve murder holes so that it’s more obvious how to use them successfully
More QoL things like better wave feedback
Then (mid-long term):
More content on all fronts (enemies, bosses, upgrades, weapons, block shapes)
More interlocking mechanics (e.g. oil that slows enemies + burning arrows = kaboom)
That's it for now! Thanks for your attention and get in touch if you feel like it.
Ben