What makes for a great TD game?

Discussion in 'General Game Discussion and Questions' started by CharredDirt, Mar 9, 2012.

  1. CharredDirt

    CharredDirt Well-Known Member

    #1 CharredDirt, Mar 9, 2012
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2012
    I'm working on a new defense game for iOS and I'm curious of all you iOS tower defense fans out there, what do you look for when buying or playing a new game of that type?

    What elements do you love?

    What things do developers do that you hate?

    I want to make my game the best out there and I'd love to hear from people other than myself. I'm a huge fan of defense games in general.
     
  2. GSnyder

    GSnyder Well-Known Member

    Nov 11, 2010
    48
    0
    0
    I can only speak for myself, but two things in particular always stick out:

    1) TD games are fundamentally a kind of puzzle game. Every level should require some new insight regarding tower placement or combination of tower types. If you can get through the level using any reasonable deployment scheme, then the level is pointless and too easy. As the designer, you need to understand exactly how the tower types fit together, and you need to lead the player to these same realizations. The geoDefense series is an excellent example of this principle.

    2) There's no point in replicating what's already been done. It's easy to look at the vast array of TD games in the marketplace and say that they're all basically the same. But they're not, really; there are a hundred little ways the formula has been inflected, and that's what keeps me interested in new TD games. There are still many, many different ways you can push the formula to keep it fresh. For example, you could build a TD based on the idea of "software-upgradeable" towers; the towers don't get more powerful, but you can upgrade their behavior to be more intelligent by adding, e.g., target leading, mobility, coordination, better target selection algorithms.

    Or, here's an idea I always thought would be good: The best deployment locations in most TD games are usually corners or peninsulas that give a tower access to creeps along multiple edges. But what if creeps could cooperate to temporarily inactivate a tower that's too exposed? That would open up all kinds of possibilities for countermeasures and tower placement. The player would have to rethink the traditional "put the towers on the corners" mechanic.

    I'm not saying that these particular ideas are stellar, but you need to have some kind of tweak that makes your TD game different from others.

    Some dislikes:

    For some reason, I just don't seem to get along with TD designs in which individual towers are too weak to do significant damage to an average creep. The "towers are weak" concept seems like it should open up all kinds of creative options, but in practice it just feels frustrating.

    Less-than-great graphics are a real handicap for TD games. There's just too much competition. It has to look great.

    I do not care for the common play mechanic in which several times in a level, special creeps that require a unique form of defense are thrown into the mix. Most commonly, these appear as flying enemies. It's fine if "flying" enemies are a regular part of the mix; I just don't like having to prepare a completely parallel defense grid against a hypothetical and uncommon "you lose" threat.
     
  3. Shaz

    Shaz Well-Known Member

    All the stuff GeoDefence does!
     
  4. SkyMuffin

    SkyMuffin Well-Known Member

    May 24, 2010
    2,377
    0
    36
    college student, ENG/WGS major
    Lexington, KY
    I've been craving a TD game similar to the Warcraft 3 mod, YouTD. Basically, it was a tower defense game where users helped create their own towers, and then the guy in charge (with the help of beta testers) balanced it all out. What made it really stick out, however, is the way towers leveled up-- you were encouraged to not build huge masses of towers because they'd all split up the experience. Instead, you had to pay a lot of attention and only plant new towers when necessary.

    There were a lot of other things that kept me coming back, like items you could put on your towers, different elements (all with their own unique strengths/weaknesses), and a hero who had abilities which grew and carried over with each new game. If someone could make a game like that they'd get all of my money.
     
  5. araczynski

    araczynski Well-Known Member

    Oct 5, 2009
    1,467
    0
    36
    programmer
    omaha, ne
    my personal tastes:

    i love the element introduced by the Creeps (i believe) of destructible objects on the screen, for extra cash, now i look for that feature in every TD, and feel the game is broken if it doesn't have it.

    i love having options, i.e. more than 4 towers and more than 3 upgrade options per tower. anything less and the game gets stale quickly.

    i love fluid animations, and big maps.

    i love movable towers, like in that wild west TD game, where the 'towers' were little people that could move around, or towers on rails, etc.

    i HATE when TD's are excessively difficult, even on easy, or levels that only work with a very specific combination of towers, in a very specific combination of locations, upgraded to a very specific level, or you die. I want to enjoy the game, not repeat levels over and over and over and over looking for some stupid singular solution. that's work, not play. i don't pay others to give me work, i pay for entertainment.

    i'll keep the neat innovation idea i have to myself, for my own TD when i start iOS coding ;)
     
  6. CharredDirt

    CharredDirt Well-Known Member

    Wow, some really great suggestions.

    First, I'm gonna download GeoDefense if you guys speak that highly of it.

    I think the graphics are going to be pretty decent. They may not be top tier but they're probably better than 80% of the TD games I've played.

    I'm all for destructible objects. I do like that game mechanic as it adds another strategic element to the game. Plus blowing up more stuff is fun.

    Also, I hated those flying units in Desktop Tower Defense. Didn't flow at all with the game.

    As for originality, I'm bringing over the HEB system from the original Charred Dirt game. (That stands for Heat, Energy, and Ballistic) Each enemy has different level resistances in each category. Instead of turrets, I'm using tanks and the tanks are assembled each game by taking a base and a turret and combining them in unique ways. Turrets can be switched out to different elements depending on which creep is on the field. Other friendly units will lower enemy resistances. As for armaments, I have 52 weapons from the original PC game to choose from.

    Does that sound like it would be fun?
     
  7. SkyMuffin

    SkyMuffin Well-Known Member

    May 24, 2010
    2,377
    0
    36
    college student, ENG/WGS major
    Lexington, KY
    This is the absolute WORST. It's the main reason I stopped caring for Defender Chronicles-- if you didn't get the right towers/upgrades at all of the right times, and you made even one mistake, it was game over. So ridiculous.
     
  8. CharredDirt

    CharredDirt Well-Known Member

    Whats also frustrating is when you cant pass a level because you dont have the freemium paid upgrades.
     
  9. Dazarath

    Dazarath Well-Known Member

    Mar 21, 2010
    1,745
    0
    36
    #9 Dazarath, Mar 10, 2012
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2012
    Here are some of my thoughts on TD mechanics:

    1) Interest: I have no idea why this became a standard mechanic, but I personally find it to be one of the worst mechanics you commonly see in TDs. When a game has an interest mechanic, the total value of the player's towers + money grows exponentially, which wrecks all kinds of havoc on game balance. The developer then has to basically choose a growth rate for the difficulty of the waves, and any player who is just slightly ahead of the curve, will find the game getting easier and easier (while also getting stupidly rich), while any player who is slightly behind the curve will just die. (I understand that the same is true for linear growth, but it's not nearly as exaggerated.) If you read the Sentinel 3 thread here on TA, you'll find that some players struggle with the easiest mode, while others think the hardest mode is a joke. This is not surprising, since that TD has the most ridiculous interest mechanic I've ever seen.

    Interest also incentivizes players to play in really odd fashions, which I think is a sign of broken game mechanics. Stuff like trying to sell towers right before interest ticks, or only buying towers right after them, or trying to sit on a single tower for as long as possible. This is not what I would consider fun.

    2) I really enjoy TDs where I can try out different combinations of towers/upgrades/placements to see what works well for different levels. Because of this, I find fixed-path TDs to be much less interesting than non-fixed-path ones. There is often only a select few spots which are worth placing towers in, and there's no option to build different mazes.

    To go along with the above, I think it's important to have the towers' range be long relative to the width of the path that the creeps follow. For example, if the width of the path is 1, and most of the towers' range is 1-2, this really limits the spots where a tower can be placed and still be useful. On the other hand, if most towers' range is in the 4-5 range, this opens up more possibilities for tower placement.

    +1 to this. You can see from this thread that TD players have a wide range of tastes, as a previous poster said that he likes this style of TD. I personally can't stand "find the intended solution" type TDs. There's no room for trying out different builds when the developer designed the level to only be completed in a single manner with very little variation.

    3) RPG Elements: I'm a huge sucker for RPG elements in any game, including TDs. It gives a sense of progression, and even on failed runs, the player can still benefit a little. It doesn't have to be huge gains, but even something like +5% to a tower's DPS is something worth striving for. Having some sort of progression system gives players a lot more reason to replay previous levels, too.

    4) This is a small issue, but I often find that towers have little to no synergy with each other. This leads to players just massing up a single tower type, since if A > B, then usually A+A > A+B. Having synergistic towers leads to better mazes using a variety of towers, which is a lot more interesting. The obvious examples would be slow towers or buff towers (though I don't actually like these). Having 4 DPS towers + 1 slow will often be better than 5 DPS towers, etc etc.

    I wish you the best of luck on your TD, and I think it's great that you're asking the community for feedback. I found this thread an interesting read, since it really shows the variety of tastes that TD players have.
     
  10. Filing Cabinet

    Filing Cabinet Well-Known Member

    Aug 20, 2011
    997
    0
    16
    For me the benchmark of any TD game is Geodefense because it has two elements that are essential to me

    - stylish graphics.
    - strategy required to beat the levels
     
  11. GSnyder

    GSnyder Well-Known Member

    Nov 11, 2010
    48
    0
    0
    How interesting! I LOVE interest in TD games and would point to the Sentinel series (which you cite as an interest-related disaster) as a case where it works well.

    I'm sure 95% of this is just personal taste, but here is the counterargument to your well-expressed reservations...

    Generally speaking, the more the player's choices affect the outcome, the more fun the game can potentially be. Tower defense is a genre in which a few rules of thumb already cover the majority of play in most games: build on corners, use a variety of tower types, put your creep-slowing towers at the lead-in to tiles that are heavily attacked, blah blah blah...

    Every time you can design a game to subvert one of these automatic behaviors, it makes the game more interesting, because you actually have to think about what you're doing rather than just executing the same old rote TD rules.

    An interest mechanic does away with the automatic assumption that you should build as fast and as much as possible. It's a whole new degree of freedom: you decide not only what and where to build, but when.

    I think interest also tends to make TD games more exciting because it motivates the player to stay on the edge of not quite being able to deal with the next wave. Even if you're an experienced TD player and would normally sail through an easy level with no problems, you still have good reason to pay close attention and optimize your deployment.

    Yep, I certainly can't argue with you here. I guess I'm not in favor of "interest" per se so much as "some reward for not blowing all your cash as soon as it comes in".

    I haven't played the original, but it sounds like you're clearly thinking along the right lines. That sounds like plenty of novelty to sustain a TD game right there.
     
  12. Dazarath

    Dazarath Well-Known Member

    Mar 21, 2010
    1,745
    0
    36
    #12 Dazarath, Mar 10, 2012
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2012
    Even though I did bash that particular part of the Sentinel series, I still enjoyed them a lot. Well, at least I really liked Sentinel 3. For some reason, I wasn't too much of a fan of 1+2. I just didn't like that particular aspect of the gameplay.

    I agree that a lot of TDs become very formulaic. It's important to give the player more choices to think about rather than just having them sit there waiting for the next 100 gold to build tower X. Like you said, a lot of this is just personal preference. I much prefer my TDs to revolve around deciding which towers to build where, rather than when to build in order to maximize interest.

    On a side note, since the OP did mention DTD, I'd like to point to that game (as well as the Facebook version, Desktop Defender) as possibly my favorite tower defense. If a player only wants to get far in terms of waves, or just wants to complete a level, it's usually simple enough. But players looking for high scores have the option of sending waves early, which obviously makes the game more difficult, while increasing one's score. I really liked that idea, because it allows the game to be a challenge for a variety of skill levels. This mechanic, combined with the special powers from the FB version, made for a much more interactive TD. (At times, I would say it got a little too hectic, though.)
     
  13. #13 RegularStormy, Mar 10, 2012
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2012
    Thanks! I had never seen it before I put it into The Creeps! so I *might* have been the first... But I can't be sure :)

    I never liked interest that worked this way either. My solution in The Creeps! Was that normally there is no interest. But on some levels you either get or build a "Piggy Bank". The piggy bank earns interest only on the money inside it. To get the money out to spend, you smash open the piggy bank, destroying it permanently. I really liked being able to control what levels have this available and even when you have it there is a cap to how much it can earn. I'm really happy with the results. I've never seen another game do it this way either so maybe The Creeps! Is the first(?), again not sure.
     
  14. CharredDirt

    CharredDirt Well-Known Member

    Man, so many great posts. I hope you all know that I'm really going to make an excellent list of all the good and bad points from this thread.

    Dazarath > Thanks for the encouragement. I'm very open with my progress during development. I built the original Charred Dirt game around user feedback and I plan to do the same with CD Defense.

    Regular Stormy > Holy Crap, I played the heck out of the Creeps HD. Excellent game sir. As far as destructible objects, I liked that system so much that i was planning on including it in my game. Would you feel like I was ripping you off? It adds so much strategy and financial incentive. Also, the Piggy bank was the perfect solution. Once money was in there, I couldn't take it out. In other words, it didn't affect my gameplay like a straight interest system would.

    Also, I downloaded GeoDefense but have only played a few levels. Seems like your standard TD with basic graphics but you guys are right, it is an excellent game.
     
  15. I'm glad you liked it! As long as you aren't straight up copying the entire game (like Dream Heights or Yeti Town), I won't be upset. Go for it, that's what game development is about... Use ideas you like, add something new or improve on something that has been done before to make a better game. I'd be honored if people think my ideas are worth imitation and/or iterating on! :)
     
  16. CharredDirt

    CharredDirt Well-Known Member

    They are excellent ideas certainly worth repeating. I'll use the destructable objects then. Thats about it. I'll leave the piggy bank alone. Also, i threw another post up that hasn't gotten any love. It shows the map layout for the game. I'd love to get some opinions on it.

    http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=125265
     
  17. araczynski

    araczynski Well-Known Member

    Oct 5, 2009
    1,467
    0
    36
    programmer
    omaha, ne
    that is a beautiful picture, hope the actual game looks like that, love the art.

    DEFINITELY have to have destructible 'things' on the map when tanks are involved.

    Although having tanks be the turrets, you almost expect them to be able to move a little... perhaps look into having them be mobile in the game, even if only a few 'squares' and very slowly, although not sure how difficult that would be coding wise. with little exhaust plumes of smoke as they move :)

    but that pic definitely looks perfect to me. look ipad3 ready :)
     
  18. CharredDirt

    CharredDirt Well-Known Member

    I've been discussing ipad 4 retina capabilities with my programmer. Some of my tiles I do have the ability to produce at retina level but others, I screwed up and saved them as is in SD quality. With cartoony style graphics, I'm not sure that you'll really see that much improvement in high def. iPad retina graphics take up 4 times as much ram, so thats a consideration as well. I'm leaning towards not doing retina. It will still look good.

    I'll have to look into making the tanks mobile. That would really set my game apart from most other TD games. You're right. If the tanks have treads, why can't they move? Maybe they move slow and can't fire while they're moving. Maybe that's how you get your tank to a higher level.
     
  19. Teknikal

    Teknikal Well-Known Member

    Oct 26, 2010
    2,194
    1
    38
    Male
    Belfast N Ireland
    It's hard to define what makes it so but if I had to pick what game I think is the best Tower Defense game going I'd have to pick pixeljunk monsters deluxe on the PSP. Seem's weird as touchscreens should really have an advantage at tower defense but pixeljunk wins for me anyway it's definitely worth having a look at.
     
  20. araczynski

    araczynski Well-Known Member

    Oct 5, 2009
    1,467
    0
    36
    programmer
    omaha, ne
    pixeljunk's monsters is a very nice game indeed, especially on the ps3. another great one that didn't seem to get too much love is guns n' glory, that's the one i was referring to that had moving 'towers'. although i think they went a little overboard and designed things so that you HAVE to move your towers constantly to compensate for various things, can get annoying at times.
     

Share This Page