Tower Tower Defence Defence

by iamwave
Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.22
Fun★★★★★★★★★★4.29
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.44
Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.49
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.74
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.76
Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.45
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.91
Towers do all the work in TD games. But who will defend the defenders themselves?

TLDR: Drag-and-drop to build towers, click on them to enter an inner TD game. If you kill most enemies in the inner game, the tower will level up.

The goal is to prevent the enemies from reaching the end. If too many enemies do, you lose. You do this by building towers via the drag-and-drop menu on the left. Each tower you build starts at level 1. The yellow bar under the tower shows progress towards the next level.

But the yellow bar will not fill by itself! Click on the built tower to go inside. There is another tower defence game! Every time an enemy reaches the end, the yellow bar shrinks. If you kill enough enemies in the inner world, the corresponding tower will upgrade.

Credits


- Honza @Aeternall (dev)
- Petr @petrroll (dev)
- Bety @Lavialee (animation)
- Vojta @DrCuketa (game balance)
- Vašek @IAmWave (dev)
- Ondřej Trhoň (music)

Additional help:
- Bouča @Colanderr (testing, bugfix)
- Chugg, Wark, Babkis, Sharpblade (testing)

Few-hours-Post-jam changes:
- Fixed a bug where enemy descriptions from other maps was sometimes being shown
- Added effect on tower level-up

Post LD update:

Added a brand new re-balanced (and slightly fixed) post LD edition, playable at `HTML5 (web): Post LD Rebalanced` link below. Please keep the spirit of the gamejam and rate the original version :). But feel free to enjoy the harder gameplay and leave feedback (or not and still leave feedback) for the new one!

Comments50

lord_blackheart
lord_blackheart27 Apr 2021, 00:29
Really nice game! enjoyed it and will definitely play again! The concept of tower defense in a tower defense is awesome!
sarssol27 Apr 2021, 05:58
Excellent tower defense. A little simplistic, but necessarily so when you're diving into additional maps every three seconds. It starts to chug a bit after a little while, but I'm honestly surprised how well it deals with the recursion.
Saussol27 Apr 2021, 14:41
Super cool game!
IceDragonsLair27 Apr 2021, 14:53
I would love an update with more towers so much I might try to make one.
Valden
Valden27 Apr 2021, 14:56
Incredible and mindblowing concept ! This was so clever as an interpretation of the theme and as a tower defense game. I managed to get a tower to lvl 12 and reached wave 59. Great job !
thedarkmagi
thedarkmagi27 Apr 2021, 16:26
This was A LOT of fun, at first I really didn't get it but once I'd worked it out I was having loads of fun and probably played for 30minutes so really strong and enjoyable!
Carston Schilds27 Apr 2021, 20:40
This concept works so well, I'd love to see it elaborated on
Cassio Eduardo27 Apr 2021, 20:45
This was pretty interesting. Thought it was going to be much more complicated than it actually is.
Magna
Magna27 Apr 2021, 20:49
Yes! Yes! Finally a tower defence! Really enjoyed the game from the start to the end. The art is also nice.
WarTronic27 Apr 2021, 20:51
Tower defence... so many good memories.
and recursive tower defence? perfection of the genre
LDJam user 23794527 Apr 2021, 20:55
Nice! The visuals of enemies reminded me of Digimon that I used to watch as a child.
Augcart27 Apr 2021, 20:57
Very fun game ! I love it :D
Gulcasa27 Apr 2021, 20:58
Incredible. Very novel concept, works fine. Kinda gets a little too easy after some 20 waves once you manage to improve your first world towers enough, but that's hard to balance.
Ambeurk
Ambeurk27 Apr 2021, 20:59
Brilliant concept, the best I have seen so far fitting the theme !

I had a looot of fun, even though I am not a huge fan of tower defense in general.

With additional features it can become a great game I think :) Congrats, it's amazing
dezom27 Apr 2021, 21:02
One of the coolest and most creative mechanics I've seen. I thought it was going to be really confusing to keep track of everything but it was actually very manageable. Great job
GogglesKitty
GogglesKitty27 Apr 2021, 21:02
Wow. Wow! This is such an awesome concept, and it's executed so well. Love it.
Lavialee27 Apr 2021, 21:03
@lord-blackheart Thank you! Recursion came up a lot during the brainstorming phase, glad you enjoyed it!
Lavialee27 Apr 2021, 21:06
@sarssol We decided to stick with the simplicity, since it was hard to balance it as it was, and time is short - adding more late-game enemies or towers would be a great additon later though.
BoltKey27 Apr 2021, 21:08
Awesome concept and superb execution. Gets a bit laggy after a while.
Lavialee27 Apr 2021, 21:08
@icedragonslair Definetly encourageing you to build on this idea, we would love to see it!
Lavialee27 Apr 2021, 21:09
@valden Thanks! It was a genre change for us, we made mainly puzzle games before, it was really refreshing to make a TD
Phillip Scott
Phillip Scott27 Apr 2021, 21:13
nice - would like to see more of this
Osterzone27 Apr 2021, 21:13
Hey, i'd like to lay this but the graphics seem a little bugged for me . This is on Fiefox
Lavialee27 Apr 2021, 21:14
@carston-schilds Yay! Thanks, though we usually don't really follow up on our LD games, I also think this is a really cool concept worth elaborating on
Lavialee27 Apr 2021, 21:15
@cassio-eduardo We tried to make it simple to follow, but there is still a lot of untapped potential for sure
Lavialee27 Apr 2021, 21:16
@magna Glad someone's excited! Was a genre change for us too, happy you enjoyed it (and me personally also happy you liked the art haha)
!
Lavialee27 Apr 2021, 21:18
@madr Never thought of Digimon, but now that you say it I can see it! Thanks!
Lavialee27 Apr 2021, 21:20
@gulcasa balancing was definetly very hard for us, especially since we didn't really want to have a "final" wave or boss; this could be improved by having more late-game enemy types, maybe flying or something similar, which we avoided mainly due to the time constrains...
Lavialee27 Apr 2021, 21:23
@osterzone We had some issues with firefox sadly, It's definetly playable on chrome, I'm not sure we tested as thoroughly elsewhere. Sorry for that, I think it has something to do with Phaser, but I can't say for sure
Glaas
Glaas27 Apr 2021, 21:28
This is so much fun and so easy to get lost in! I love how silly it is!
Tieffeline
Tieffeline27 Apr 2021, 21:28
Tower defence inception ! Ahahaha I like it so much ! Well done guys !
ClevRaven27 Apr 2021, 21:32
This one is really good. I got to like 60k enemies vanquished, like wave 120 something, at that point it was a slide show XD, maybe if I downloaded it instead of playing online I could have gotten further...

On the good, you nail the theme, like I was like 7 layers deep in some turrets. The audio, I like how it does a change in pitch the deeper you go, makes the whole mood cohesive. Prety innovative too.
AutoGibbon
AutoGibbon27 Apr 2021, 21:40
I added this game to my browser favourites. The concept is pure genious, and instantly my favourite jam entry of LD48 so far. I think I played for nearly a hour before realising I need to check out other peoples' games!

If there's anything you could add that would enhance the otherwise simple and brilliant experience you already have, it's MORE JUICE! Particles and stuff to celebrate each and every death, and something cool happen when a turret levels up?

This is awesome. I love it.
crazyrems
crazyrems27 Apr 2021, 22:13
I made the game crash.

Because it was so intense I played for almost 20 minutes, the game dropped more and more frames until it froze because too many enemies. I didn’t know how many they were but I guess my 5 turrets up to each on 4 levels weren’t for nothing.

Fun: 10/5
Jiri Hysek
Jiri Hysek27 Apr 2021, 22:51
Wow! I spent a lot of time playing this game :) The tower inception concept as a way to upgrade it is great. Awesome idea!
Tieffeline
Tieffeline27 Apr 2021, 22:56
Looks like it didn't get harder at some point
Aeternall27 Apr 2021, 23:01
Thank you so much for the feedback everyone, it means a lot
Aeternall27 Apr 2021, 23:07
@jiri-hysek Glad you enjoyed, thanks!

@tieffeline There wasn't enough time to balance such late waves, unfortunately. The enemies still get stronger but not enough to stop you, apparently. Thanks for playing up to 101!
Jiri Hysek
Jiri Hysek28 Apr 2021, 11:07
@aeternall yeah, with towers above level 50 (damage 6290) I'm unstoppable :)
I'm surprised how engaging the concept is, you have reinvented the tower defence genre :)
Lavialee28 Apr 2021, 13:48
@jiri-hysek You got much farther than any of us in the testing :) glad you enjoyed!
darkshadow
darkshadow28 Apr 2021, 16:44
Great idea and well executed! This looks like a huge time sink!

The only thing keeping it from perfection is the mini-map on the right, I thought time was paused while in the turret until I died! Then I'm not sure how but maybe some colouring for the progress bars to show how many times it's been reset so I can see which will upgrade and which ones are stuck.

The UI glitched on Firefox but okay on chrome
Tarcisiotm28 Apr 2021, 17:40
Thanks for making this game. This is currently my favorite entry, by far!

Really liked how simple but effective and detailed the tiles are, especially the tower ones. Concept is endearing, and really well executed. Liked the music, the effects, the art, interactions are snappy and feel good. I played all the way to wave 136 when it started getting slow.

My suggestions / feedback:
- One thing that might help a LOT when you start the game as a new player would be having the vortex that handles damage be a different icon. It took me around 3 tries to realize why I was dying. I could assume all dimensions could hurt me, but they only hurt the upgrades.
- Balancing: I don't think there is any point using the first tower other than to place the very first one. The second one is much more powerful and have the same specs.
- It would be cool if players could choose their level of recursion, and not having all the towers have that by default. This could be as simple as just placing your first tower would start recursion for a tower. Might help scale things further a bit.
- One design concern I would have is how to scale this if you move forward with making this into a "full game" (for me it already is, I hope you know what I mean). Since you already have sort of a recursion thing. I wonder if you could flesh this out in a way players would always play this one level, but the inner ones would also present something unique and worth pursuing other than just powering up your main one (which in itself is already a super cool and well executed concept, in my opinion).

Again, just wanted to say congratulations on making this gem of a game!
Jvdwijk
Jvdwijk28 Apr 2021, 21:41
This game was amazing, I loved the mechanic in this one, might have spent a bit too much time on it ^^
Doot
Doot5 May 2021, 13:33
Great game!

I love the idea. I didn't even read the description yet everything felt very clear and intuitive.
The balance feel good for a jam game, I am sure it could be better but this might be the thing that needs the most time to get right.
The audio and visual feedback is great on all actions.

Great job and thanks for the game!

Other games by @iamwave

Found a bug?
Tell us on Discord