LabyrinthTD
A tower defense game where you play as the minotaur of a labyrinth
Pretty self explanatory, you build traps and attack enemies. Hardest part near the end was balancing - keeping the difficulty curve in line with the player's strength gets challenging after ~25 waves. I err'ed on the side of difficulty when trying to balance this, but let me know how the balancing feels and if you find anything over/under-powered. Spikes definitely need some work, it's pretty much always better to save up for a sentry after you place a couple spikes.
The labyrinth is randomly generated at the start of the game using DFS, and the people/victims use Godot's Astar pathfinding to locate the nearest exit. I experimented with giving them no sense of direction to be more thematic but that felt like it removed a lot of the core gameplay mechanics of a tower defense game.
Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Let me know if you find any game-breaking bugs or if you have any other feedback. Once I wake up sometime next year I'll take a look.
All the assets are original except for the sound effects which I grabbed from https://www.zapsplat.com/.
Comments (7)
Made it to wave 14 the first time and wave 20 the second time. Balancing is very good! Though once the doors are gone, it goes downhill quickly because you don't have nearly as much time to kill the baddies before they escape.
Great game, very complete for one person in the limited time! The randomly generated mazes mean you have to rethink your strategy on every playthrough, because the "catchment area" of each approach corridor is different, and sentries can shoot through walls.
Wall phasing is a godsend, I see why you added that because it would be nearly unplayable otherwise. Maybe make it automatic though? There's already plenty to do without worrying about bumping into walls as well.
As for the spikes, maybe a second type of spikes that costs 20-30 and triggers twice as often? Then you have to choose in the early game, whether you want to save up for one of these right in front of your door.
Pixel art with a different pixel size for each sprite is not my cup of tea, but the sprites themselves look fine.
The music, though simple, does not annoy; in fact I still have it playing in the background as I'm typing this.
Bugs:
- 'r' to restart did not work for me. Just refreshing the browser tab worked.
- I once placed a sentry on top of spikes, but didn't manage to do it a second time. It was convenient, but the game is more interesting if this isn't possible.
@thomastc :
Yeah I probably should have made the wall-phasing automatic, it's hard to accurately time it so running into a wall can feel clunky.
Good idea with the second type of spikes - I think a lot of the fun of a tower defense game comes from the abundance of decisions the player can make regarding tower type and placement. Right now there's not much of a decision for tower type because there's only 2 towers and one of them sucks. It was one of those things where I figured I'd get around to adding another trap/tower or two and didn't end up making the time to do so.
This was my first time doing my own pixel art, usually I just use free spritesheets I find online. I believe the pixel size for each sprite is consistent, but some of the HUD elements (trap previews on the left, trap icon next to the cursor when placing) are scaled up or down. Also the font isn't at the same pixel ratio.
@Baconinvader :
Yeah this was definitely on my todo list, I was going to add a heal cost for each gate that you could buy inbetween rounds. This would definitely make the game more interesting as the player would have to decide whether to use skulls on traps or on healing. Didn't have the time for it though so I just gave a little bit of free healing each wave. And yeah I probably should have spent more time making a couple more towers, I think that would have given the gameplay a big boost.
Thanks guys, I appreciate the feedback!
Managed get through 24 waves \o/
Fun game to cheese! Phasing felt really good too and the building mechanics worked surprisingly smoothly.
What's interesting is that generating random labyrinths gives you asymmetric map between each door and each playthrough is kind of a puzzle which door needs more defense and where are the best placements for spikes etc! Nice job!
Adding to the automation of wall-phasing - or rather having the player not being affected by walls - I'd suggest also making the axe-swing always-on, since there is no downside to it as far as I can tell. Or alternatively making the player move very slowly while attacking, but I'd prefer the former since it feels less constricting.
Very fun game altogether, made it to wave 18!
P.S. consider turning on high scores :)
I thought it was entertaining. The wall-phasing felt janky to me and I ended just spamming the button and hoping it would go through. I liked the skulls as currency thing for some reason hehe. And the corresponding UI animation. This game has a lot of features for a jam game! I just wish there were a few more tower / enemy types. But it's understandable you didn't have the time to add those.
I only got to wave 18 but very fun game!