T w e n t y S i d e d
First Steven mentioned this game. Perhaps some vague notion of self-preservation kept me from diving into the thing right then. (You’ll remember how nuts I went for Flash TD back in January.) Then Jay went and posted a screenshot. Geeze guys, thanks a lot.
So here it is, Flash Circle TD. It differs from the last game in that the critters aren’t trying to get anywhere. You aren’t trying to keep them away from your base, or whatever. They just come in and walk around in circles. The game is over if you get more than 100 at a time. This produces a very different game from more or less the same gameplay mechanics. Interesting.
Jay is hooked as well, which means Apocalypse Cow is most likely languishing while he pummels the circling critters. Curses!
Starcraft: Bot Fight
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
The Best of 2013
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2013.
Programming Vexations
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
Wolfenstein II
This is a massive step down in story, gameplay, and art design when compared to the 2014 soft reboot. Yet critics rated this one much higher. What's going on here?
The Death of Half-Life
Valve still hasn't admitted it, but the Half-Life franchise is dead. So what made these games so popular anyway?
I didn’t find it as entertaining as Flash TD. I got up to level 62 on my first try; I got bored about level 54 and just left it to run.
I found this this morning at jayisgames. I didn’t enjoy this one as much as Flash Element TD either (however, I enjoyed that one immensely, so that’s not really saying much).
I do like the new lose/victory condition, though. Really a novel way of improving upon the Tower Defense genre.
And thus I lose days of my life.
I do miss the “interest” of flash TD. The way it encouraged you to save money and go for minimalist / optimal layouts gave the game additional depth.
TD games have never really interested me that much. It gets to a point where you just futilely hope to gain the money to upgrade your towers. Figuring out where to put them to maximise damage is fun, but soon grows old.
Did you see Desktop Tower Defense. An interesting twist in that you set up your own maze.
The lack of interest does hurt the replayability of the game. It’s just a slow grind until you run out of cash. I ended up playing it only 5 times before the prospect of repeating became disgusting. Mind, I already played for hours in the earlier Element version, so I’m not “new” at this…
(2444, lv 88 on normal)
While not a “tower defense” game, per se (although it does have both towers and defending), another game I came across this week is Bowmaster Prelude at Lost Vectors.
http://www.lostvectors.com/prelude/index.html
This is probably an old one for a lot of people, but I found it to have some of the most depth of any Flash game I’ve seen. Not to mention 4 different modes for controls! I’ve been addicted to this one all week.
Yes, Bowmaster Prelude was a VERY good game – I played through it twice.
Once you understand how the game works, it’s a bit on the easy side, but still very enjoyable.
Hint 1: somewhere after level 1 (say, about level 3-7), start a level, kill most of it (leave one thing, maybe), then quit. Lather, rinse, repeat. You’ll raise your level (which increases the number of people you have available), you can level up your arrows (and troops, if you’re careful), and you can get a lot of gold (kill everything but one catapult, then destroy their castle = lots of gold and/or lots of arrow leveling).
Hint 2: when leveling your character, shoot arrows as high as possible (off the top of the screen) nearly straight up, repeatedly. Adjust slightly (once you know where they are landing), so that they hit enemy troops (just as they are passing their own castle is a good place to start) – you get more experience the farther the arrow goes before it hits. Max is about 30 XP per shot.
Hint 3: if you leave your castle at all (you can get more money, less XP when completing a level if you get all head shots, which is easier to do at point blank range with none of your owner troops around to mess things up or get hit), you can heal your self by shooting your healing arrow directly at the ground underneath you.
I went through the game almost solo the first time (using healers and archers a little), and it was fun, but a bit fast (and mostly pretty easy). The second time, I raised my level VERY high (20+, IIRC) and maxed out every single arrow and troop. It was fun, but time consuming (and the last level was WAY too easy).
I hop he finished Bowmaster II soon – if it’s even better the Prelude (as Prelude was better than the previous games), it should be very enjoyable.
I played through it a few times, and I like it. But I agree, it’s not as fun as Flash Element TD – at least, not yet. The lack of the interest factor is pretty huge. Also, the upgrades feel more generic… strict mathematical progression, which makes the decision-making process less interesting.
So I like the game, and it might have longer legs for me than Flash Element TD, but I don’t think it’ll suck up THAT much more of my life.
Though I did play it instead of working on Apocalypse Cow last night :) But I didn’t get home until 10 PM, after 13 hours of working on The Unannounced Game, and I REALLY didn’t feel up to more coding :P
I think someone should make a game and title it “To be announced.”
People would be hearing about your game everywhere!
Desktop Tower Defense, that Scott mentions above, is pretty cool. The flying critters are bastards, though.