LudumData

Point-defense Hell by PolyHatSteve

[raw]
made by PolyHatSteve for LD 41 (COMPO)

Bullet-hell x Tower Defense!

Tired of all those bullets flying at your face? Why not build some turrets to shoot them down, slow them, or even shoot back at your enemies? Welcome to Point-Defense Hell.

Main features: - Build turrets between waves - Several enemy types - 20 levels - The tried and tested controls of the shoot em' up genre

BuildingTowers.gif

Turret types: - Point-defense turrets shoot down enemy bullets. Can be great for making the incoming barrage more manageable. Upgrading increases their fire rate. - Slow turrets slow down bullets within their area of influence (the circle.) Useful for dodging, and for slowing bullets for your point-defense turrets to take out. Upgrades increase the slow effect. - Anti-Enemy turrets attack your enemies directly. Helpful to grind down your enemies if you're too busy dodging. Upgrading increases their fire rate.

Other tips: - Holding shift slows down your ship. Useful for fine-grained dodging. - Your hit-box is the little teal box on your ship.

Software used: - Unity - SFXR - FL Studio

Source code https://polyhatsteve.itch.io/point-defense-hell
HTML5 (web) https://polyhatsteve.itch.io/point-defense-hell
Windows https://polyhatsteve.itch.io/point-defense-hell
macOS https://polyhatsteve.itch.io/point-defense-hell
Linux https://polyhatsteve.itch.io/point-defense-hell
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/point-defense-hell

Ratings

Overall 374th 3.333⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Fun 292th 3.361⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 493th 3.059⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Theme 458th 3.353⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 600th 2.567⭐ 17🧑‍⚖️
Audio 234th 3.156⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Mood 526th 2.647⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Given 23🗳️ 19🗨️

Feedback

RaccoonLudos
23. Apr 2018 · 15:41 UTC
I really like that idea, it's simple but fun, a bit more variety of towers would be good, but this is cool for the compo. Good game.
Dekobii
24. Apr 2018 · 07:50 UTC
Good game overall! I really enjoyed the bullet-hell aspects of it. It is a little shallow - more depth of play would suit it. The graphics fit well together but don't create much of an experience, which could be improved. Excellent Compo game, you should be proud of it!
Nico H.
24. Apr 2018 · 07:50 UTC
I really like it! This game is simple but it works and makes fun. But it's also very hard. I've died at wave 7 I think. Any win strategies out there? :grin:
tthe
24. Apr 2018 · 07:54 UTC
For a compo game, it's not that bad. There were a few things that annoyed me:

* The collision detection between the player and the enemy bullets is really bad, it seems as if the player had a point collider at the center, and bullets, that seem like they should hit just pass straight through
* I generally don't like Unity and Unreal for small games, as their performance overhead is really significant compared to a lower level engine, like libGDX, therefore the game runs much slower. I like playing with 60+ FPS, but the game just didn't want to go above 45 on my laptop
* I got a Game Over screen, and the game went unresponsive. You should've at least create a `Restart` button, because now if I wanted to play more, I would have to exit the game, and open it again.
🎤 PolyHatSteve
24. Apr 2018 · 08:15 UTC
@Nico H. Thank you! The most useful thing is to place upgraded slow towers near the bottom to help dodge, and then tons of defense towers. After level 5 you need tons of anti-enemy towers though because you just can't block all the bullets. :P

@tthe Thanks for the thoughtful response! Yeah the game does perform poorly, but that is mostly not the engine's fault haha. I'm doing some pretty expensive things for the point-defense towers, and the game is actually 3d rendered using an orthographic camera...! I was going to go with a 2.5D style but didn't have time, so I ended up with a poorly-performing 2D game, haha. The collision problems partly stem from that as well.

I had a restart button rigged up as well, but it was super buggy so I just left it out for the release. Sacrifices had to be made to meet the compo deadline, heh. I mentioned it on the itch page further down, but I've moved it up to the top now. Anyways, cheers!
Arqcenick
24. Apr 2018 · 10:16 UTC
I liked the gameplay mechanics a lot, a simple combination well done in the mechanics sense. It was fun to play and that is probably the most important aspect. There are issues with collision detection and some menu bugs(construction menu open in fighting phase). However one thing that I think can improve the game greatly is the selection of color palette. The colors feel a little muddy. Still it was a great game to play.
Evan Minto
26. Apr 2018 · 07:02 UTC
Love this idea, especially since I'm not great at bullet hell games so the ability to pre-plan a strategy makes it a little easier in some ways. I like the balance between the turret types. I played around with a couple different strategies. I think one issue is that as cool as the slowing mechanic is, it makes the bullets harder to predict since their speed keeps changing. Kind of removes the pattern-recognition part of bullet hell games, which AFIAK is what makes it possible for people to make sense of that many bullets.

Anyway I definitely had fun with it. I'd play a polished and expanded version of this for sure. Good job!
Wyatt
26. Apr 2018 · 07:42 UTC
Great gameplay! It was definitely fun and engaging. You did a great job balancing the tower defense and wave difficulty. Awesome work.
Zinkler
26. Apr 2018 · 07:56 UTC
I have a huge problem with the controls - I don't think that bullet hell games are supposed to have acceleration in the controls. It makes it harder to control the ship if you have to constantly deal with the momentum. I was able to build a layout where I never had to deal with pretty much any bullets since they were all slowed down and destroyed before they reached me, and then I lost to the FPS that dropped to like 5 on ~23rd wave. I love the general idea, and the gameplay is quite solid, good job!
🎤 PolyHatSteve
26. Apr 2018 · 19:22 UTC
@Evan Minto Thank you! Also yeah, the slow turrets can actually make it harder if you build them too high up, haha. The best place seems to be to put them near the bottom just to give you more time to dodge without disrupting the patterns too much.

@Zinkler Yeah it did strike me that something was a bit off with the controls as I was testing the game. I've been playing some touhou lately and it definitely does feel more floaty than it should. I think the problem comes down with using the Unity "axes" system, so I'm going to have to experiment with just basic button inputs later on. Anyways, thanks for the input!
TWCROCKETT
27. Apr 2018 · 20:17 UTC
Great job. The game engine runs smoothly and it's got effective visuals.
Yetman
27. Apr 2018 · 21:24 UTC
I like the idea. Even without a tutorial, it was really clear and easy to master. I lost on Wave 8 but it was really fun. Great job.
yancharkin
28. Apr 2018 · 10:21 UTC
I'm not a big fan of bullet-hell games, but I enjoyed this game quite a bit! "Tower Defense" element makes the game much more interesting.