Zgulls by ashashza
I tried to make a tower defensy game where pesky seagulls enclose you in a loop.

I didn't achieve the level of depth I envisioned for this but it gave me massive respect for anyone creating tower defense games!
I didn't create the audio for this jam, just hacked together some free sounds found online.
| Youtube | https://ashashza.itch.io/zgulls |
| Youtube | https://ashashza.itch.io/zgulls |
| Youtube | https://ashashza.itch.io/zgulls |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/zgulls |
Ratings
| Overall | 229th | 3.958⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 352th | 3.729⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 565th | 3.542⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1193th | 3.208⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 406th | 3.979⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 641th | 2.895⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 152th | 4.042⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 22🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
The tower defense mechanics are simple, but very well thought. I loved the fact that there is no way to lose and a clear goal with an ending before it gets repetitive. I loved the art, the music choice, the ambient sounds, everything leads to a perfect mood.
Even the fact that you don't quite understand what towers do exactly or if a strat is better than another one leads to this great feeling of comfort you have when playing.
Thanks for the game I loved it 💕
HTML5 version should be easy to do with unity, maybe push one if you want more people to play?
Music was very relaxing, and mixed with the seagulls noise was even better. The graphics were really cute and nice, and made the game very pleasing to watch. It's easy and calm,and makes you want to stay even after you've won.
The game also plays really nice, only problem is maybe sometimes I couldn't click on an option to select it. But without that, it's really intuitive and fun.
Congratulations on this amazing game!
@doot Really appreciate that feedback, thanks. HTML version is also a good idea, I've uploaded a build :)
@antihedra Great point on the hut placement. It's something I noticed while watching others play and would definitely fix if I work on this further.
@voidsay Happy to add builds. I've just added a web build https://ashashza.itch.io/zgulls Let me know if that works for you!
@darkmax14 Great point on building placement feedback, I face the same irritation myself. I wanted there to be consequence if you lost a building but I don't think having the spacing issue was a good choice :stuck_out_tongue:
@bentekiller Aw, sorry you ran into that. Thanks for giving it another try! You echo'd my feeling with this jam a lot. I enjoy the look and mood but wish I'd managed to create more depth in the gameplay.
@krysh Thanks! So glad you liked the soundtrack, after playing your jam you've clearly got good taste in tunes!
@gamescodedogs Appreciated! It's so nice to hear that the chill mood I was going for came through.
The UI could have received some extra love and it was not always clear where I could place new structures, but otherwise very nice!
Anyway the bug wasn't too bad for me, so let's get back to the actual game!
Fences seam extremely OP. Just build a couple fishing huts and create the grate palisade! They are stronger and smaller then the other towers, plus they are very cheap.
I wish there where hotkeys. Buttons to quickly select a building and pressing shift to queue up multiple of the same type.
It was a relaxing experience more or less, good job!
Minor issues: the fences were a bit OP maybe and I'm not sure the boulders were always firing. A quality of life improvement to keep the current building type selected would be nice. Some indicator of where an object can be placed would be cool too.
I really liked the challenge to get to 100 fish. it took me 40 minutes to get 100 fish. i probably had a million slings and half a million boulders. i enjoyed alot!
@voidsay Ah, sounds like web kinda worked. I'm not doing anything special, using standard render pipe. I suspect that the postprocessing shader I added for subtle fog is causing the red lines, good to know! Good feedback on the fence OP thing. I wish I'd had more time to balance out the towers more and make choices between them more interesting. Thanks for playing.
@andre-sadie That's all great input, thanks. Appreciate the compliments on colour & minimal visuals too.
@vesk Wow, nice catch on Islanders! I played that a few weeks ago so there's definitely some inspiration from there (mostly around free-form building placement). Thanks for the comment.
@walaber Oh man, that stream was delightful to watch! Your kids are excellent playtesters :smile: Watching the confusing controls in the beginning was really painful, I wish I'd done a better job explaining the camera controls (and not making the building buttons look like hotkeys!). Your son groked the concept so quickly and did such a good job of getting all the way to the finish. You daughter also had great feedback on the thumbnail not doing a good job of presenting the game well. Realised I saw the physics game you're working on, on reddit recently. Listed! So much learning in this for me, thanks guys!
With random building rotation you nicely avoided visual reprtition :slight_smile:
I think tkat some builting construction and destruction sound can be added here to add more feedback to player.
Only thing that bothers me is that I needed to click RMB to deselect building before i could chose other, but is a minor issue.
I also experienced a little bit, and I escaped the loop. Outside the circle it is much easier to defend, because than birds are attacking from only one side, but i guess it's cheating :stuck_out_tongue: