I like your art work. Good game

really enjoyed playing

I couldn't really understand what was going on in the game, apart from this, the art and the music are fantastic!

I love the art and muic. The gameplay is a little confusing even after having read your description.

Nice and interesting game. I love the art and animations. The font really matches the overall feel. Liked that you have options to upgrade your towers. The idea is innovative. music fits really well. Great job!

Beautiful Game. I love the artwork on the towers. I was a little confused by the colour components etc and what the "good vs bad" enemies were. But I did get it and enjoyed it. :)

Really fun twist on tower defense. There's good depth, deciding when to speed up and slow down your targets and how to balance colors. The fact that you're keeping your targets alive really turns the whole genre on its head.

Love the art style as well.

I was having some issues with the audio spiking and getting quiet, although I did enjoy the music when it was working.

I must admit, i didn't get everything in this game ^^'
The contextual menu is a little bit confusing. After several attempts i started to understand how the association of some towers can create "combos" and charge the light particules more efficiently.
However, the graphics are nice and the music creats a real atmosphere in the game.
It clearly asked you a lot a work, well done !

I'm a tower defense fan so this excited me when I saw it! It's a cool concept to play with the inverse TD mechanic, but I think it can be explained better.

I'm mixed about the slow tower, since it gave the mindset that I was supposed to STOP the particles from reaching the end point seeing as this game borrows many TD concepts. Also after the slow tower is upgraded, it becomes a haste tower, which is a completely different tower type from its base tower type, so I think the initial tower should just be a Lv 1 haste tower since I completely avoided slow towers until late-game until I put one for fun and realised that its behaviour changes when upgraded to be useful. It's definitely a noob-trap for first-time players.

I wasn't sure what the colours symbolise since the recolor tooltip didn't explain anything. I thought it was purely aesthetics and didn't see the point of it, but a waste of money. It was only until I selected a particle that I start to get a hint it had some gameplay element, so this could be explained in-game. I think this was the most confusing aspect for me when I played. The TD part is pretty clear since I've played TDs, but the colours is something unique so I wasn't sure what "recolouring" did. Even now I'm not so sure.

It also didn't help that I wasn't aware of the ability to select the moving particles. This makes me feel like the bars should be displayed above each particle by default so I can gauge visually without having to click on each particle, but I understand this may clutter the screen so I'm unsure about this. So then I figured that you had to balance the colours to keep it alive I think? Midway through I wanted to quit and re-read the instructions on the menu because I didn't understand what the colours do so maybe adding a help button in the map scene will be nice so I don't have to leave the game for help. I also wondered if the amount of life gained from each particle depends on how far the coloured bars are filled so I can plan better. I think this mechanic really needs more explanation, but it's just my personal opinion.

Since you have a contextual menu, you can make use of it to explain more stuff in-game. I was wondering why the number at the top was decreasing by itself even though I seemed to be winning. I think hovering over the pollen and life numbers at the top UI should say what those are - at first glance I thought 10,000 was the currency and 50 was the lives, since in TDs the currency is usually the bigger number. Something as simple as saying "This is your life, it decreases over time, and recharges when light particles reach you" will greatly explain the game mechanics to me since not everybody will read your ludum dare page before playing, and hovering over things players don't understand is a more intuitive action.

I think the default path could be more interesting, adding some corners and turns will add strategic depth to tower placement like most TDs. Otherwise, I just cram all my towers at the row adjacent to the path and the rest of the map space is not used which isn't the most fun way to play a TD. Definitely has potential for improving the fun factor there. The presence of tower types did help to combat this slightly.

Shortcut keys (1,2,3) would be a nice QoL since this is a strategy game and it gets cumbersome with the mouse to place or upgrade multiple towers. It becomes a chore to build/upgrade later on. However, I appreciate the speed up buttons.

Music is relaxing. There are some moments where the music lets out momentary high pitched squeaks that sounds broken/ear-piercing, but it's a small issue. I liked that the music "changes" during battle (seems like an overlay of 2 sfx tracks instead of a change). Nice nontheless.

Also, is there an end point to the game? I think that would make it a more complete experience, with the option to continue endlessly after that if you want to keep the infinite waves. Overall it's pretty creative and the colours mechanic is definitely something cool to explore with a bit more explanation to the player. Great game! :)

@yyz Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I agree that many things in the game could be explained better, and we will take note of it for improvements in the future.

About the slow tower, you are right. It does not really fit into the current state of the game. Now that you mentioned it, I realize that having haste tower in the slow tower upgrades is counterintuitive.

The colors actually symbolize the type of damage the tower deals, which honestly, was not well described in the game.

I really like the idea of using hovering tooltips to display information which we were having trouble placing on the screen! The shortcut keys is also a great idea.

The last wave is wave 20. I too, think that the option to continue endlessly would make the game more complete, and it is an interesting idea to consider. I really like many of the great ideas and suggestions you have here, and will definitely be taking them into consideration. Thanks for taking the time to play our game and for your thoughtful feedback!

@ianteo thanks for the explanation! I eventually got that the colour would deal "damage" to the respective coloured health bar, but I think the part that confused me was that each particle had 3 health bars, so I was unsure if the game's intention is to tell me that I had to balance them for optimum "DPS" or that I just need to focus on one colour to ensure the particle makes it to the end. So for me it was ambiguous if there was a need to fill up the 3 health bars, and if there is a benefit for doing so, or to focus on 1 since it is cheaper and it appears only 1 is needed for its survival.

Also, silly me! I tried the game again and realised I could actually build on the path to make it wind around, pretty cool. But then I realise given the design of the game, this is not beneficial since I want the particles to take the shortest path, so it won't make sense for me as a player to try and create an interesting path as the best way to win is to keep the path straight, unless there's a hidden mechanic I've not discovered.

I can imagine that if you were going down that route, you could have some "collectibles" on the map to encourage the player to build an interesting path, to guide the particles to go through those collectibles, or like special "health refill" spots for the player to aim for, but I understand there may not be time for exploration in a jam so I'm probably just getting carried away (I love exploring the potential of TD games haha).

I didn't make it to wave 20 as I couldn't quite figure out the optimum strategy so I mistook that the game didn't end, but great that it does. Good job to you and your team on the game once again.

@yyz Yes, I totally get you. The initial idea was for the player to build towers a long the path to force the particles to wind around. Unfortunately, my stage design made it so that the optimal play was to let the particles take the shortest path. Your ideas to incentivize the player to make a winding path are really interesting, and I will be thinking about how to expand on those ideas. :smile:

@ianteo yea no worries, I totally understand the idea behind your choices. I'm glad that my comment was able to be of help! always happy to talk with fellow game devs, maybe we'll get the chance to work together sometime :v:

The art is amazing and the music really helps with the mood of the game O: Buuuut didn’t quite understood all of the game :/

The tutorial part was kind of confusing for me, although after some time I got some of the hang out fo it, like the combos and stuff. Overall had a fun, although confusing, time. Keep it up you guys :D

The sound on this is so very nice. That plus the art really gives the game a good feel! With this being said, I didn't really understand the game play. And reading the how to play in the game at the size it was in the browser was very difficult, you may want to increase the font size, or go for something with a similar feel, but is a little more legible