In What the Shell you play as a crab and have to protect small turtle hatchlings on their way to the ocean. Drive off seagulls by building different types of sand towers that are occupied by your armed comrades. Try to keep as many turtles alive as possible.

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Controls

• WASD: Move
• 123456: Select different towers to build
• Q: Start destruction mode
• E: Start upgrade mode
• Esc: Pause
• Mouse: Aim
• Mouse Wheel: Zoom in/out
• Left Mouse button: Depending on your current state:
  • Shoot claw as boomerang
  • Build selected tower
  • Destroy hovered tower
  • Upgrade hovered tower
• Right Mouse button: Depending on your current state:
  • Cancel tower building
  • Cancel tower upgrade
  • Cancel tower destruction

Gameplay

You control a crab on a beach playing field. On the left side, turtle babies will hatch from their eggs and start crawling towards the ocean. From the top and bottom seagulls will spawn periodically over time that want to eat the turtles.

You can defend the turtles by building sand towers along their path. Towers are occupied by other crabs and have different kinds of projectiles or waves that will work as auto turrets for you. Towers can also be upgraded to further improve their efficiency and effectiveness. For building and upgrading towers you need seashells which you earn by defeating seagulls. If you misplaced a tower or need space you can also destroy them which will give you their initial cost back.

Additionally you can also detach and throw your own claw as a boomerang to attack seagulls yourself.

If a seagull reaches a turtle, it will grab it and try to fly away with it. Once the seagull reaches the top or bottom border, the turtle is lost for good. If you defeat the seagull before it can escape, the turtle will drop and continue crawling.

Win condition

You win the game if you manage to keep the majority of the baby turtles alive. If more than 30 turtles die you lose the game.

Tower types

The following tower types can be built:

|Urchin Tower|Conch Tower|5G Tower|Umbrella Tower|Seastar Tower|Bucket Tower| |---|---|---|---|---|---| ||||||| |Throws urchins that attach to seagulls and deal small amount of damage multiple times.|The sound of this majestic conch slows down all seagulls in its range.|Creates shock waves that deal damage to all surrounding seagulls over time.|Shoots an umbrella over large distances. Has the highest range of all towers.|Throws a seastar that chains off seagulls a certain amount of time.|Shoots multiple projectiles in a broad spread.| |Upgrade to increase frequency, range and damage.|Upgrade to increase range and slow effect.|Upgrade to increase range.|Upgrade to increase frequency, range and damage.|Upgrade to increase frequency, range, damage and the number of chains.|Upgrade to increase frequency, range, damage and the number of projectiles.|

Enemy types

​The following enemy types exist:​

|Normal Seagull|Tanky Seagull|Fast Seagull| |---|---|---| |||| |medium health|high health|low health| |medium speed|low speed|high speed|

Tips

• The UI shows you many important numbers, including remaining unhatched eggs, the number of turtles that successfully reached the ocean, and how many turtles you can lose before losing the game.
• The UI also shows a minimap for an easy overview on the whole beach area.
• The minimap also indicates from where enemies will soon spawn in with an exclamation mark.

Technical details

• The game was made in Unity 2D.
• All used graphics and sounds have been made by ourselves.