This is awesome. I got really stressed out at the beginning thinking I really messed up my turret location at the start. But once realizing that I can sell towers it became really fun scrambling around buying,selling and upgrading. Also great music ;P

Fun game! I like the that the game has a only few simple mechanics, but there's actually room to try new tricks and ideas within those mechanics. After losing a few times I found I had some new ideas for how to approach things.

Repositioning felt a bit hectic using a trackpad, I didn't feel quite quick enough to rearrange as much as I would like. But I liked that there was no punishment for rearranging, it encouraged trying out different arrangements.

So far this is the jam game I've given the most tries after losing, because I actually was enjoying trying to figure out how to win.

A simple, fun, decently balanced Tower Defense game! Interesting music as well :)
Nice work!

Nice! I think the twist of selling and buying towers adds a lot of value to the mix. You always can get money from some place.

This game felt really fast paced and cutthroat to me - I feel like if I mismanaged any single unit of currency I could lose. I found it very fun in its difficulty, and managed to get up to wave 6 after some time playing and improving. It doesn't feel impossible, but I would need a *lot* of practice to beat all 20 I think.
I would appreciate some setup time in-between waves because I often found myself temporarily moving some turrets near the enemy spawns to get extra hits in before they reached the winding path around heart.

Also, I found that I could sell the heart for $1. Regardless of if it was intentional or not I appreciated the extra cash :p

omg you can sell the heart

thanks for the bug report, @mbc :sweat_smile:

Well, that was fun! And so far the game I spent most time with on here. It took me multiple tries and certainly wasn't easy, but it never seemed out of reach, so I kept trying!

I especially like the decision that towers can be sold for full value. Makes experimenting much easier and less punishing, and while it takes away bigger the commitment decisions you have to make in other TDs, it adds lots and lots of smaller decision on what to sell and maybe build elsewhere. Nice.

Not sure about the upgrades - it seems that just placing more stuff is better value for most of it, especially in the first half? I only started upgrading on the critical beam paths, and then at the end when I was in the thick of it.

Great achievement to get a balanced TD game out in such a short time!

And after it was over, I sold everything and just sat there a bit. Peace returned to the heart. Also, money.

PS: Love the choice of music.

I always like a tower defence game, and this is a lovely looking one!

Is there meant to be an ending message after wave 20 - it just stopped for me.

You can never go wrong with a tower defense game. Looks and plays great! And the music made me laugh.

Haha the music :)

This was pretty difficult right from the start you have to be quick and strategic, I like that you can reactively sell towers and move closer to your base when you need to.

The tower defence genre can feel a bit basic sometimes, but this was really well polished and enjoyable :)

And of course, the music made me actually laugh out loud.

I loved it! I like the art :) and the music was glorious

A very polished and fun tower defence game! The laser turret is an intersting and I like how you have to aim it yourself, was very satisfying 😁 and quite challenging! The music made me laugh out loud, great pun! The graphics were simple, cute and effective.
Really good effort, well done!

I played it like 6 times before beating last wave, but there was no end screen ;(. Game has lovely music and greate pixel art, great game bro. I would like to stats of towers, that would be useful for building best defense :)

Thoroughly enjoyable from the perspective of someone that gets too stressed out trying to play RTS games. The ability to sell back units at full price feels really unique, and trying to grasp the changes from one upgrade to another make experimenting feel fresh, even though I would like a bit more direct feedback about certain differences between damage values sometimes. It makes me think of the design behind the Machine Masters in Mega Man, where you have ample room to test things out and see what's most effective where, but you still have to work to get to the ideal testing environment. Thank you for your hard work!

Such a fun small game. It seems a bit hard at first, but once you get the hang of it it works out nicely. Well done!

Very solid Tower defense game, with a good difficulty curve, a complete upgrade system and the ability to sell without losing money the towers gives it a special touch, when suddenly you need to rethink frenetically what to sell or to buy for defeating a specific enemy (usually short waves of strong enemies, once the enemies passed some optimized parts of the map). Great fun!

I'm not tower defense games fan #1 but I liked this one, it's very unforgiving and I've sudden lost some games before I understood what to buy/upgrade first (also where to put lasers -_-)
The 1-bit-tile-ish style is a joy to see :)

I really enjoyed it :) I felt the progression was fair without being too easy which can be tough to balance. The palette is quite nice and really suits the overall style. Also, the music is hilarious. It was cool to watch your thought process and progress on twitter as well :)

I liked how moving towers sorta broke up the "don't really interact much" problem with tower defense games, made the game really fun! Overall a really solid entry!

Really good game all around. The art style is cute and everything in the game fits together. I just think that selling back towers so early in the game is kind of tough on the player, making it feel very hard until you are used to do it - and you do it a lot then.
Very good overall, ofc.

There's something charming about this simple TD game. I had a good time with it!
I'll say though, it's a tough game! I tried it about 4 times and couldn't get past the second boss on my best run.
I liked the little details, like pointing out where the next wave would come from. It definitely made it feel more playable.

I would have liked upgraded towers to feel more potent, but I understand how hard it is to playtest and balance much during a jam.
Fun entry! well done!

Very nicely done! I could not figure out how to restart the game without just reloading the webpage after I lost :( which I did more often than I'd like to admit.

Yeah, it's a tower defence game. The music is nice, but I don't think you're allowed to use copyrighted music. You're also not even mentioning the name of the song and a link to the midi cover. I believe you're using this version (https://bitmidi.com/bonnie-tyler-total-eclipse-of-the-heart-mid), but slowed down a bit.

I have achieved a total defense of the heart. I did enjoy the frantic moments where I had to sell all my lasers to beat a boss down. A nice encapsulation of the genre with a fun soundtrack!

I dig the graphics and I will admit, the music got a laugh out of me. I like the simplicity, though I found it kind of difficult (granted, I'm awful at tower defense games so that may have played a part). Definitely something I enjoyed playing all the same!

I feel like it was a bit too difficult (a single mistake and you're done) and riding on a single joke, but on the other hand I'm not a big fan of path-based tower defense games in general :stuck_out_tongue: I did like simplicity of it all a lot and the art works great, as does the gameplay. Not saying anything about the music :grin:

Played it way to long.. :smile: Love the art, the sound effects and the gameplay. Only made it to wave 10.. Great job :thumbsup:
Going to take another game just to see if I can't beat it.. :smile:

Great little tower defence game with nice visuals. I thought it was a bit tough at first but then I learned you can sell towers for the same amount they cost, so I just started reorganizing the level between waves which I thought was pretty neat. Though I do think it's still a bit punishing overall.

There's also a weird bug (or maybe intended affect) with the tower that shoots down a hole row. It seems to shoot behind itself as well. Admittedly helpful, just not sure if it's intended.

Every now and then I get a little bit terrified when starting a new Ludum Dare game. And the I see the look in your eyes!

It's a beauty!

Very fun game! I managed to go to the level 10, i don't think I will be able to beat all of them but I had a lot of fun! Simple, fast paced, fun music, nice pixel art. GG <3

A fun, simple game with all the TD essentials. UI could be a little confusing to those who have not played many TD games, but to those who know the fundamentals it's probably a breath of relief to not be flooded with information. Solid entry!

I'm terrible at tower defense games, but I enjoyed this one, and I love the premise/title.

I don't really like tower defense games in general, but this one was really fun! I think, it's because this game is simple in the right way. It's nice to be able to sell things for the same price that you paid for them, technically it gives the ability to move weapons around. :) Also, thanks for binding number keys to weapons, it helps a lot. Nice, highly enjoyable game!

The audio was fun at first, but then it turned pretty painful, especially with all the intense pew pew going on! Other than that a cute, simple tower defense.

Past the cheesy song (a guilty pleasure of mine :smiley:) as the concept's starting point, this is a really solid and fun entry. I struggled the first times to avoid being overwhelmed at wave 3, but eventually you figure out the best positioning -and reach the 15$ I needed to place that wonderful, wonderful beam :two_hearts: .

Colour palette and sprites looked great.

Not sure if this has been reported already, but beam towers are targetting backward too (not that I'm complaining, it saved my life a couple of times :grimacing:)

Good job!

I love the mood of the game, the art is so nice and the music add some humor, i can deny hahahah well done bro!

This was fun! I've never played tower defence myself and felt too difficult at first, but after the first few waves (~ Wave 6?) it became easy and fun. Maybe too easy? As you can sell towers and the money doesn't get consumed, you can put tons of towers by the end of the game. Mechanics to decrease money, like steal, might be interesting. Also I loved the pixel graphics. Great job!

The graphics look well, good pixel art. Controls are self-explanatory. Although, the game is very difficult, I couldn't make it through past third wave! Maybe needs some better money weighing when killing an enemy?
_(I found your game via Haxe Roundup and instantly remembered your name and Hexagon, so I had to check out your work :rofl:)_

lol the Total Eclipse of the Heart. I feel like the ultimate strat is just to go ham on lasers on the horizontal stretches. I'm not normally a fan of tower defense because they're generally a bit samey, but this is actually the most original take I've seen on the genre since I started playing LD, because you actually have different area effects on the lasers. Most of the time it's just "range increase" or "DPS difference", not actual difference in area. So it was cool! Nice one.


Awesome. got super sucked in, didn't think I would.

I enjoyed this! Specially trying different set ups. I like how you can freely add and remove defenses. It was a fun game but I kinda kept wishing there was a mechanical twist to the tower defense formula.

Not a huge tower defence fan, but this was really fun.

This was one of those games that you keep saying "one more go" to yourself. I started off by not really liking it and thinking that it was just impossible to progress enough but once I got my head around having to constantly re-position I started to really enjoy it. Nice work!

Nice! I liked the pacing, and the ability to sell things without losing money opens up the gameplay. Loved the music :).

The sound effects do get a bit weird with a lot of units.

I was internally laughing at the music all the time hahah
Nice take on tower defense, pretty tough and quite fun.

I really enjoyed this game! the art, music and difficulty progression kept it really interesting :) Havent played a TD game in a while!

Pretty fun little TD game with what feels like a good difficulty balance (though I only made it about halfway through). :slight_smile:

A few parts did lack some polish: I would have appreciated speed up / slow down / pause buttons, as is common in TD games. Or at least don't start the game right away before placing the first tower / before you've even had a chance to get "acclimated to" the UI. Also, a way to restart the game without reloading the page would've been good. Oh, and I managed to accidentally place a tower in a random spot more than once because I was impatient on the title screen and double clicked. :sweat_smile:

Somehow I just really love the concept of ripping off an 80s pop song for a game for no apparent reason :D Gameplay is pretty fun, though tower defense in general just sort of seems like trial and error to me. Is this upgrade actually worth 60% as much as buying a new tower? Who knows! Try and fail and find out maybe! It's like I'm supposed to be an optimal DPS calculating machine, but I don't have direct feedback on how to improve. I got pretty far on my first attempt (wave 15) then kept failing earlier on subsequent attempts and didn't really understand why. Tower defense just feels like a genre where it's hard to learn how to get better. Regardless, it was still pretty satisfying to play. Nice work!

Enjoyable TD game, one of only a dozen or so games I've played that made me think "one more go" when I failed. I'd aggree with what others have said about the lack of feedback about what an upgrade does (I think it just expands the range of the laser); some stats would probably help but might clutter the clean interface you have (maybe use number of stars/crosses to indicate Range & Power, etc). I think the same problem is with the health bar of the attackers; I think they're the same length, but some monsters obviously have more hitpoints than others.
Also got to admit, I'm not sure I'd have been quite so into it without Bonnie Tyler blaring in the background..

**Me at 7pm:** "_Just one.. more... game_"

**Me around midnight:**



Looking forward to waves 21+ and new maps!!! :fingers_crossed:

I'm not usually one for tower defence games, but this was fun and really well balanced. It wasn't initially clear how some of the objects worked (e.g. vortex), but trial and error made me find my way. Very impressive that you managed this in a few framework too - I wouldn't dream of leaving my custom engine these days. Nice work as always Terry. :slight_smile:

This is a very complete and well balanced game, one of the best I've seen! The towers provide different strategies so there's a lot to the game. A lot of different enemies too. Definitely going to play this again to try and complete all 20 levels. This is also one of the few games where I have no obvious complaints about the game design. Excellent job!

More TD games need to allow for 100% refund rates! The "random" mode of Element TD is my favorite TD of all time because of this; it even incentivizes you to sell and rebuild towers periodically by giving you interest on your unused money every 15 seconds.

This is simple and straightforward but there's enough variety in the towers and waves to be pretty fun and allow for a neat process of discovering what works and what doesn't. The 100% refund rate means the player is free to experiment -- which they need to do since we don't tell them any stats or characteristics of the towers. It works really well!

This game is addicting! I got back to it now after playing it earlier, just to try to beat it.
But I noticed the gameplay seems to be bound to framerate. On my 60hz screen I can get to round 12, while on my higher framerate monitor I can't get past round 2. The enemies move way too fast.
Gameplay that shows the second round:

60hz: https://streamable.com/z6hgz5

165hz: https://streamable.com/6gjkvi

also I won the game and sold my heart!

I enjoyed the pacing of this game. Once I stabilized in the early game, I started to hit my stride, making tangible improvements to my damage output, but then I got killed by the second boss. Overall I felt like the game was fair, and that I was improving at the game every time I lost. I'm glad you focused on pacing and balance, that essential aspect of the game really makes the game shine!

:wave_tone1: This game is featured in a blog post highlighting my favorite LD46 games:

**https://github.blog/2020-05-15-ludum-dare-46-staff-picks** `<3`