Leviathan

Wow, very fun right of the bat

1. Very intuitive, I think after a few plays you start to understand tower attack power etc. 
2. Not confused
3. The flying manta ray maybe OP
4. Yes

1.) Is the process of building and upgrading a tower intuitive?  Do you have a good sense of the range of a tower?

No I don't really understand how far a tower can shoot compared to each other.

2.) Did you feel like you understood the mechanics of the game?  Was there anything you were confused by?

Nope I think it is coming along really well.

3.) How do you feel about the difficulty of the game?  How was the pacing of the first 10 rounds compared to the future rounds? 4.) Did you feel like the selection of towers offered you multiple choices in terms of playstyle?

A squid cam and wrecked my economy on round 3 so i only made it to round 7.

4.) Did you feel like the selection of towers offered you multiple choices in terms of playstyle?

Yes

Finally, if you encountered anything you think might be a bug during your time playing, we'd appreciate it if you let us know!

It is coming along really well now!

This game is really great!

I feel the early waves of enemies move pretty quickly, which can be a bit overwhelming when you start a new game.

I wonder if raising the price of towers that aren't needed in the first few rounds would help the player know that the tower wont be effective in those rounds. (based on enemy type)

-Alexis Rivera

This game looks amazing, I love the color scheme. The monsters honestly are adorable(not sure if that's the vibe you wanted but they are very cute)and the boss was so cool to see moving towards me. I love the concept of this game as well.

The only negative I encountered was that I had no way of seeing how much currency I have at my disposal.

The process of building the towers and upgrading felt intuitive and the large circle helps with the range. I would suggest to have a double click system when purchasing or upgrading the towers, although the text boxes may clog the playing field. 

I understood the mechanics after a few refreshes. A small tutorial of the controls and the overall objective would be greatly appreciated. I like the red stripe on the side of the screen where the monsters will appear. I was confused on how to add further towers, for some reason, I was not able to access the medical tower and any options under the word medical. I would chalk that up to user error, it may be me, it could help to add a small scroller bar on the side. Or perhaps make it a pop-out menu.  

The first ten rounds are paced very well. I found that the rounds moved in a good fast pace. I made it level 14, but I'm not sure what eventually caused my demise. I would enjoy if there was a small indication on how to start the game, a small tag saying to place a tower to begin. 

The towers is really where I found my strategy. I was able to determine exactly where a tower should go based on what it targets. I also enjoy having the "slums" as a sort of barrier around my city. I very much enjoyed the variety of towers.  

Overall, I found no bugs and no issues with lagging. I was able to entre my name with my high score and ended the game. 

A fantastic game! I would love to play this more often, it moves fast and you have to make quick decisions. 

You guys been doing a good job putting this together. The art and music are on point and the tower defense fundamentals work pretty well. As for your questions:

1. I think building would be a bit more intuitive if you switched the control scheme for placing towers to be a two click system where you click to select the tower and then click again to place it. The drag and drop can be a bit unreliable when you're scrambling to build towers. 

2. I wasn't aware of the upgrade system initially so I think making that more apparent and clear on how to upgrade is an improvement to make. I also think tooltips on enemies that will appear next round telling the player their type and their effects would be nice. I didn't exactly know what enemies were flying types at first and having that info to know what towers to prep for the next round would be helpful. Then also knowing that the stingray is actually a cruise missile that destroys my hopes and dreams is also some info I would've loved to know too.

3. The game comes out swinging and in these initial play throughs I found it a bit challenging while I was learning the tower mechanics. It becomes easier after learning what to do but I think toning down the difficulty in the first few rounds just by a little would help. I found myself getting jumped in round 9 only to get destroyed by the Leviathan the round after. And I think a little more time to get established would make this game feel good. Then after round 10 I'd say it feels right to get funky with the difficulty. I do like the inability to build towers on top of destroyed sites. It really adds a layer of challenge and strategy. If you'd want to make games longer I think being able to put out fires for a cost to restore a tile would be a good addition, maybe make the cost to do that very expensive to prevent people from overly relying on it. Just a suggestion though. 

4. I liked the tower selection. I think you have a good set of towers and the tooltips that tell you what they do and the enemy types they combat is good. I don't think you need to change any of that as I think everything you need to hold out is given to the player.

One last thing for you guys, in one of my games I lost to the Leviathan in round 10 and had a game crash at the very end. Game still ended but was unresponsive at the name input screen. I'd look at that. I'll attach the webpage error but I would think there's some Unity error that caused this to be thrown.

Outside of that this game is coming along real well, good job so far guys!

-Micco Estrada

Love the retro feel to this game! I could not figure out how to upgrade the towers though. The range on most of the towers are good, but I feel like the hospital tower's range was not perfectly clear. It was the only tower I did not use much because of this, and how high its cost was.

Mechanics were easy enough to understand, but I did wonder why I could only place a gunner as my first tower instead of being able to choose from all the towers.

The difficulty is good where its at currently, but I think either the costs should be lowered a tad or slightly more reward from the monsters. Especially with the bombers that destroy groups of towers, it can quickly eat through costs.

I ended up mostly choosing gunners and drones placing them 3-4 tiles from the core. Though even on my most successful run I only made it to level 11 (made it there 4 times out of a dozen or so attempts). I tried multiple styles including lining the core with traps, but I always felt like the costs were a bit unbalanced for me to be successful.

Great game otherwise! My main suggestion would be to balance the costs a bit and it would be perfect! No bugs from what I could tell though!

Pretty cool game! Everything works well. I will be playing this more often than not

1. To avoid a player from accidentally  upgrading a tower there should be a physical buttons saying "upgrade" instead of double clicking the tower/ words next to the tower.

2. One thing that is hard to distinct with some enemies is if anti air can kill certain types of enemies. There should be some type of visual queue or label above each enemy saying what type of enemy it is and what can kill it

On another note I feel like to make the game look more visually appealing when defending the city there should be more enemies attacking at a given time. Like ALOT more. Doing thing along with changing  the cost of turrents, health, and damage can make the game look at cooler visually.

1.) Is the process of building and upgrading a tower intuitive?  Do you have a good sense of the range of a tower?

I think its a little too easy to upgrade the tower. many times I would try to click on the tower to see stats/range and it would accidentally upgrade it.

2.) Besides a bit more information regarding the specifics of towers and upgrades, is there anything you feel would improve the user interface?

Being able to zoom in and out around the map to better gauge how many enemies are coming.

3.) How do you feel about the difficulty of the game?  We aimed for the prototype to have a rather high difficulty, as we wanted players to hit an end point (losing).  Compared to this, what sort of difficulty would you like to see in future versions (Easier, much easier, about the same, harder because I'm a masochist, etc.)?

I got to round 20 before quitting. I think the difficulty is in a good spot and you can really capitalize on the whole rebuilding is required aspect.

4.) It's hard to tell (especially with some graphical glitches we're still running into), but each tower does subtly show its health.  Did you notice this fact, and if you did was the display useful? 

I did not notice it on my own but after reading this it was helpful to for placing slums as walls.

Finally, if you encountered anything you think might be a bug during your time playing, we'd appreciate it if you let us know!

Nothing major, just layering issues with some towers and the HQ. Really like how the drones move around!

Hey Guys!

Firstly the process of building and upgrading a tower is pretty intuitive. I would suggest a quick pop up when the game starts that tells the player to click on the store button. A little tip here would definitely add some accessibility. In order to improve the user interface I would add a large bar that shows the player base health and tower health. I for one didnt notice any of these elements outright and feel they are crucial to the game. I think the difficulty of the game is way to fast paced. Going from a round of all ground to all air right away feels like its taking away from the players learning curve. I would suggest a few ground unit rounds then an air unit then mixed units after that. I feel that gives the player a good amount of time to learn what each unit does and how it is defeated. As I stated earlier I did not notice any of the health counters. Not even the home base. I feel this needs to be much more obvious. Other than that I really like the art style of the game and it runs very smoothly.  

thank you for the game. here is my reply:

1. It was very easy to place the towers and I knew what the range of the towers were for the sniper and the gunner. I would like to know about the range of the drone tower, as it only shows the drones flying about.

2. I think that a picture of the type of enemy coming would improve the interface as well as giving me a chance to add a tower based on the enemy coming

3. I think that the difficulty was good where it was. the bigger monsters give you an incentive to save your credits to build more towers, and the Leviathan really shakes up the way you play.

4. I was able to see the health of the towers, but I could go for a health bar over each of the towers as well.

I also noticed a graphical glitch whenever you put a tower near the settlement. part of the wall disappears where the tower is. other than that, it was a good prototype.

1. It was fairly simple for me to figure out how to place towers. However, it wasn't very clear to me how far my towers could shoot. I like how you could see their range when you dragged the towers in. But sometimes it felt like enemies were in the range of my towers and they wouldn't shoot at the enemies. This mainly happened in the higher round for me.
2. I thought the stuff was self-explanatory. I like how it's not very cluttered, and the stuff that is there can be minimized.
3. The difficulty was pretty good. It felt like it naturally got more and more challenging. One idea might be to have one of the larger enemies come in as a mini-boss on round 5 or so? But if you left it as it was I think it would still be a really fun game!
4. It was hard for me to tell most of the towers had health. I could tell easest with the drone tower, but the rest I had no idea what their health was. 

Overall, I thought it was super fun! I can't wait for the finished product! I think I encountered two bugs? One is that the Leviathan would go through my towers and go straight to my colony. I didn't think this was supposed to happen because it just went underneath all of my towers. The second bug that I think I encountered was when some of my towers got destroyed. After they were destroyed, the tile turned red and I couldn't place a tower on that tile for a while. I wasn't sure if this was a feature or not. It made planning more challenging for sure. But regardless, I had a ton of fun playing y'all's game.

1.) Is the process of building and upgrading a tower intuitive?  Do you have a good sense of the range of a tower?

The building and range was intuitive and I liked it. However I was unsure what upgrading did. Was is just health or was it range and damage as well.

2.) Besides a bit more information regarding the specifics of towers and upgrades, is there anything you feel would improve the user interface?

A pile of rubble would be better than the red tiles in my opinion as it would nicely wrap up the graphical side of the program.

3.) How do you feel about the difficulty of the game?  We aimed for the prototype to have a rather high difficulty, as we wanted players to hit an end point (losing).  Compared to this, what sort of difficulty would you like to see in future versions (Easier, much easier, about the same, harder because I'm a masochist, etc.)?

At this time it is a fair game with me reaching wave 20. I would like to see the game gain in difficulty over time and maybe additional towers unlocked over time.

4.) It's hard to tell (especially with some graphical glitches we're still running into), but each tower does subtly show its health.  Did you notice this fact, and if you did was the display useful? 

Once I knew where the health indicators were it was easy. I rather liked this method as it makes you double check the status of the towers.

1. I felt the process of buying and placing the towers was intuitive. I didn't really know the range of any of them. When the towers are all on the board it is hard to keep track of which one is doing what. The act of upgrading is kind of intuitive but I didn't have a need to hover over any of the towers so if I had not read your description I wouldn't know that I could upgrade them. 

2. I think knowing the range each tower has when placing them (maybe in a circle like you did for one of the towers) and when they are actively attacking enemies would be helpful. Also, it would be helpful to know how much damage each tower has taken and how much each tower gives. I know the towers flash red faster the more damage they have taken but that is only visible when an enemy is currently attacking them. It would be nice to know how many more rounds until the Leviathan comes. I know it is every ten rounds but it would be nice to have a visual reminder on screen (maybe a countdown). I think this will help remind the player about how much time they have left and will also make the rounds leading up to the Leviathan feel more nerve-wracking. 

3. I feel like the first ten rounds until the first appearance of the Leviathan were pretty easy and then the shift to the next appearance the rounds got really difficult. Having the rounds more difficult made it a lot more fun. I think the first ten rounds should get progressively harder (so round one would be easy but by round ten it would be harder) instead of waiting until after the Leviathan shows up the first time. Otherwise, I felt like there was a lot of downtime in the first ten rounds. The difficulty after that is good. It feels rewarding to try to play for as long as possible. 

4. The central tower's health was noticeable since the center grew more red. I noticed the towers flashed red faster depending on how much damage they received but if there was another indicator I didn't notice it. I think when the towers were being attacked the red flashing was enough to know how much damage the tower had taken. However, if the tower wasn't being attacked it would have been nice to know the health for it. 

I didn't notice any bugs. I love the art style and the noticeable difference between the different towers and how they play. Great job! I look forward to seeing how you continue to develop and improve the game!

1. I feel like there should be a circle that appears when trying to place towers or when you select one, that way the players knows the range of a given tower. 

2. I think if you put some visual label on towers and enemies that signify if its ground/air based would be good.

3. I like the overall difficulty of the game

4. I did not notice the health of the towers. Is it possible to show a health bar for the towers?

I really liked the tracking and animations for the sniper towers!