Darkness Defenders
Defend your evil kingdom from adventurers in this puzzling tower-defense game make for the 102nd Weekly Game Jam!
Build turrets and power them using your minions, combining their unique abilities to create an impenetrable kingdom of darkness! But be warned, adventurers including warriors, archers, and knights will attack your kingdom and attempt to overwhelm you.
Darkness defenders interprets the theme of the game jam, "One Big Boss," by having you play as the boss, the lord of darkness.
Follow me here on itch.io if you enjoyed the game, and make sure to give some feedback on the game to help me improve in the future (if you give feedback on my game, I'll download yours and help you out too).
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Very nice, it's fun to play.
Adding sound and bosses could really bring this to the next level as a tower defense game. But in it's current state it's already enjoyable, though after a while it does start to lag a lot. Perhaps changing difficulty by transitioning to stronger enemies and stronger projectiles instead of increasing the amount would help performance.
The minimalistic sprites are readable and work well.
One gameplay remark, the beggar, or old man with coin only comes facing to the right, so that created a bit of an uneven battlefield, which could be interesting, but left my left side rather empty with very few turrets.
Here's a screenshot just before I stopped due to lag: https://imgur.com/a/s2wzONl
Had a lot of fun playing this. I got to 110k points or so before things started lagging too much. Here's a screenshot taken moments before that. https://imgur.com/hqYZNOH
Hey! Nice game :D
The only downside is that... there's no sound, right? ^^;;
But besides that, I like the graphics, and the gameplay is simple enough for a casual run.
But... speaking of which, I've tried to jump in and play the game, and I really didn't understand what each tower did what, only after my first game over, and going through the tutorial is that I was able to really enjoy it :)
But, good job nonetheless o/ I like it.
Thanks! Yeah I could see how it could be confusing if you hadn't played the tutorial. And I definitely need sound.
The sound could be something simple. I think something in the lines of the old Atari 2600 games would fit with your graphics ^^
Try finding a synthesizer or something. I think you could use something like LMMS, which is open source, or Brfx, which produces something more along the NES era :)
If you need help with it, just give me a shout ^^
Very nice game, my only complains are:
1.The game feels slow so I'll try and speed it up a little
2.I think you should be able to return an item back to the bottom bar after you picked it
3.It will be nice if could buy an sell the towers and the turrets
Thanks for the feedback! The first two just came out in an update, but I think I won't add the third because it doesn't really fit with my original vision for the game and wouldn't really add to the experience in my opinion.
This is quite fun, and I enjoyed playing it a lot. My only complaint would be that after you reach a certain point, you're basically invincible. After around 15 minutes, I actually got up to eat lunch, came back, and had an insanely high score. Still a really fun game though, I just think the difficulty could max out a bit higher.
Yes, I struggled with getting the difficulty to be maintained over the course of the game... I've added an update which will increase the difficulty some by changing the mechanics. But this is still definitely something I'll work on in the future. Also am planning to make the endgame more interesting by adding more mechanics that begin to come into play then.
Well..... it seems the browser version isn't working for me it keeps saying " Cannot read property 'getParameter' of undefined ". I don't typically download any games I only play them on browser because of limited storage. Would be nice if it was fixed for browser only gamer's like me : )
I'm sorry, I don't know what the origin of this bug is but will try to fix it. Others don't seem to have the problem and I don't believe it's reproducible on my computer so I don't know what I can do to fix it.
Sorry for not providing enough details. I use Google Chrome (64-bit) which is actually up to date. The game also loads in the browser but after loading it only shows a message I mentioned in the first reply it doesn't show anything else just a blank background with the error text. Other than that I really don't know what else to provide as I don't know what game engine your using.... Other browser games works for me except this one.
Perhaps it's a problem with WebGL? Do you see a spinning cube when you visit this website https://get.webgl.org/? If not use the chrome support and enable webgl.
If not maybe use the developer tools under the top right options menu>more tools> developer tools and see if it shows any errors in the console tab. That could give a better clue as to what is going on.
Ok finally gotten the game to work on Firefox instead. Its a cool and fresh game for sure so you did nail the main concepts workings of your game and I think there are some places where this game can improve.
Try out Balmung its a great 8 bit game and one of the best tic-80 games and should give you better idea on how to improve your game. I don't know why its not popular despite it being fully functional Zelda like game.
nice! very cool
One bug i've noticed, if you dont use the supplies right away, new ones can stack on top... which makes it hard to know what you are placing. being able to return an item back on the bottom bar after you select it would be nice too (especially if you are unfamiliar with the unit ranges)
Thanks for the feedback! I'll add a way to return unused minions/turrets to the supply area.
Cool game. It's a different twist to the basic tower games. I had no trouble with the controls.
Some recommendations for next update:
1.It would be nice if you redo the slots once you place them in at least once like a bonus.
2.The game could use sounds and music.
3.A fast forward button would be nice some times the enemies walk slow.
Overall great game. I know it was a quick weekly game that you have to code and design on the go so I am impressed.
Thanks for the feedback!
1. I'm not quite sure what you mean here, do you mean that once you place a minion/turret in a tile you should be able to place another minion/turret in the same tile to get a bonus or something? I'm interested but didn't quite understand what you meant.
2. Yes, definitely something I need to add.
3. Will try to add this feature as well as an exit button soon.
Good game! I played for over an hour :P
I would like to hear some sfx as well. Also, I'm going to agree with the rest of the comments, after around 5000 nothing really happens. But your overall idea is pretty addictive. You should definitely develop it further!
Good job. :)
Thanks for the feedback. I think I'll add extra mechanics that start to come into play more as you reach 5000+ score - perhaps more resource management or something like that.
Fun game! Nice concept, looks fun, the tutorial is clear. Well done. I've got some suggestions as well:
- I'd like it if everything is unmovable once you place it. I think it'd make it more interesting because you'd have to think more about the placement of the buildings.
- Also, I'd suggest having to buy and sell the turrets, so you'd be able to fix mistakes in your organization or be able to quickly save a lane.
- It'd be nice to have some more gameplay as well. I understand it's a jam game. It's just that I liked it, but then nothing happens anymore because you defended every lane (you could possibly make an ending as well if you can't come up with more gameplay anymore at some point).
- Once you get around the 5000 score mark, things are getting really easy, and defending the last lanes isn't really a challenge anymore. This is a bit of the same point as the previous point; just have more gameplay.
- One thing that's confusing to me is whether or not the tile level system has an effect on the walls and minions, etc. (basically everything that doesn't shoot). Maybe you could make clear if a tile is unaffected by the tile levels (either because it's empty or because the building on the tile has a constant level). It'd make things much more clear.
- Another suggestion I have for the clarity of the game is making the visuals of the different functioning buildings more distinctive.
- My last suggestion is to make it impossible to place stuff on top of the grey spawning boxes (shops, idk what to call it), because it makes things confusing.
I don't know if you're gonna continue working on this, but I think it's a cool concept, so I'd say you should if you feel like it. Add some more gameplay, and maybe spice the art up a little bit and it could be even better. Good job!
(That's a lot I just typed. Just know I did that because I liked the game)
1. I'll try that out and see how it changes the game.
2. Yeah might add buying turrets if I continue building on this game.
3. I'll try but don't have any ideas
4. Difficulty was a problem in development, still don't have a good curve. It's harder in the beginning than in the end!
5. I put this info in the tutorial, how could I make it clearer? (the tile system does not have an effect on walls and minions)
6. I'm no artist :P so definitely something I could improve.
7. I'll add this too.
Thanks for the feedback!
I see you changed some things. It's definitely a lot more challenging right now. If you want to make the turrets unmovable, you should make them sellable and buyable though, because a tiny mistake can cause your loss right now. Also I found another issue that pops up since the turrets are unmovable; it's impossible to cancel placing a turret, so if you clicked it, you can't do anything but placing it. Glad to see you are improving the game!