LudumData

Placeholder by teamenschede

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made by teamenschede for LD27 (JAM)
Here's our entry for this Jam. It came out pretty polished in the end, and we're satisfied with the final game.

Placeholder is our take on a Tower Defense game that does things completely different. There is no 'maze', your buildings attack eachother, and managing your income has a very special mechanic. The difficulty is tuned to be somewhat easy at the beginning, but it gets pretty challenging overall.

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Make sure to read the description and rules posted below the game before playing. If you get stuck, strategy and hints can be found below.
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Windows https://github.com/ruphin/Placeholder/archive/LD26-Final.zip
Web http://placeholder.tinco.nl
Source https://github.com/ruphin/Placeholder/tree/LD26-Final
Original URL https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=27808

Ratings

Coolness 73% 3
Overall(Jam) 3.50 118
Audio(Jam) 1.67 489
Fun(Jam) 3.29 146
Graphics(Jam) 2.95 369
Humor(Jam) 1.64 464
Innovation(Jam) 3.55 80
Mood(Jam) 2.56 413
Theme(Jam) 2.90 379

Feedback

immanuela
27. Aug 2013 · 09:50 UTC
I like this idea, felt like I was playing tower defence with marbles :D very unique idea from what I've seen so far, good job.
timtipgames
27. Aug 2013 · 09:57 UTC
I dig the concept. Maybe I am just not skilled enough, but it seems that it's really really difficult to survive very long. I bookmarked this to play it again later and to see if I just chose bad strategies :) Well done!
gre
27. Aug 2013 · 10:06 UTC
Tower Defense!! Apart from the troll, this is a very good game :-)

Game mecanism is interesting: Beacon / Burner / Harvester - in other word, attract your ennemies, kill them, consume them to get energy.

This isn't actually a classic Tower Defense, this one is very brain-bending on finding the best placement strategy.
kristof
27. Aug 2013 · 10:07 UTC
At first I thought the game would be way to easy. But when more and more portals popped up it became very challenging. This is a very cool form of tower defense. Overall one of my favorites! Keep it up.
Pixelfan Games
27. Aug 2013 · 10:17 UTC
i like graphics & idea, i missed some sounds, good job
RetroEpic
27. Aug 2013 · 10:42 UTC
Great game, interesting approach to strategy - destroying your own building is a nice touch. Beacon is essential!!
bitserum
27. Aug 2013 · 11:02 UTC
An example of a great gameplay. Fresh game, graphics and audio needs some work but good job.
MidCry
27. Aug 2013 · 11:03 UTC
Nice and tricky game play
i love this game
Check out our Roguelike game
Sh1rogane
27. Aug 2013 · 11:03 UTC
I like the idea very much, took some time before i could play it good, Fun!
SamC
27. Aug 2013 · 11:05 UTC
I like it, pretty difficult, cool idea however not a very interesting use of the 10 seconds theme
foumart
27. Aug 2013 · 12:21 UTC
Very interesting approach and nicelly performed. Is the bacon burning out, or maybe only one at the same time? Anyways this is a great strategy. I would like to try on a grid with pre-defined placements or some kind of "magnetic" radial connections (according to the distance).. and some sound as well:)
foumart
27. Aug 2013 · 13:00 UTC
Hi-Score update - Round:19, Kills:289 (disregard my comment above about the bacon - i was trying to place one behind the minimap, which by the way can be optimized for better structure view (dif colors for buildings)
🎤 teamenschede
27. Aug 2013 · 13:12 UTC
If anyone is interested in Hi-Scores:
I managed to get to round 74 with about 2500 kills

The game can be quite difficult, but once you figure out how to solve some of the problems, you can get pretty far.

It is very possible to get past round 75, but you have to start using some very tricky mechanics (beacon chaining) at around level 40, and plan your layout very well.
plancien
27. Aug 2013 · 13:37 UTC
Impressive ! You invented a good strategy game. Perhaps a bit hard
steven
27. Aug 2013 · 13:47 UTC
The game is fun, but time consuming if you hold through many rounds. My strategy was to keep the portals low, which brought me to round 107 with 842 kills. The beacon chaining is very powerful, but around level 100 the things are so quick, that it becomes extremely hard to kill them before they reach the end of the chain. I think you can get a bit higher than 107, but expect that thereabouts it will really become impossible to hold your place any longer.
udo
27. Aug 2013 · 13:50 UTC
That's a really great take on round-based strategy gaming. Sounds would have made this even better (or, possibly, sound just didn't work on my machine). I'll be playing this for a while now :)
Tinco
27. Aug 2013 · 15:15 UTC
Awesome game, challenging and different :)
kebabskal
27. Aug 2013 · 21:01 UTC
Too complicated for my little mind :) I know it's lazy, but I didn't feel like reading a whole lot.
deepnight
27. Aug 2013 · 22:16 UTC
Very good TD concept here :)
The interface is very frustrating though: the arrow keys don't work during resolution phases, and the right click scrolling gets stuck each time the mouse leaves the game area.
Super Hamster
28. Aug 2013 · 04:01 UTC
This game was really interesting and I think you took tower defense games in an interesting way. I've never seen anything like this before. *Cyber-five* for also making a tower defense game :D
🎤 teamenschede
28. Aug 2013 · 13:49 UTC
@kebabskal
We realise the game guide is a little long at the moment. A skippable in-game tutorial would probably work, but we didn't have time to implement something like that.

@deepnight
We haven't had any problems with arrow keys failing, what platform/browser are you on?
eemmbbeerr
28. Aug 2013 · 14:41 UTC
I liked this concept a lot, great job!
kibertoad
29. Aug 2013 · 22:34 UTC
neat idea. can have a future.
The Evil Cult
31. Aug 2013 · 14:39 UTC
This game is taking a lot longer than I thought it would to get through so I'll post my thoughts now and some when I die. Currently at round 27 (234 kills) and finding that I basically have infinite energy at this point and am not seeing a point where I can die in sight. My first couple of attempts I got pretty owned until I figured out how to make the most use out of my initial resources and the first couple of rounds. Really enjoying so far, will comment and rate after I finish :)
The Evil Cult
31. Aug 2013 · 14:45 UTC
Round 40 (305 kills), enemies getting noticeably faster now and starting to kill off my beacons pretty quickly. Still have a lot of energy (1236) but can see that I will die eventually.
The Evil Cult
31. Aug 2013 · 14:59 UTC
Round 60 (428 kills, 740 energy). Things are really easily killing off beacons now. Managed to learn a strategy to make them bounce a little bit between beacons but can't figure which ones they will target now, seems a little random and so beacons are becoming less and less effective.
The Evil Cult
31. Aug 2013 · 15:05 UTC
Round 66 (476 kills, 494 energy) Things are overwhelming my defences, taking out large chunks of my infrastructure quickly and without effort. Given up hope of beating teamenschede's score. I'm not going to make it out alive. Tell my wife I love her!
The Evil Cult
31. Aug 2013 · 15:09 UTC
Round 69 (516 kills, 8 energy) Spent all my energy rashly in a last ditch effort to try and kill portals. Things could not be held back. I am dead. GG
The Evil Cult
31. Aug 2013 · 15:11 UTC
Sorry for all the spam posting! Final thoughts: Fantasticly fun game, great idea and feels nicely tuned. At first I thought the game was going to be way too easy (after the initial learning curve) but it really escalated and provided a nice challenge all the way through. That said, I feel it could have progressed a little faster. Only issue I felt was that I couldn't be sure which beacon things would go to if I had a few overlapping and thus couldn't really plan out properly. Amazing game though, most fun one I have played this LD yet. Very nice work.
keyboardmonkey
31. Aug 2013 · 17:06 UTC
Bravo! The 10-second waves give a nice pause between planning, hot dog does it get hard quickly. Can't pas level 17 but I very much enjoy placing this :]
Oxygamer
16. Sep 2013 · 22:58 UTC
Obey or Die !!!