Tharkarys Invasion - Last Line of Defense by Fil089
A mixture of Tower Defense + Shoot'em Up. You control a ship that must fly around and kill enemies to get money to buy towers for adicional defense. Game ends when the generator on the center is destroyed.
Controls:
WASD - Fly the ship;
SHIFT - Focus mode (Slows ship maximum speed); (Sorry, I forgot I have made this)
Mouse - Aim;
Left Mouse - Shoot;
X - When hovering over the turret platforms construct a turret.
| Windows | https://fil089.itch.io/ldjam-41-td-shootem-up |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/tower-defense-shootem-up-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 1186th | 2.339⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1155th | 2.375⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1186th | 2.107⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1163th | 2.357⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 31🗨️ |
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/incompatible-rally
Yeah... Dificulty balance was kind of a problem for me.
You're right, I didn't implement much besides a dificult scaling (that I personally think is way too slow) and a failure state only. It certainly beats having nothing at all, but since I did screw the dificulty balance from the get-go and forgot to implement a scoring system, I prefered to leave the game very easy.
On retrospect though I should've kept the speed increase per wave as it could've remedied the lack of dificulty later...
Oh well...
I saw what you were trying with this combo but the beauty of TD games comes from the variety of strategies and breaks between waves, and the beauty of shmups comes from the enemy patterns and interesting bosses. Best parts of both genres were missing in this game so I didn't find it fun.
Well done for completing a game though it's a serious achievement for only 2 days of work.
@JezPez I have a [postmortem post](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/tower-defense-shootem-up-1/so-i-finished-my-game-in-time-i-guess-so-im-doing-an-almost-post-mortem) of my game if you are interested in looking more on the process. But you're right, TDs and Shooters aren't my prefered genres so I don't know much of their more nuanced aspects. I'm much more familiar with Platformers by a huge margin, so during this jam I always felt something was quite not right with my game and by the time I figured it out I didn't have time to implement it. But thanks for the honest feedback. Feels good knowing that I finished something good out of what I usually do/know.

Friendly reminder to people to read the instructions. I was having a bad time before reading that **shift** slows down the ship and **x** can be used to build turrets. Afterwards, I was having a better appreciation for this game.
For what it's worth, it's a short but good time. The genres are not a very impressive mix, but placing the turrets and seeing them work actually alleviated a lot of the problems that could have otherwise made this a bland experience. Moving around is floaty, but Shift did improve the movement a lot. At times I wondered if it could be the other way around: Be faster while holding shift and just move slower overall.
Regardless, a good entry here. Rough on the edges, but certainly something worth building on. [My team](twitter.com/whalesandgames) would like to see your next projects. Cheers! :whale:
I know this it a jam entry but still, here some suggestions to improve game play even more:
I think the shooting could be more generous. It's just so much fun to blow up dozens of ships so giving the player a higher rate of fire would greatly improve the fun and the visuals (because the explosions look gorgeous)
Instead of a tutorial file just add hints into the game itself. For example show a small x icon when the player can build a tower.
### Over all it is an impressive entry, so keep up the good work and I am looking forward to your next games!
There are also way too many enemies spawning at the start, the gun on the ship doesn't shoot fast enough to keep up. The fire rate on the gun should be faster anyways, it'd be better for game feel.
After you get 6 turrets there isn't really much else to do in terms of tower defense, you just keep shooting enemies over and over.
Interesting concept, but needs more polish.
Like @GiovanniBarrottu said, the bounces plus the floaty impression make the controls pretty irritating. Especially since you bounce where you should build.
I would really recomend you to watch the "art of screenshake" video from vlambeer, and apply every single point he make to your game. I can assure you those changes wouldn't be so hard to implement and you would see an instant improvement ;)
Sometimes enemy ships can spawn right on top of your base. Might want to have a minimum distance they spawn it.
Nice job! Congratulations on finishing!
On the other hand if you are looking for challenge that originates from broken game design then look no further:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/sam
But once I built a few turrets, it wasn't that big of a deal. As far as I could tell, though, you can't lose the game? My central core was touched several times by enemies (until I got the hang of it), didn't seem to do anything.
I can sympathize about not having instructions in the game; I wasn't able to cram my own game with a tutorial in the time I had left. Which sucks for people if it's a complicated game, or not obvious how you do things.