Trindle Armored Defense

Hey there ! I couldn't let you go from my page with this comment without giving you the way back ! :D
So, I played your game and here is what I've to say:

* Thanks you for the splashscreen it lakes a lot this LD on many other games haha
* I like the explanations, clear and simple, but the cooldown is the last thing I saw and it was a bit short before I had read it all. So maybe increasing it or putting in on top could have been a good idea :)
* The mapping on the numpad: Oh My God ! Excellent idea, never a binding has been that efficient, THANKS !
* The super blast of the base is overpowered, this is really cool to detonate, I nearly suicided myself just to see it destroy everything haha
* The choice strong / fast for the tanks is good, both deserve a try and has its own speciality, liked it.

Everything was very clear, this is a very good entry, specially for a second entry ^^ You can be proud of you, thanks for sharing and thanks for the fun (and thanks for the tanks; now we're even on the bad jokes haha)

I just love it. Good graphism and sound effects. Good gamePlay. I like tower defense.
Keep moving forward.

A real flashback to old Battle City! Good intense gameplay with a solid menu and information. I got the fast vehicle while reading the instructions. Cant remember the score but didnt survive the full length.

###### Continue doing:
- Solid game play
- Intense
- Clear graphics
- Giving a solid feel with menu, start screen, end screen
- Have the game giving good feedback (base under attack, sound ques for fireing etc)

###### Remember to:
- Use the theme for additional ideas
- Another win state than just survive

Anyhow, great game and thanks for your feedback as well!

I liked the tank designs, very well done. Nice variety!
Gameplay was simple and explained pretty well and polished.
Game is a solid challenge although I managed to break the game by just driving into enemies and shooting. Possibly adding some sort of collision damage can prevent cheesy tactics?

Hey there, nice job! From startup you get the sense of urgency (being called lieutenant, the countdown..), which creates a unique atmosphere. But it still feels like a video game, especially with the 8-direction movement system and (nice) pixel work.

My only criticism is the game seems unbalanced. If you keep shooting and using the super blast, the challenge doesn't seem overwhelming. Other than that, great job!

Giving some classic arcade game vibe here!
Amazing gameplay, controls, sounds!
Fun graphics.
Your game is thought of and executed beautifully! Continue making such games. Congratulations and good luck!

Wew, that was intence. I really miss the auto-fire button in this. Played it much longer than I expected to play, means it is good as a game.

Except strange hitbox behaviour some times(enemies often start capture being outside base circle) it feels really solid and accomplished so good job.

Great entry! Challenging at times but well executed. The overall experience is really great. Improve the balance of power, damage, etc. I know it's the hardest part :) Congrats!

@Vegevan thanks a lot for the detailed feedback and for checking out my game. The mapping on the keypad was added basically last minute before submitting. I sent the game for testing to a couple of friends and one of them said- I wish I could rotate stationary without moving...so I made it happen. Glad you liked it :D

@gettingrekt thanks a lot for the detailed feedback to you as well. I'll keep those things in mind for my next game for the next Ludum Dare entry and maybe i'll finish this game up, polish it and release it somewhere if overall feedback will be positive for it.

@hephyrius Thanks for the suggestion on collision damage, I could take that a step further... Medium tank can take less damage and medium amount of damage when "ramming" colliding with enemies, light fast tank would take more damage and deal less damage and then add another tank a super heavy which takes very little damage and does massive damage. I think that'd make a fun addition to the game

And everybody else thank you so much for your feedback and for playing my game

Thank you everyone for playing the game and thank you everyone who will still play the game.
Thanks a lot to everyone for leaving your opinions and feedback!

I really appreciate it and look forward to hearing more feedback

i liked the tank design but i think maybe a more interesting colour palette could be more visually stimulating, especially as you are looking at them for a long time(for a jam game) a few more visual clues would be nice to let you know whats going on, a bit of feedback even as simple as a "well done" when a wave is over would of just broken up the gameplay. also diagonal firing please:):)

Avast recognized this as a threat and didn't let me start it

Change the end of your download link to "...ME.zip?dl=1" to skip ads and go directly to the download.

Unfortunately I cannot run this Windows 64 bit exe on my 32 bit machine, could you add another build?

Overall pretty nice concept. Perhaps im an alone, but i really didnt like the controls. While then numpad controls are efficient, id prefer somewhat realistic tank controls with separate turret aiming.

@cynical-monkey diagonal shooting is implemented. You can also rotate on spot without moving with keypad. Diagonal shooting also works when moving diagonally.

@notime4games add it as an exception or something, avast is silly and for some reason games created with Game Maker Studio both 1 and 2 are recognized by windows and SOME anti virus programs as a threat and won't open. With windows 10 u can just click- More Information and then- Run anyways. But with avast you'll have to manually add an exception for it or pause avast for the time being.

@gonutz not sure what that'll do to the link but I don't think there are any ads when downloading from dropbox. Never had any ads. As far as a build goes, I'll try to see if I can make one that works for 32 bit windows, if not, sorry... I wasn't aware that this build wouldn't work on 32bit...

@piotrj I see what you mean, and I wanted a separate turret movement from chassis movement for more realism but I simply dind't have the time to implement that feature, and having never done that before it'd have taken me at least a few hours extra to implement, but then i'd also have to implement that for the enemy tanks so that's at least 5+ hours of work which I ddin't have. Sorry :( I hope you still enjoyed the game even with the unrealistic arcady feel it has.

Thank you all for playing <3 love ya'll

The tutorial was nice, taught me everything i needed to know. Maybe next time try to teach the game while the player is playing, some people don't have the patience to read the wall of text.
Gameplay wise it's pretty straightforward. Although after some time my damage output was a bit too low to kill all the enemies so i was forced to use the nuke. Also I got a lot of energy for no reason so nuking was pretty cheap anyways. Other than that it was a nice bullet hell.
The controls were really responsive and my tank was fast enough to dodge the bullets and return fire so kudos for that.

While not participating this time, I, at least, want to say: very great step up from your last game! very well done!

Got the hang of the game pretty quick. There isn't a ton of variety but the enemies AI is really balanced, I think you hit the difficulty really nicely. The ability to use the num pad to aim was handy.

This was pretty fun. The graphics are okay and the sound is serviceable, but the gameplay itself is good. I felt like the game needed a bit more feedback on what's happening. I'm just rolling around hoping to survive somehow.

Maybe it's just me but I think the smaller tank is overpowered. I don't know why I should use the other one. The enemies' goal is to reach the base, so if my firing rate is reduced by that much I can barely keep up. The extra HP seems to be useless as it's very easy to evade everything.

Another thing I've noticed is that the shooting seems to be delayed. I don't know if this was intentional but it's really weird and messes up my timing. The second I shoot something I usually start moving towards something else. So when the shot comes out half a second later it's pretty confusing.

Other than that I don't have much else so say. Overall I liked the game. Good work.

Finally got to play it on my Windows machine :D

Cool game! Simple and a good balancing. A little bit more feedback for your actions would have been nice, but it was quite fun to play! Well done! :)

First Impression : I get to be a tank, nice :D

Graphics : Your style real matches the game well :) little shadows below the tanks might have been a good idea if you want to improve it further :)

Sound : The sound of the game is also really well put together, some background music would be nice if you continue working on it :)

Gameplay : I really like the concept of base defending games :) what was really good about your game was that there was always something to do and it was initially clear what i had to do due to the nature of the design of the game :) maybe more variations of enemy tanks would be nice for future updates :)

Overall : Great job for your second ludum dare entry (i also join the second time this time around :D), you can be proud of yourself :)

I liked the retro feel of the game, but the aiming was just too awkward for me. Perhaps using the mouse to aim and having turret rotate slowly towards the mouse would be better.

Nice sound design and nice graphics ! And nice game overall everything works and seems to be really clean (except the end pannel maybe). Maybe a tiny difficulty problem : the F ability is broken, the fire is underpower. Except that everything is good ! Goodjob !

It's a nice little game, the retro style look good. Keep it up!

Hey everyone, I would like to thank you all once again so much for playing my game and for all the invaluable feedback.
I've decided to continue this game, polish it up, expand it to few missions / levels, add new features and mechanics suggested by people as well as fix the issues mentioned by you all. Thanks to you all this game will become my first finished project and I'll probably publish it on Itch.io and maybe some other similar sites.

I haven't had the time to play all of your games yet, many of you I've played your games already, those of you I haven't played games of yet, I'll get there. Still plenty of days left in voting and I've just been busy!

again thank you all for your amazing feedback and for encouraging me to want to finish this and make this my first finished released game and for all the great hints tips and fixes I need to make! I love you all! <3 and again, for those whose games I've not played, I'm excited to test your games and will do that when I have time.

Fun game! I chose the slow tank first and got murdered pretty fast, but I hadn't figured out how the base nova worked. The fast tank was more fun, and getting hit isn't an issue if you stay in the bubble. I found it fairly easy - even when the tanks got a lot stronger, I was always at 180-250 energy and could afford a nova. The abrupt end was a surprise - I had 284 points, so I'm not sure what triggered it. Menus and instructions were clear, controls were intuitive (except for remembering the 'f' key), and sounds were appropriate and used well. Nice work.

They are tooooo much! ahah
I loved this game! But I hate the big tanks... you need like 10 shoots to get it down! XD
Btw nice concept, I love the mechanic of the circle on your base!
Also graphics and sounds are good!

For what exists-
What I liked:
1. Graphics and sounds worked well enough.
2. I like having a choice between tanks. I went with the faster tank, and woo boy was it fast.
3. That pulse laser super blast thing was cool
4. Numpad to choose direction to fire was really useful (and with controller support could turn into a twin stick shooter type game)

---

What I didn't like:
1. I felt the big tanks seemed a bit unfair. They have A TON of hitpoints. It may just be a personal thing, but I find damage sponge enemies to be pretty boring.
2. The 'R' key should not be active during gameplay. I accidentally hit R instead of F and instead of wiping out hordes of enemies I found my self back at the starting screen.
3. AI was incredibly basic and I felt I was cheesing my way through the game by just staying kinda near the middle-top-right which freezes most tanks. Also if a tank hasn't moved from the starting position and another tank would spawn it just kinda overwrites the first tank sometimes. In general: bugs.

For the future (as per your post about wanting to continue on it)-

---

What could be changed:
1. This feels like it should be more of a Wave based game where you have a wave of enemies, then another, then another, instead of just a constant stream of magic tanks.
2. Big tanks could have less HP, maybe like 4 but shoot extra damaging/faster/spread of bullets. In fact you could add multiple new styles of tanks by just tweaking the existing ones here and there and giving them a different color pallet.
3. Enemy AI could be changed so they shoot at the base instead of just at the player (or maybe have a type of tank that only goes for the base).
4. Energy wave could be limited to a certain number of shots (per wave if you use option number 1) which would prevent people from just waiting for energy recharges while kiting around a swarm of tanks.
5. The whole area could stand to be zoomed out a bit (or tanks and building shrunk), which would give you more room for obstacles and for the player to manuever around.

---

What could be added:
1. More player tanks! Maybe different shot style or weaponry. You could add some tanks that control like real tanks for a 'realistic mode'
2. More enemy tanks! As mentioned above.
3. MUSIC. Even a simple soundtrack in the background can add so much to a game.
4. Powerups? for shooting faster, moving faster, repair, energy, different types of shot spread, go nuts.

Well this is a way too long comment, but you asked for detailed feedback. Hope this was detailed enough! =P

The game is good, Yes, The sound music should be added
And Up gradable items will make it a complete game

Else, Loved the core gameplay

First of all, nice vibe of old tanks from nintendo)

I'd suggest to do next:
- make a destruction sound the same volume for all tanks
- slower your tank down, right now it's very easy to avoid bullets
- make different colors for tanks instead of grey shades. it's hard to differ them right now
- bind special ability to timer and make it an instant of very fast blast. it would be far more tactical and useful

Overall I really liked the game! I would suggest, however, maxing the base power at 100--the game now allows going over, which makes the game progressively easier. Health bars on the tanks would be a nice touch, and I would have liked if the base attack were not so powerful--it makes the game a bit easy.

But regardless, a great game!

I like it, solid gameplay

First up the controls are nice, also being able to use the numpad to change direction while staying stationary feels good. The hitboxes in this game are a bit clunky though.
You can get a little stuck in a corner, and enemies can start capturing your base before actually entering it.

It's fun shooting tanks, but only for a while. There is no way of being destroyed yourself if you stay close to the base. With instant health refills and the super move "F" not using up much power it is way too easy.

Having a timer for the next power refill might be nice, it just seemed arbitrary when first playing the game.

Artstyle and music function within the context of the game, but aren't very detailed.

Overall, it's fun for a short while and gets boring quickly because of balancing issues.

Unfortunately I cannot play your Windows 64 bit game on my 32 bit machine, could you add another build?


Good one! Two things felt a little overpowered:

1. getting the tank back to base instantly gives you 10/10 durability. There could be a charging mechanic over time. Instantly is too fast for me.

2. the energy pulse from the base. I managed to finish the game quite easily because of it. I like to feel powerful in a game, but I felt a little *too* powerful this time. That made me feel a little bored towards the end.

Still, great entry!!

Oh and a small trick I sometimes use with sound effects: if I'm going to have a lot of explosions or bullets, I first stop all sounds and *then* play the latest one, so that two similar sounds don't play at the same time. You might want to do that, or not.

Congrats on your 2nd LD!

Nice little arcade tank game you've got there.
I love tanks and a game with them in it always gets a play from me!
Like I said, it feels arcadey and that's a good thing. There were different tanks that broke up the otherwise monotony.
I wasn't fan of the controls though. I tried using numlock, the tank couldn't move at the same time, but worse, I couldn't get control back to the tank. Perhaps using the mouse for control of the turret, using a cursor and slaving the turret to that, would work better. Then you could move and shoot at the same time like a real tank.
Still, it was fun for a quick play, so good job on your first LD entry!

I love the Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) Tactical Nuke sound and love yours. Only critique is that I wish you could rotate your tank with more precision. Very nice game.

Fun game for sure! The art works pretty well and gives you the feeling of different tanks coming for you. Audio worked well in giving me feedback as I was never focused on the words. Would have liked health on the other tanks and maybe so hit effect. But still pretty darn good :)

OMG O_O 47 ratings and so many comments. I love you all! I really really really appreciate all your amazing feedback, what you suggest I should fix and how to make the game more fun! THANK YOU ALL!

Again I've been so busy I had no time to check out some of your games, I'll get to that starting monday as I'm traveling on sunday.
Again thank you all SOOO MUCH and my apologies to those who left comments and i haven't checked out their games yet! And also thank you all in advance who will play my game and leave feed back. Rest assured, I'll check out your games as well and give you the best feedback I can!

Thank you all for the amazing feedback!

Well this was fun! The art and the sounds were cool, and the concept was interesting. It was just a little bit hard not knowing when the enemy tanks were near to die, and also rotating the tank was kinda strange. But for a compo game, this is an amazing work, congratulations!

I absolutely loved this game, only thing I could possibility recommend would be better quality sounds and maybe some realistic graphics would really set it off personally. Maybe even add like different backgrounds like a jungle or something

I liked the game and had fun, but it also could use some polish. the sounds were harsh and repetitive. Also the game play was very repetitive and got a little boring after a few minutes. If the enemies shot faster as the game progressed or if there bullets changed somehow. Also the player's bullets could use a power up. Those tanks were really pushy! One almost pushed me through the level boundary before I got him. I wasn't sure how the base was gaining power or how to control that, so in the end I was just fighting timer, but my hands were hurting from playing at this point.. If you made the bullets pulse when you hold the key that would be appreciated. This game is a pretty solid entry. It reminded me of early tank games which I love. Making the game bigger after the fact could be really fun!

I like top-down tank games, nice.

This one plays a bit like old Atari ones, which is neat. The only issues I can really see here is the balance, the small tank you can choose doesn't pack anywhere near enough firepower to protect the base, so I had to resort to using the pulse attack, which felt cheaper than it should have been. Keeping myself alive also wasn't much of a problem due to instant healing, I'd prefer to be kept on my toes a bit more. The mechanics are solid otherwise, they just never really get a chance to shine next to each other.

I liked the graphics and the variety but the game felt a bit too easy. It also felt a bit janky to shoot with the weird diagonal angles: would've been nice to be able to rotate the tank's gun.

Neat game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eXpztmcl_M

@jupiter-hadley woo :D already seen when you first released it but thanks for posting it in the comments. I look forward to LD40 and hope you'll play my game again :P