Unstable flowers by Adroman

made by Adroman for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

Your goal is to protect the flowers from the enemies. You have an arsenal of towers to choose from, but be careful, it gets UNSTABLE. Once you cause enough instability, you will suffer, making your game harder.

You gain instability for building towers, upgrading towers,

overkill damages, allowing monsters to steal the flowers,

instability is also gained via money hoarding,

but you also gain it via game pausing.

Once you reach a certain threshold, distaster will trigger,

in a better case, monsters will become stronger.

However, if you get unlucky, you might lose a flower,

or even cause an earthquake and maybe lose a tower.

How long will your flowers survive?

Basically I was thinking about making either tower defense game or a deck-building card game, before the theme got announced. For this theme, I wanted to incorporate the instability mechanics to a classic tower defense game.

The game is configured in three difficulties: - Easy will lower the instability gained and will not trigger the worst disasters - Medium is a standard way to play - Hard is for those, who like to trigger a disaster almost every wave and there are a lot of earthquakes

Some keyboard shortcuts: - Space key will call the next wave, if the current one is finished - Right mouse button and Escape key will deselect a tower - Escape key will also pause the game, if the tower is deselected - Alt+Enter will toggle the fullscreen mode (Unity's behavior)

Some notes: - This game was made in mind of 16:9 aspect ratio and was developed for 720p resolution, if it's in Windowed mode - There are still some bugs (get it?), mainly about pathfinding and not picking up flowers. - If there is a major game breaking bug, let me know to patch it.

Tools used: - Unity3D - Game engine - Jetbrains Rider - Development tool - https://www.piskelapp.com/ - Pixel art creation tool for enemies, towers and projectiles

Third-party Assets used (Please obtain them via their page): - Whispers of Avalon - Grassland tileset: https://opengameart.org/content/whispers-of-avalon-grassland-tileset - Simple UI: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/gui/icons/simple-ui-103969 - RPG Medieveal Themes: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/audio/music/orchestral/rpg-medieval-themes-196607#description - Middle Age - Medieval Action Sound FX Pack: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/audio/sound-fx/middle-age-medieval-action-sound-fx-pack-54030#reviews - [deprecated] CritterSFX: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/audio/sound-fx/creatures/lil-critter-sfx-5016

Link	https://github.com/Adroman/ld49-entry-adroman
Link	https://github.com/Adroman/ld49-entry-adroman/releases/tag/v1.0.0
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-flowers

Ratings

Overall	743^th	3.526⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Fun	590^th	3.556⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	1281^th	2.75⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Theme	948^th	3.333⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Humor	809^th	2.806⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Mood	1177^th	2.971⭐	19🧑‍⚖️
Given		38🗳️	4🗨️

Feedback

Monado

04. Oct 2021 · 20:38 UTC

Very interesting tower defense game, the fact that I could lose any of my towers at a certain point kept me on my toes! Very challenging and engaging!

QueenOfSquiggles

04. Oct 2021 · 20:53 UTC

I really enjoyed playing this game. I've never played a tower defense game quite like it. I made it through 29 waves on medium. I think it was super funny when I got an earthquake and the information pane just said something like "I hope at least one of your towers got destroyed". That was pretty funny. It was to tell if the armour damage did anything. I'm not sure of a solution for that, it just was a bit hard to guess what was needed for each bug.

dodori

05. Oct 2021 · 03:38 UTC

I always enjoy me some Tower Defense games. I can just sit there for hours playing those. I like the fact that you have a second chance to stop them, since they need to move back along the track. Nice little entry!

Alina Baybulatova

05. Oct 2021 · 03:50 UTC

Interesting idea. I really have fun to play this game) thank you

marbles

05. Oct 2021 · 05:27 UTC

I made to it Wave 33. I liked that the enemies have to go back after getting a flower unlike the usual tower defense game where the enemy is gone once it reaches your base. Some "disasters" aren't very interesting but you can further add things like getting a random tower to attack nearby towers. I liked the music and the sounds of the bugs. I also like the humorous tutorial.

UX issues:
- When selecting a tower to build, you don't immediately know which one is selected. You have to look at the right to know the selection. You can improve this by simply having a clear outline or highlight on the button or make it look it is depressed like a button.
- At first I thought that there's no way to select a deployed tower but then realize I don't need it since I can see the details just by hovering over it. So I thought the towers cannot be upgraded. Maybe it's just me but I didn't notice that there's an "Upgrade Cost" below and I didn't know I just need to click the tower to upgrade it.
- No indication if selected tower can be built (insufficient gold)
- No visual range indication

🎤 Adroman

05. Oct 2021 · 20:05 UTC

@monado @queenofsquiggles @dodori @alina-baybulatova @marbles Let me thank all of you (and those, who rated the game) for your feedback, this is my first jam in my life and I wanted to see, how able am I at creating a game. Fortunately, the idea for this theme was pretty clear (originally I wanted to combine deck-build with TD, but I left the deck-building part out) and I wanted to make it at least a little bit unique with that instability mechanics. I am more experienced about developing Tower defense games, but I didn't implement the "monsters going back" feature before (and it's still not perfect). Also I am not an artist and I am not good at creating my own graphics and sounds (I only created the towers, bugs and the projectiles).
Also I wasn't sure what kind of humor use and I didn't want to cross the line (like the jokes about specific numbers), I am nervous about the "Nothing happened" disaster's flavor text.
If things goes well (they are now going well), I will put an update to make the UI look better and provide clearer information (like the button color change, range indication, message about insufficient gold). In more ideal scenario I can try to support multiple reference resolutions (1080p and 1440p) and in the most ideal situations, I might port this game to Android tablets, but I want to wait until the Jam voting ends.

jabsatz

05. Oct 2021 · 20:34 UTC

Pretty well rounded tower defense game! It reminds me a lot of the ones found in warcraft 3, it's a nice touch that the enemies have to actually pick up the flowers and bring them back, and you really did the instability theme in a nice way. Graphically it's a bit ugly for me, but clearly the focus was on gameplay and it shows. Great job!

Quoc

08. Oct 2021 · 15:42 UTC

Cool game. I like tower defense. The idea was great and I enjoyed playing it

Forik

09. Oct 2021 · 01:21 UTC

Love tower defence. Thanks for your game =)

DragonSheep

09. Oct 2021 · 18:33 UTC

Huh, a cute way of adding a bit more resource management to tower defense games.

LDJam user 269161

20. Oct 2021 · 20:26 UTC

Its a flower defense game =)

DecrementedPalindrome

21. Oct 2021 · 00:06 UTC

Nice game! I agree with most of the feedback that you've got so far. I didn't realise that I could upgrade towers until I read marbles' comment :). I liked the graphics of the game, especially the fact that towers change when they are upgraded. The UI graphics don't really match the game but they still look clean. The fact that the enemies have to take the flowers back reminds me of Cursed Treasure.

🎤 Adroman

21. Oct 2021 · 00:12 UTC

@decrementedpalindrome I haven't played that game in a long time, but it was one of my favorites.

rjhelms

21. Oct 2021 · 02:38 UTC

Nice take on tower defense. I didn't realize until pretty late that I could upgrade buildings - but that didn't stop me from enjoying this.