Neon CGTD by MiltonNH25
Neon CGTD is a card game tower defense where you must protect your base from being destroyed. To do this, play cards to place different towers to defeat the incoming enemies. You must be quick though, as your hand of cards will be constantly changing. In between levels, you will also have the option to draft more cards into your deck, giving you more options in your defense. How long will your base survive?



Controls:
Left Mouse: Select cards and place down towers
Right Mouse: Cancel selection
| Link | https://miltonnh25.itch.io/neon-cgtd |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/neon-cgtd |
Ratings
| Overall | 91th | 4.075⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 61th | 4.125⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 422th | 3.5⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 185th | 4.1⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 793th | 3.3⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 517th | 3.25⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 924th | 2.118⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 830th | 3.167⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 22🗳️ | 14🗨️ |
I had a lot of fun with this game! I was not expecting to be so focused while playing, it hit a great pace of always being active while still being a tower defense style game. Excellent use of the theme to add that bit of randomness to really spice it up.
A way I can think this could be better if there was an option to also remove a card between levels. That way the bad starting cards can get completely replaced, instead of being filler space in the deck.
The hardest part of any level is starting out as well, so an option could be to be able to pick the starting cards in some way, so an initial bad draw is not the worst hill to climb over. I really liked the extra aspect of the altars being an active energy farm, some more energy cards would add that extra layer of strategy.
I really liked this game, I do hope you expand it in a big way!
well done
Loved the idea of building a deck and the shuffle of my hand every ten seconds made it even better.
Great job !
That said, it does seem like the difficulty curve is that the beginning of each level is usually going to be the hardest part. I did have some levels where the ending ended up being harder, as the end had a bunch of fast enemies that were able to get past all my defenses, but every time I actually lost the game was near the beginning of a level.
I think that it could be nice to change the beginning of the level just a little bit to give the player more time to play their initial cards. I often was too busy looking at the map and trying to figure out where the enemies would be coming from to really make the best use of my time. So I think I would like it if there was some way to see the map before starting the actual gameplay, or if there was some extra time for the first round of cards and an extra delay for the first round of enemies. Either way.
But overall, I had a good time trying to put together a good hand. I think that there are cards that synergize well together, which is great, as that is always the fun part of a deck builder. My best strategy was using the sharps and the freezes, which went well together, I think.
The card-based mechanic was a little overwhelming at first. The game starts, and I've not yet understood what all the cards do, so it took me a while on the first level to build up a defense. But once I did, I had a lot of fun with the different types.
The 10-second hand refresh, combined with the slow energy gain, was an interesting design element. It forced me to strategize to save up energy for when the big cards came around, as I couldn't rely on gaining enough energy within the hand that I saw it first.
