Solar Sentinel by grizeldi

Solar Sentinel is an exciting tower defense game with an eco-friendly twist. You'll need to harvest the energy of the sun to power your turrets as you defend a beautiful forest from pollution caused by enemy trucks. Use your resources wisely and upgrade your defenses to successfully defend the forest!


How to Play
The game includes a tutorial level that explains the mechanics (buttons T1 and T2 on the level select menu), but if for whatever reason you need a quick rundown, here's the basic mechanics:
Solar panels
Solar panels are used to collect energy from the sun to power defenses. Be aware of clouds as they affect the amount of energy produced.

Laser
The laser is used to destroy enemy vehicles, but it needs energy to function. More energy produces more damage.

Relay
Relay is used to redirect power beams over longer and obscured paths.

Pillon
Converts energy into money, which is used to build more towers.

Shortcuts
- R - connect
- M - move
- esc - pause
- right mb - cancel connect
Minimum Requirements
Anything with a dedicated GPU will probably run the game fine. If you have an integrated GPU, your mileage may vary, but we tested the game on an Intel UHD Graphics 630 and got roughly 5 FPS, so we'd recommend playing on a PC with a discrete GPU.


Credits
- grizeldi: Tech Art, Programming, Project Lead
- MoffKalast: Programming, UI, SFX selection
- PickyDogFish: Game and Level Design, Programming
- Spadey01: 3D Art
- TheRedDevil: Programming
- negdo: 3D Art, Art Direction
Post jam update
We have made a post jam 1.1 update that you can get on the itch.io page. If you want to experience the game as it was originally submitted for the jam download version 1.0.
| Link | https://pickydogfish.itch.io/solar-sentinel |
| Link | https://pickydogfish.itch.io/solar-sentinel |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/solar-sentinel |
Ratings
| Overall | 319th | 3.609⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 396th | 3.391⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 496th | 3.159⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 492th | 3.565⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 20th | 4.587⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 548th | 2.525⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 570th | 3.143⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 47🗳️ | 28🗨️ |
Main criticism is that I wish I could connect towers *through* other towards instead of one being in the way and blocking it (and really grateful that you even had a tooltip/toast explaining that). A lot of great stuff going on here, solid work everyone!
However, unfortunately I found the gameplay to be a bit lacking, there isn't much depth as there is only 4 towers, but the challenge is pretty much gone as soon as you get 1 laser with just a couple connectors attached to it, and nothing will ever challenge it.
If it were fleshed out a bit more and had some more challenge and mechanical depth to it, I could definitely see this being a really good game.
About connecting towers, i hoped i explained it well enough in the tutorial level, but i guess not.
I love that you can visually see the forest degrading. I love the little level indicator in the top right, too. Such a neat way of display that information!
A few pain points:
- Audio was very repetitive and the explosion sounds felt out of place compared to the rest of the sfx
- I agree with others, it got very difficult for me to connect towers at a certain point because of the camera angle
- I was confused why I couldn't just click away to deselect things, it was odd and unintuitive to me to have to right click cancel
- I wish there was some way to see how many waves have passed and how many are left
- It felt out of place to me that the Pylons couldn't accept multiple connections when that very mechanic was such a staple of the rest of the game
- The relays seemed useless to me because I could just surround towers in solar, there was no need. I think they would have become a lot more useful and there would be more depth if the number of available tiles was limited more, or if relays could accept multiple connections.
- I see the efficiency rating on my solar towers but... what does that mean? How does that affect me? How do I manage that mechanic? Was I not paying attention in the tutorial?
With that being said I still think it is a good entry because of how good it looks, how well it works with few bugs despite it's logical complexity.
Also moving buildings. I love moving buildings. Such an unnecessary detail but absolutely amazing. I loved watching them float up and then over slowly, and it is a really innovative way of making sure moving doesn't become OP.
Also one more thing of note: I got some terrible flickering/checkerboarding on my RX 480, but it otherwise ran well, though I imagine that is more of a Godot problem than a you problem, I figured I'd mention it. I suspect it has something to do with you having vsync enabled whilist my monitor has AMD Freesync on, but I wouldn't turn off freesync to test because.. that's asking for trouble. :sweat:
Audio was mostly duct taped into the game last moment and was very much not a focus as our usual audio guy was unavailable, so it does get repetitive fast. Definitely something we would've looked into if we didn't spend hours dealing with godot 4's bugs :stuck_out_tongue:
Deselecting works with RMB or ESC, but I agree, clicking away should also be an option, as well as some camera rotation options. Noted.
Pylons (=the currency generating towers) only accept 1 connection, but relays should accept multiple unless something broke.
Regarding solar panel efficiency and moving towers: the original plan for the game was that the solar panels produce power according to the amount of clouds covering them (that's the efficiency rating), so the player would have to move stuff around and rebuild networks. Sadly we ran out of time to tweak all the numbers and the end result ended up being a more standard tower defense where moving doesn't have much use.
Regarding flickering on an RX480, godot4 we used is in beta, so it's very likely it's related to that.
https://youtu.be/HdOGrrm8ftw
Also it seems levels has no end, played one level 10+ minutes and the trucks were coming non stop.
Love the art and ability to pump the tower with a lot of panels connected to it! Clouds is a neat feature.
Things I missed the most:
- tower power value
- wave progress indicator, remaining waves count.
(I also have 15 minutes gameplay video, will post it once uploaded)
https://youtu.be/P7pEh-ha4Wc
I love the models and the concept. Can't beat a good tower defense!
The only issue I will say is when you get far into the level, you have solar panels everywhere and it can look a bit disorienting but other than that, nice job! :D I didn't manage to beat the level :(
@D3kryption you may have actually beaten the level, we currently lack a screen that gives you the option to switch to endless mode, so if you see trucks pouring out without a pause you've already passsed all waves.
I managed to crash the game in the first level when trying to connect some towers.
I did the tutorials, and the first level didn't end when I destroyed all the trucks, the second level I ran out of forest and the trucks kept coming.
The sound got to me very quickly, and there was no way to turn it down or off in the game.
I would have liked to be able to rotate the camera around so I can better see where I am placing towers.
I filled the first level with towers and destroyed all the trucks endlessly. Is there no end to the levels?
Overall, I had fun. Would like some more towers to play with.
Good job!