Beaver Bailiff by dr-braur
I think it’s more or less ready :) Please enjoy and leave some feedback!
A tower defense game — but you have to collect taxes first.
https://dr-braur.itch.io/beaver-bailiff

Every night, the village is under attack by mysterious dark forces. As a newly appointed bailiff, you have to build shrines to protect the inhabitants of the village. The problem is that shrines require significant funds to be built, so you must collect taxes every day. And people do not like taxes.
Ah, you’re also a beaver.
Movement: WSAD/Arrows
Action: LMB, Space, E
Switch action: RMB, Tab, Enter
| Link | https://dr-braur.itch.io/beaver-bailiff |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/lovecraftian-bailiff |
Ratings
| Overall | 304th | 3.625⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 392th | 3.321⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 281th | 3.429⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 75th | 4.214⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 97th | 4.362⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 190th | 3.875⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 22🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
https://dr-braur.itch.io/beaver-bailiff
It's not 100% finished and there are few small bugs, but it should be playable
Please enjoy and leave some feedback!
I found a bug related to using an auto-clicker)
The biggest struggle now is just balancing—how you can respond to every new lair spawn with a shrine vaguely in its direction. It'd be cool to mix in more meaningful choice with jacking up the spawns/difficulty until you have to sacrifice some buildings, maybe making certain buildings add value in different ways (bank gives you interest? armory gives a damage buff?), maybe another price tier of turrets for that "cheap now to survive the night or save for the big gun for tomorrow?" choice
definitely one of my favorite theme concepts so far, super cool art, nice general design, great beaver
The gameplay loop is very nice. More variety for towers and monster behavior would spice things up but this is a solid base. And the art style is killing it! Well drawn sprites + the added perspective makes it so cinematic to build an entire wall of towers and watch the monsters raiding (and falling) at night.
Here's my building placements by day 10, managed to lose just one house besides the one from the starting cutscene -- guess I got kinda lucky with the first spawn locations being close to each other:

hey dont know why I cant open the game .(cry) I really luv the art style.
its weird that I could open other game.dont know if its bugs or my pc's probs
Really love your art!
I enjoyed raising development of the town. Walking around, checking how small shacks are turning into proper mansions. To withhold the tax collecting when the house was close to an upgrade, and reap the benefits later. It is similar idea I had in my own game, with delayed gratification. Really cool.
What I found lacking a bit, is the Shrines and combat. The first didn't have any visual radius, didn't shoot anything, just damaged on proximity, but you never knew if it is close enough or, whether one will be enough.
* I think the time you wait is too much, I like the animated transitions between night/day, but I fell like I waited a lot of the playtime
* The balance is a lit bit off, I ended collection for 1 shrine every night and then put it near the creature's nest. Maybe some kind of penalties to do this abusive strategy?
* I think killing creatures could be more satisfying, some kill animation (I know is jam game so fitting those is expensive), maybe see with the camera all the kills you did
I like how you can still knock with low attitude but just have to knock harder :)
- As comment above said, it's easy to cheese the game by placing a shrine right next to the spawns. It is also not clear how shrines work -- AOE effect would be useful or a visual cue when a creature is starting to get affected.
- Sometimes I'm experiencing a weird shove - I'm not sure what it's caused by
- Minimap feels a bit lacking - attacked colours have the same colour as regular houses, character's house also blends in (though it helps that it's somewhere in the center)
- Walking gets a little mundane with time - paths with speed boost would be a nice addition, especially that they're in the thumbnail :) also the bushes are annoying to get stuck on 😒
- Spectating monsters could be improved by giving the option to switch between them - also when first monster attacks, camera stays in place instead of jumping to another monster
- Press space (or another button) to speed up time (especially when you start the game when you already played it) would be nice
- Sounds on LMB/RMB feel like a bug - I'm not supposed to be able to do anything while at the dwelling
- "Your dwelling. Enter to skip time" -- "Go inside" instead of "Enter" would be a clearer wording :)
- I think this message should be shown over the house like a informational speech bubble:

I think overall I did a pretty good job of being a bailiff.
[Beaver score.png](///raw/d8e/36/z/6f847.png)
I'd love to see this game continued and made bigger and better.