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What Makes TinyWars Different from Other Tower Defense Games?

What Makes TinyWars Different from Other Tower Defense Games? 1911 1071 andrew

We are at a 30% completion mark for our upcoming gameplay demo, very exciting to see the project progress everyday! We estimate 30% completion based on the fact that we have done 5 out of the 15 waves that will be in the demo.

Planning wise, the content of the waves has been planned out, but they have not been coded into the demo yet. What sounds awesome on paper can often need a lot more tweaking when put into the game.

How is TinyWars Revolutionizing Tower Defense

…Not sure if “revolutionizing” is the right word, but we certainly are building upon a tried and true genre. Tower defense has been done many times before us, from really basic app games to some AAA titles, but these days it seems to be a stagnant, unpopular niche genre. With TinyWars we hope to build upon a lot of cool features from our favorite TD games and inject some of our own original ideas into it.

Cool Features to Expect in the Demo!

3maryemotion

Mary will have more poses in the final demo than what is seen in the gameplay video (above)

Path Shifting

The battlefield is constantly changing, anything can happen at any time that could stir up the  battle and shift the course of the enemies. You need to be able to adapt your strategy at any time, don’t get too comfortable with your tower placement, be willing to sell units when necessary to adapt to the changing battlefield.

In the demo: This will happen in the demo regarding the strawberry. (spoilers)

Upgrade animation GIF

Updated upgrade animation

TinyWars

What is a “TinyWar?” TinyWars happen periodically during the game, they can happen at any time, in any level, so be on your guard! A TinyWar is a phase in the game when “dark magic” takes over. Normally there are breaks in between waves where the player can take time to plan and even “retry” waves that they didn’t do too well on. However, during a “tinywar” that will not be available, you must complete the entire set of waves and if you fail, you can only restart form the beginning of the tinywar.

In the demo: This will happen when a certain character makes an appearance in the demo. (spoilers)

Unlimited Upgrades

This is still a concept we have been experimenting with, but limiting the unit upgrades to only 3 – 5 phases is what most tower defense games do. We have been juggling with the idea of having unlimited amount of upgrades, different upgrade “paths”, or transformation upgrades that totally change the way the character behaves. The last one is nothing new, we’ve seen it before in other games, but I am not sure if it has been utilized to its fullest extent! We’ll see about this concept.

In the demo: This feature is currently not planned for the demo.

Gameplay

Lastly we want to create a tower defense game where players are rewarded for having good strategies! Not merely building the most towers or the most powerful towers. In tower defense, placement should be a key component of the game and we have units that specifically react to certain units. This is something you must figure out as you play, and don’t worry, the logic behind which units react to what type of attacks is anything but randomized! There has been a lot of thought put into the enemies and what they do.

What is this Blue Blob guy? Is he a placeholder?

Bad Guy GIF

Ah yes, you might have noticed this beautifully rendered “test demo enemy.” Throughout playing the demo countless times, we have grown quite fond of this character to be honest. He will be staying in the demo. Will he appear in the final game? Maybe not, but he’s staying in the demo and that’s final!

 How Many Playable Units Will Be In the Demo?

Currently two, the Fire Witch (Kim), and the Melee Unit (Suzu).

Suzu Blink 3 Kim Blink 3

Will that be boring? No, because there is a lot of enemy types to fight against. Having a lot of unit types is cool, but having a lot of enemy types is far more interesting! Enemies should not be overlooked in a tower defense game!

Also this demo takes place in the “Grass World,” which is the first chapter in the TinyWars story. In that chapter these are the only two playable units. Each chapter unlocks more units, but we do want this demo to reflect some early gameplay of TinyWars. There’s just a lot of things relating to the story that we just can’t spoil! Trust me, you’re going to like the story a lot!

How Difficult Will the Demo be?

Oh man, we designed this demo to be accessible to everyone to be able to get into tower defense (surprisingly, a lot of people are not familiar with tower defense),  but we also created this demo to be like a little “challenge.” Challenge yourself, your friends, or people you know to actually beat the demo.

We said it would be easy and fun to pick up! We never said we would make it easy to beat. In fact, the final wave of the demo has been specifically designed to be a challenge. We’re trying to cram 100 units into the screen at once, we’ll see about that. But we will make sure it’s not easy to beat, or at least not easy to beat with a perfect score! (not taking any damage!)

We promise we will play through the demo ourselves to ensure that it is possible to beat without taking damage!

Is there Any Story in the Demo?

There will not be story related cutscenes in this demo, this is just a lighthearted demo for fun and to demonstrate the gameplay mechanics of TinyWars. However, there will be story “elements” in this demo. Mary’s personality will be presented, and some other hints might be made, but regarding the main story we just don’t have anything in this demo.

This is NOT to suggest that we don’t have the TinyWars story figured out! Oh no! The storyline for TinyWars has been written well in advanced of any gameplay or coding! By this we mean that all the main events and key plot points have been outlined in the story, this doesn’t mean all the lines have been set in stone and scripted fully, but the events have been pretty much set in stone!

The story is not shallow, nor generic, I can certainly promise that! It will be fun to follow, it’ll be a wild ride, and there will be some heart breaking moments for sure. Maybe one day TinyWars might get an anime deal! Who knows? But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves here… First thing is first, the gameplay demo!

Be on the look out, we are 30% done and progressing faster and faster now that many of the core mechanics have been implemented and lots of bugs have been addressed!

What platforms will the gameplay demo release on?

The gameplay demo will release on Windows PC for sure. Regarding mobile development, there still needs to be a lot of testing done to make sure device comparability is maximized. The game is fully responsive and should work (in theory) on any sized screen or device, BUT this has yet to be tested.

First the PC version of the game needs to be completed before we can even begin testing for mobile, I’m sure there will be many tweaks and adjustments to be made in order to get the mobile version running smoothly… Oh boy, I’m getting excited just thinking about it.