Where it all started until the end

So, I've finished making my first game in 2021 and I'm gonna talk about all of the good things and bad things of the process and the final product of the game.

Before the BTPJam#3 began, my friend gave me some game genre suggestions since I'm tired of making platformer games. He gave me Tower Defense as a game genre. It sparked me a little and decided to toy around with the whole mechanic for a while. Then, BTP had begun with the theme Less is More.

I understand the concept of Less is More, something like an RPG game where less items make the player moves faster. To incorporate this idea with my Tower Defense game, I had an idea where the less turrets make them more effective on beating the waves. It was a great idea and some people also thinks it will be an interesting game. I also watched the video about Design by Subtraction, where you only provide the necessary things and anything else that is not important will be removed. 

Although this is a one week long jam, I was considering to not join the jam. I had two final exams happening during the jam and they are crucial for my credits. But, why not? I'm not hoping to win, but just enough to reach the minimum amount of it.

Now, I'm no artist. I can't make animations or some complex design of an image with shader or something like that. But the one thing I know is that I can make simple arts with simple shapes. I had an idea of a shooter game back in 2020, where one circle fight against polygons. That idea is scrapped however because I was going to make the game using Unity, but I don't know how. So, why not I make the game in a tower defense mode?

Most tower defense games, such as Bloons TD, Kingdom Rush, and others, are very idle, where once a player has enough and strong troops, they just idle and wait until the game ends. Hence, I'm going non-mainstream way, where the players can't idle and wait until the game ends. I nerfed the turrets with 2 things:

• The turrets deal 1/x damage where x is the number of turrets. The less turrets deployed, the higher they will damage.
• The turrets have a fire rate of x/2 where x is the number of turrets. The higher the fire rate, the slower they will shoot.

In other words, the less turrets you deployed, the more effective your defense. 

I added 3 new maps in the feature to make the game less boring. If the player repeatedly plays in one map, they will get bored. So, I made 2 additional maps and make sure they functions properly. The hardest part during the development is the waves. There are a lot of factors that I have to do to make them work properly, so it's tedious. However, I managed to pull it off. 

I'd like to continue making this game since it is interesting, but probably I'll just add more waves, some difficulty settings to the player, and more maps. This has been a fun ride, and I'm curious where I'll go soon.