Sometimes it's hard to pick out the sarcasm from the actual tutorial. "Why [a tower defense game]? Because you're a chicken and just want to make a game that people will play." That almost sounds like a good way to reach your goals and not fail, while also getting better at game dev. I came here to learn how to fail at making a massive project that no one will ever play once I never finish it because I can't get better at making something so far outside of my abilities that I can barely write a line of code.
Honestly that's what I'm doing right now for my portfolio. I'm a software developer and I have a *mountain* of failed ambitious projects behind me this last year... So these last few weeks I've just been taking very small, template projects and putting them together over and over until I remind myself that I actually *can* do this and I *do* know what I'm doing
@@sammyjones8279I did the same thing for an annual roguelike game jam. My first attempt I bit off more than I could chew, trying to make rideable vehicles and computer controlled allies. So the next year, my game was so simple it could have been considered a puzzle game rather than a roguelike!
@@Artindiit's okay. I just let it wash over like the background hum of freeway traffic ... And try to pick out a bit of inspiration or anger or false modesty or pretended knowledge or some new attitude....
Another tip: to fail, you CAN have a lot of complex costumization, multiple tower types etc. but the important thing is that only one strategy is optimal, no matter how many tower types etc. are left unused by the player.
@@pinguin4898Ooh, that’s even more devious. Making the game have tons of complex and beautiful synergies, and then making it all literally worthless because nothing can top spamming a singular type of tower on every available patch of land. REALLY highlights the wasted potential.
Some more tips: 1. Make a standart 3-level upgrade system, which increases only attack speed, damage and radius. It shouldn't change how it looks. 2. Make an upgrade menu like this: green radius and two buttons(sell and upgrade) around the tower. 3. Don't forget about 3 stars that has nothing to do with the game but only make people mad. 4. Add a hard mode which does nothing except for increasing enemy's health
Its OK if you do half. just so long as you have cool upgrades and voice overs. presentation is important, you aren't trying to reinvent the genre. people will whine if you do something they don't expect, people will whine if you do something poorly. just start with the basic and then add to it. but dont do the enemy spam thing. framerates are an issue.
@@bloodred255Nuh uh, it's not okay, it's kinda crazy that I needed this video to realize about all the things I was doing wrong, no one will play a TD game with uninteresting towers, no strategy, no synergies, no matter how good the presentation is
1:32 Oh yeah, never give the player an opportunity to increase the base’s health over the course of the match, even as literally every enemy will now have 100 or more health, cause mistakes are in fact only tolerable early on. Ooh, bonus tips: Make sure to use a gatcha system for unlocking towers. Nothing like getting that legendary tower either way too early or never ever ever. But the actually important part is to not give a player any chance to make up for the bad RNG he had. All those commons he wasted thousands on can never be traded, never merged into a stronger version, only tossed away like the garbage they are. The starter tower must be worthless. Like genuinely one of the early towers you can get can essentially replace it. Finally, make sure the players are *so* starved for money the entire match, that the only way to even beat the match is to own the generic cash-every-wave farm tower.
yeah, a puzzle game where you play as a monkey and throw a limited number of darts to pop the require number of balloons in a level. pretty great for it's time.
I think the funniest part of this one is that the tower defense genre was pretty heavily oversaturated back in the golden age of Flash games, so this is not far off at all from what I know Besides Bloons TD, though, I can suggest a couple others for people to check out: - The Gemcraft series is a curious blend of tower defense and RPG, each entry has a meta-game system of sorts where as you accumulate better high scores across the extensive list of maps, you get skill points that you can spend on upgrades to gain an edge in later maps, or aim for EVEN HIGHER SCORES on maps you've already completed - just as a forewarning, it's an episodic series set in a dark fantasy world, so be wary those who are faint of heart. Also the devs have another one-off TD game with a similar system, "Balloon Invasion", that isn't as goofy as it sounds (WW1/2 themes/aesthetics) but it's interesting to me because you get/have to directly control one of the turrets - The Creeper World series is another childhood favorite of mine, I'd cite it more as an RTS but I think it still fits the bill for the most part. Basically, you're tasked with expanding a network of structures and pushing back the namesake enemy, the Creeper, to gain ground, and eventually achieve a clear-cut objective (said objective changes with the game but still). The claim to fame this series has is the Creeper isn't really a discrete enemy, instead being a fluid-like substance that conforms to the terrain levels, developing deep pools in craters or racing down hill sides. There's short, free demos for the first 3 games on Flashpoint, too!
Kingdom Rush is another great example. The existence of footsoldiers alone would make it cool and unique, but they do so much with the concept it makes KR more fun to master, I think, than other tower defense games I've played. Just don't play past the first 3 games (OG, Frontiers, and Origins).
Yes very good keeping the players health as low as possible, there is no fun at all in trying to scramble together whatever troops you can afford to defend the home base while the enemies pile on.
@@greyfaceofaxe Mindustry is a tower defense and automation game. You build drills to mine ore and other resources, use conveyor belts to move those resources around, including supplying ammunition to the towers that require them, and use towers and walls to protect against waves of enemies. It's pretty good.
Lol every single roblox tower defense game basically requires you to sink way too many hours just so you can have a fighting chance. Not to mention if you want to win anything hard, you need to find other people who have also grinded for very long times and use a very convoluted strategy just to die to rng over and over again until you've completed one difficult level (after several hours).
@@ArtindiIf you want to go a bit wider, you could always talk about how to fail at Bosses in general. Bosses can be such an important part in a games combat design that screwing them up basically renders the entire game much worse.
Idk about that since that "genre" is basically just Furi and even then it's less a genre and more just a variant of whatever genre your game already is, but one focused on bosses I think would be really good yeah
@@dontkickmychick6076 Just straight only bosses? Surprisingly common for flash games like Sky Serpents and Epic Boss Fighter. But primarily boss fight focused games? Monster Hunter, Touhou, the Souls games, Cuphead... there's a fair bit of those.
About the early remark about the tower defense games being strict: This reminds me that there are numerous defense games that aren't tower defense games. For early ones, Atlantis and Battle City/Tank Force come to mind. For flash games, Deflector and Onslaught come to mind. Interesting how varied the defense games can be if you ditch the tower part.
If you ever add a manual tower, make sure to give it no cooldown so that players can win by using an autoclicker. Or just make it extremely micro consuming with almost perfect timings for it to be decent.
what I have learned is to make good games these also work, but just do the exact opposite, for example, "make it so that you can not remove towers when they're placed" turns into "give the player free will to place and remove towers whenever they like to add more freedom and accessibility."
Also remember to add in vague descriptors to the upgrades or towers, "increases damage massively" or "fast firerate / rapid fire rate / quick firerate" or even better put no descriptors to the upgrades other than flavor text and let the players figure out wheter "archer's love these new bows" increases fire rate, damage, range, or if they even do anything in the first place!
@c.o.f.f.e.e.. yeah even the normal towers a lot of them dont give specific stats and I just want something like "4 attacks per second". They do good with damage numbers and pierce but not when attack speed is concerned
@@c.o.f.f.e.e.. maybe its just me but i've always liked the vauge descriptions in BTD6. you can pretty much always figure out what its gonna do based on what path it is, the previous upgrade, or the upgrade image itself. the tier 5s and paragons are powerful enough to where i never felt like i was wasting money figuring out what they did. the only upgrade i have a problem with is legend of the night, it was obvious after i got it but wtf is "we turn to him, when all hope is lost..." supposed to mean??
Gemcraft still my favourite TD game despite the grindy late game. Chasing Shadows and Frostborn Wrath to be specific, the older ones are hard to replay nowadays because of the lack of simple QoL stuff like clicking on tower to place gem.
Instructions unclear. Accidentally made a tower defense/RTS hybrid where between each wave you can move your existing "towers" into new positions to account for the different types of enemies and paths they will take with each wave. Requiring the player to make sacrifices between strength _now_ and strength _later._ ... Okay I didn't actually end up making such a game. But now I kinda wanna go ahead and make that! :V
Tower Defense is tricky but oh boy is Dungeon Warfare extremely well designed for a super small team to have made them. They are some of my favorite hidden gems.
Hmm, a few ideas someone could use to spice up a TD game: Unlimited time between waves, towers can be refunded for full price. You get a better score the fewer towers you use, so you're encouraged to adapt to each wave. Forked paths and open areas where you can place walls to control the shape of the map. You still have to leave a clear path to your core. As soon as an enemy reaches your core and deals damage, the wave ends immediately, essentially skipping the rest of the wave. You can try to adapt so it doesn't happen again. You could also just come up with an entirely new mechanic and build the game around that. That will probably get you the best result.
@@watchmychannelorelse Well, how I'd design it is that all enemies do 1 point of damage, and you'd have maybe 3 to 5 HP on your core. So by all means, let an enemy through to skip a wave, but there's no way to heal, and the next wave will only be harder.
Don’t forget- there should be no way the enemy should EVER be able to harm your towers/troops. They should be invincible and all enemies, armed or not, should run straight towards the end.
Great video! My main learning at how to fail at tower defence games is, don't optimise code. Players love seeing bugs and feeling like the game is falling over.
idea: a little list at the end or during the video that keeps track of all the points you need to fail successfully, for more clarity while keeping the sarcasmn/irony :)
0:34 Plants vs Zombies (ya know, the second most famous tower defense franchise): C'mon, you can't make a joke about how tower defense games are like that when the two main examples (bloons and pvz) change the formula so much 1:02 Bloons didn't start as a tower defense franchise, it started with puzzle games and the tower defense spin offs became so popular it turned into the main thing. A monkey shooting darts at balloons it has to pop to beat a level in a puzzlr game makes much more sense than in a tower defense setting I am having a hard time separing the irony from the serious aspect because...Some things they say are true, others are kind of true and others are just wrong and each claim is so close together. Like, at the start what they say is partially correct, tower defense games are common for first games since they tend to be simple and likeable, but saying that they can only be simple and likeable and are only made by cowards or lazy people is just wrong! The fact that this is a "how to fail video" makes it so more confusing because if I end up agreeing with a piece of advice that means I'm being stupid while the person that gave the advice is not?
@@SoulHero7I sure hoped that would be a joke. PvZ 1 is a great game, but not quite near the peak. At least not nowadays when things like Arknights or Fortnite Save the World exist.
Yay! I was really excited by this video as I'm (or I should be) making a tower defense game too! And luckly it meets all the points of this video! /j No, it's really neat to see what kinda fails on tower defense games that end up making them sorta generic and bland, as this is one of my favourite genre of games but I really can't find any variety. Is like this video got re-uploaded as "How To Win At Tower Defense Games" and sent out to all mobile game developers with little to no sense of sarcasm. Eitherways thanks for this awesome video!
I’m making a tower defense game, but since I have no experience with coding I have to make the game bare bones, but I’m glad that my towers actually are original and look very nice
Extra: Make the only useful tower the starter tower, the one that shoots a basic projectile and nothing else, zero gimmicks allowed. With the only viable strategy being spamming said tower, there's no way the player can get it wrong! They will have so much fun!!! Bonus points if you make positioning not matter at all, so the only way the player will ever reach the highest wave possible is if they get good RNG with the enemy spawns.
Or, you could try making a hack of pvz1 that majes all zombies incredubly powerful and annoying! dont forget making doomshroom the only startegy that works and adding randomness in thing that shouldnt. if you made all these steps acordingly you will have one of the most popular tower defences ever while failing.
tower defense games are actual very versatile on mobile platforms you often see the classic tower defense with 4 towers and a path on steam its more custom to be creative and break out,maybe having an open space instead of a path and economy towers that add complexity to the game on roblox(very surprisingly) its normal to have a wide selection of towers which can serve the economy,buff other towers,defend in the basic 4 ways,OR EVEN SPAWN YOUR OWN UNITS ON THE PATH and while this is very surprising that roblox has both its own version of a genre and it being actually pretty good it still has its drawbacks compared to the steam type of games so if you are to develop a tower defense game you could take inspiration from both
Ok other than the frame rate point I think alot of the things in this video, the Bloons games are pretty good at avoiding, there are towers thst move other towers, towers that prevent leaks, towers that give you lives, and an accessibility option to at least assist the frame rate and make sure you see what is going on. And they are spicing the game up with paragons and unlockable making the grind less tedious when you're on round 253. "once I get enough XP I can get the submarine paragon!" Is what you look forward to. And the community makes fun challenges to play was well. They even have plans to make a fully fledged terraria style mod menu for the game. I don't think Bloons is a great example for the tedium and such these games typically provide. God bless you! (and this isn't saying any of you need to im just stating it because it seems the end times are upon us) Repent and seek the love and grace of the mighty lord Jesus! Allow him too cleanse your soul, and make you born anew in the kingdom of Christ!
2:02, this is exactly how i feel about bloons 1d 5. the only real strategy is put down a ninj, upgrade it to double shot or bloonjitsu, then place down farms while the ninja holds off the bloons. then when you have enough money sell all the farms and the ninja monkey and get a 4-2 super monkey and you win
How coincidental, i just started development on a tower defense game. After watching your video, I've become enlightened to make it as generic and simple as possible.
I think it’d be nice to have a little “so to recap, don’t: *short list of things talked about in the video*” I think it’d clear up any confusion, while also being able to express exactly what you’re trying to say without forcing it to be in reverse
You can also fail by adding too much characters and towers and enemies. Just make sure that: The Towers are just the same shooting with different skins, and if you get tired of reskining it over and over, you can forget its "special quirks" like fire or ice. The less you work, the more time you'll have for other towers. As for enemies, just have the same tier 1 with a different color because oh gee being BLUE is stronger or something. You want to both save resources, art, and precious time, so you totally are allowed to copy and paste the same guys but with different values. BONUS: If you make a tower objectively better than the other, that's fine! The player will explore its way figuring out that the not so cool shooting tower gets outclassed by the other shooting tower with a different hat
What’s that? Making these replacement towers a part of some permanent upgrade system? That’s stupid! The whole point of a tower defense game is giving the player a wide arsenal of varied, balanced towers. A system to upgrade towers to a new tier rather than gambling your way to an OP tower right away defeats the whole point!!! 😡😡😡🤬🤬😡😡
I generally don't like tower defense games... unless you also control a playable character in them. That's one way to really liven them up; not only do you need to be strategic in your placement of towers/traps, but also quick-witted in the points you defend as your character! Though I've never seen it in typical top-down tower defense games, so perhaps it doesn't exactly apply to this video.
Hello! These videos are really good! I would love to see one that is about traditional 2d fighting games (such as street fighter or mortal kombat) as if I were to make a game, it would be one of those. Or don’t. Either way these are great!
Idk about Artindi, but I do got a few pointers of my own The weak attacks should have extremely long wind ups and cooldowns, while the strong, borderli- *…actually* overpowered moves can be turbo button’d to be used every other frame, instakilling the opponent. In fact, even if they’re not ridiculously strong, attacks that stun-lock the opponent indefinitely are just as good. Graphics remain more important than performance, even in fighting games, so you don’t have to worry about your game randomly dipping into the mid 20s when it’d absolutely ruin the genre-integral use of framedata, whatever *that* means. Speaking of being as smooth as an asteroid poised to cause the extinction of any redeeming qualities of your new game, the online gameplay should feel like you’re playing on a dial-up modem. Not like one of those fancy “56k” modems, I mean the one your great grandparent used for his TRS-80.
I'm just about to reaveal my third tower defense on Steam. This time I took my first game, made it better, bigger and prettier. Is it enough? Probably now, but the newest game was made in 3 months time frame and I'm proud of finishing it.
I have actually made a tower defence game. It was a long time ago when I was just getting started programming. More made as a fun bit of programming, nothing too fancy. It is online. 5 internet points to anyone who replies with a link.
0:51 there's this td game called Infinitode 2, and it's imo one of the best tds I've played. Yes, it's artstyle is basic geometry. I'm not disproving anything, just pointing that out (because tbh that game is underated as fuck)
So I'm assuming you guys know aobut tower defense games. Maybe you know the name of what I'm thinking of? It's kinda top-down isometric 2.5D, in-between levels you can buy upgrades for your castle including dragons, machinery and build up the tower itself. The levels have a PVZ looking grid, and sometimes obstacles around the road. I remember the characters being some kind of creatures, maybe demons, and you can place knights as one of you classes, I think. Its graphics also remind me of PVZ and maybe the Candy Crush offshoot Farm Saga (?). It has biomes, I remember there being a sunny orangy one with wheat fields, and a dark purple one. The first biome with its collection of levels has sunflowers. Sorry for non-specificity, I played this game as a kid and was really hoping to find it again. 😭 If anyone has any tips at all, I'd love to hear it
Here is my weird tower defense idea, I'm trying to make a tower defense but with no tower defending... instead a tower you control a ball that move like your snake game, that crush every monster infront of him. ^V^) yeah it is absurd.
everytime new tower defense game pop up and its build base foundation from bloon I'm instantly become uninterested, i guess i just wish different kind of game when playing tower defense one that let your tower be interacted by enemy, like in plant vs zombie and arknights, enemy can target and kill your tower
Ever try Battle Cats? Its a really solid one. Kinda grindy early game, but if you can get past that it is actually a great game. (Even for being a mobile game)
Sometimes it's hard to pick out the sarcasm from the actual tutorial. "Why [a tower defense game]? Because you're a chicken and just want to make a game that people will play." That almost sounds like a good way to reach your goals and not fail, while also getting better at game dev. I came here to learn how to fail at making a massive project that no one will ever play once I never finish it because I can't get better at making something so far outside of my abilities that I can barely write a line of code.
yeah, this one blurs the lines a bit more then usual probably, hard to hit that balance. :)
Honestly that's what I'm doing right now for my portfolio. I'm a software developer and I have a *mountain* of failed ambitious projects behind me this last year... So these last few weeks I've just been taking very small, template projects and putting them together over and over until I remind myself that I actually *can* do this and I *do* know what I'm doing
I cannot separate irony from good advice from stupidity and I'm going insane
@@sammyjones8279I did the same thing for an annual roguelike game jam. My first attempt I bit off more than I could chew, trying to make rideable vehicles and computer controlled allies. So the next year, my game was so simple it could have been considered a puzzle game rather than a roguelike!
@@Artindiit's okay. I just let it wash over like the background hum of freeway traffic ... And try to pick out a bit of inspiration or anger or false modesty or pretended knowledge or some new attitude....
Another tip: to fail, you CAN have a lot of complex costumization, multiple tower types etc. but the important thing is that only one strategy is optimal, no matter how many tower types etc. are left unused by the player.
good point, the more useless stuff you can add the better! :D
@@Artindi Even the first Bloons Tower Defense game had growing pains with easily discoverable optimal strategy.
you can also have awesome synergies but make sure that just spamming one type of the cheapest tower is the optimal strategy
@@pinguin4898Ooh, that’s even more devious. Making the game have tons of complex and beautiful synergies, and then making it all literally worthless because nothing can top spamming a singular type of tower on every available patch of land. REALLY highlights the wasted potential.
@@Orenshaii I would say PVZ with Doom-shroom/puff-shroom
You really nailed what separates the engaging & deep Tower defense games from the sea of unremarkable & generic ones.
hey i've seen you before, you were the guy arguing with that sock fanboy
Cool to see Shyguy. Thank you for your contributions over the years. Tower defense ftw.
*THERE ARE ZOMBIES ON YOUR LAWN‼️‼️‼️*
@@Ulaanbasaar Me:
"I hate tower defense games."
Me after playing PvZ:
"OMG I LOVE THIS! What kind of game is this?"
@@Nerobyrne BbbBrAAaAaAaAIIiIIns
As a tower defense genre enthusiasm this video hits hard especially the frame rate causing lag
I once played bloons 5 in my phone, and for about an hour it was 1 frame/second, and my phone was hot enough to cook on. I made bacon and eggs.
Was watching the whole series playlist and when I reached the end, this video suddenly appeared with no views. Good timing!
Ha ha, what are the chances? :)
@@Artindithe *odds.* what are the *odds.* ☝️🤓
@@usernametaken017 you chanced the odds but got an odd chance ^^
Some more tips:
1. Make a standart 3-level upgrade system, which increases only attack speed, damage and radius. It shouldn't change how it looks.
2. Make an upgrade menu like this: green radius and two buttons(sell and upgrade) around the tower.
3. Don't forget about 3 stars that has nothing to do with the game but only make people mad.
4. Add a hard mode which does nothing except for increasing enemy's health
I think changing the looks has become a common trait. Should always be incorporated.
You forgot about the way to long targeting system with five hundred buttons each which only targets the first enemy.
You have 300 lives. Three stars requires every single one. Leave no margin for error.
@@bluenightrblx this is the whole point!
We don't want to make a "generic" TD, we want to fail!
half of the things im doing is described in this video, time to redesign the entire game
no keep going! you are following the tutorial! ;)
Better to be a chicken than a sheep
@@Artindi 😭😭
Its OK if you do half. just so long as you have cool upgrades and voice overs. presentation is important, you aren't trying to reinvent the genre. people will whine if you do something they don't expect, people will whine if you do something poorly.
just start with the basic and then add to it.
but dont do the enemy spam thing. framerates are an issue.
@@bloodred255Nuh uh, it's not okay, it's kinda crazy that I needed this video to realize about all the things I was doing wrong, no one will play a TD game with uninteresting towers, no strategy, no synergies, no matter how good the presentation is
1:32 Oh yeah, never give the player an opportunity to increase the base’s health over the course of the match, even as literally every enemy will now have 100 or more health, cause mistakes are in fact only tolerable early on.
Ooh, bonus tips: Make sure to use a gatcha system for unlocking towers. Nothing like getting that legendary tower either way too early or never ever ever. But the actually important part is to not give a player any chance to make up for the bad RNG he had. All those commons he wasted thousands on can never be traded, never merged into a stronger version, only tossed away like the garbage they are.
The starter tower must be worthless. Like genuinely one of the early towers you can get can essentially replace it.
Finally, make sure the players are *so* starved for money the entire match, that the only way to even beat the match is to own the generic cash-every-wave farm tower.
the current state of the genre
i wish skibidi toilet never existed
it's funny how roblox stylized this list
its funny how every roblox TD is like this
Basic roblox td game
Accurate description of every TD in roblox
monkeys and balloons? zombies and plants? kingdoms and rushing? what a load of nonsense!
Gems and crafting? Preposterous!
Animal-eared people in a semi-dystopian world filled with rock cancer weather? PATHETIC!
@@unimportantcommenter4356
Holy based gemcraft user spotted
Ok but have you seen tower and defense?
Arks? With Knights? No shot with that, dawg.
Are there any real OG's here who remember Bloons before it was a tower defense game? 0.0
best puzzle game ever
I did get to learn about them alongside the tower defense games, and so while priority was on the TD in my mind, the remaining games were a treat
Never played it. But heard about it before in an one hour video of comprehensive bloon TD history
Wasn't it like a catapult game where you were trying to hit as many balloons as possible?
yeah, a puzzle game where you play as a monkey and throw a limited number of darts to pop the require number of balloons in a level. pretty great for it's time.
haha, your skills in "pixel art" are so remarkable! perhaps you should try starting a "TH-cam" channel?
Hm... that might be a good idea....
I think the funniest part of this one is that the tower defense genre was pretty heavily oversaturated back in the golden age of Flash games, so this is not far off at all from what I know
Besides Bloons TD, though, I can suggest a couple others for people to check out:
- The Gemcraft series is a curious blend of tower defense and RPG, each entry has a meta-game system of sorts where as you accumulate better high scores across the extensive list of maps, you get skill points that you can spend on upgrades to gain an edge in later maps, or aim for EVEN HIGHER SCORES on maps you've already completed - just as a forewarning, it's an episodic series set in a dark fantasy world, so be wary those who are faint of heart. Also the devs have another one-off TD game with a similar system, "Balloon Invasion", that isn't as goofy as it sounds (WW1/2 themes/aesthetics) but it's interesting to me because you get/have to directly control one of the turrets
- The Creeper World series is another childhood favorite of mine, I'd cite it more as an RTS but I think it still fits the bill for the most part. Basically, you're tasked with expanding a network of structures and pushing back the namesake enemy, the Creeper, to gain ground, and eventually achieve a clear-cut objective (said objective changes with the game but still). The claim to fame this series has is the Creeper isn't really a discrete enemy, instead being a fluid-like substance that conforms to the terrain levels, developing deep pools in craters or racing down hill sides. There's short, free demos for the first 3 games on Flashpoint, too!
Kingdom Rush is another great example. The existence of footsoldiers alone would make it cool and unique, but they do so much with the concept it makes KR more fun to master, I think, than other tower defense games I've played. Just don't play past the first 3 games (OG, Frontiers, and Origins).
Yes very good keeping the players health as low as possible, there is no fun at all in trying to scramble together whatever troops you can afford to defend the home base while the enemies pile on.
I know right, insta-death is WAY more fun. :)
Alternatively, give the player health through some upgrade but not enough to actually matter anyways come endgame.
@@Gatrehs Genius
The developer of Mindustry flew into the future and watched your tutorial to make a good game.
Anuke nailed it
No, he is just smart. Except when it comes to
circleTarget: true
For flares
I am dumb. You mean mind industry bad or that game is good despite following this giude?
@@greyfaceofaxe No, I mean that the developer of mindustry looked at this guide and figured out how to make a good game.
@@greyfaceofaxe Mindustry is a tower defense and automation game. You build drills to mine ore and other resources, use conveyor belts to move those resources around, including supplying ammunition to the towers that require them, and use towers and walls to protect against waves of enemies. It's pretty good.
i love how this is actually really accurate to every roblox tower defense game
World tower defense is really good though
Lol every single roblox tower defense game basically requires you to sink way too many hours just so you can have a fighting chance. Not to mention if you want to win anything hard, you need to find other people who have also grinded for very long times and use a very convoluted strategy just to die to rng over and over again until you've completed one difficult level (after several hours).
You know, I never thought about why I stopped playing tower defense games even though they used to be one of my favorite genres. Now I know why.
I really love this series. It is so non-constructive :)
it's destructive. lol
I'm curious hearing your pixelated take about "Boss rush" games ( Like for example Furi ).
I can already think about some ways to fail at it.
I'm not super familiar with boss rush games, but I'm sure I'll make a video on it sooner or later. :)
@@ArtindiIf you want to go a bit wider, you could always talk about how to fail at Bosses in general. Bosses can be such an important part in a games combat design that screwing them up basically renders the entire game much worse.
Idk about that since that "genre" is basically just Furi and even then it's less a genre and more just a variant of whatever genre your game already is, but one focused on bosses I think would be really good yeah
@@dontkickmychick6076 Just straight only bosses? Surprisingly common for flash games like Sky Serpents and Epic Boss Fighter. But primarily boss fight focused games? Monster Hunter, Touhou, the Souls games, Cuphead... there's a fair bit of those.
About the early remark about the tower defense games being strict: This reminds me that there are numerous defense games that aren't tower defense games. For early ones, Atlantis and Battle City/Tank Force come to mind. For flash games, Deflector and Onslaught come to mind. Interesting how varied the defense games can be if you ditch the tower part.
If you ever add a manual tower, make sure to give it no cooldown so that players can win by using an autoclicker. Or just make it extremely micro consuming with almost perfect timings for it to be decent.
what I have learned is to make good games these also work, but just do the exact opposite, for example, "make it so that you can not remove towers when they're placed" turns into "give the player free will to place and remove towers whenever they like to add more freedom and accessibility."
Also remember to add in vague descriptors to the upgrades or towers, "increases damage massively" or "fast firerate / rapid fire rate / quick firerate" or even better put no descriptors to the upgrades other than flavor text and let the players figure out wheter "archer's love these new bows" increases fire rate, damage, range, or if they even do anything in the first place!
LMAOO like I love btd6 but the tier 5 descriptions kill me 💀 "This is one big plane!" like wtf????
@c.o.f.f.e.e.. yeah even the normal towers a lot of them dont give specific stats and I just want something like "4 attacks per second". They do good with damage numbers and pierce but not when attack speed is concerned
@@c.o.f.f.e.e.. maybe its just me but i've always liked the vauge descriptions in BTD6. you can pretty much always figure out what its gonna do based on what path it is, the previous upgrade, or the upgrade image itself. the tier 5s and paragons are powerful enough to where i never felt like i was wasting money figuring out what they did. the only upgrade i have a problem with is legend of the night, it was obvious after i got it but wtf is "we turn to him, when all hope is lost..." supposed to mean??
@@cheapyyyyy “When you become too big to fail…”
Actual effect: Gives you an ability that pays you for free
@@TheMamaluigi300 i should have mentioned that one too but i forgot cause its way worse than the legend of the night description
Gemcraft still my favourite TD game despite the grindy late game.
Chasing Shadows and Frostborn Wrath to be specific, the older ones are hard to replay nowadays because of the lack of simple QoL stuff like clicking on tower to place gem.
Based Gemcraft enjoyer.
Instructions unclear. Accidentally made a tower defense/RTS hybrid where between each wave you can move your existing "towers" into new positions to account for the different types of enemies and paths they will take with each wave. Requiring the player to make sacrifices between strength _now_ and strength _later._
... Okay I didn't actually end up making such a game. But now I kinda wanna go ahead and make that! :V
Bro, i hade pretty much the EXACT same idea!!!!
@@aidencook5524path to nowhere let you move your tower instantly (multiple time in one battle)
Sounds like advanced wars?
Tower Defense is tricky but oh boy is Dungeon Warfare extremely well designed for a super small team to have made them.
They are some of my favorite hidden gems.
Just started working on a tower defense game a week ago. Perfect timing. Thank you for the tips.
Happy I could help... or not help... one of those. ;)
Hmm, a few ideas someone could use to spice up a TD game:
Unlimited time between waves, towers can be refunded for full price. You get a better score the fewer towers you use, so you're encouraged to adapt to each wave.
Forked paths and open areas where you can place walls to control the shape of the map. You still have to leave a clear path to your core.
As soon as an enemy reaches your core and deals damage, the wave ends immediately, essentially skipping the rest of the wave. You can try to adapt so it doesn't happen again.
You could also just come up with an entirely new mechanic and build the game around that. That will probably get you the best result.
What if I just let weaker enemies through to my core to prevent a stronger one from doing more damage though?
@@watchmychannelorelse Well, how I'd design it is that all enemies do 1 point of damage, and you'd have maybe 3 to 5 HP on your core. So by all means, let an enemy through to skip a wave, but there's no way to heal, and the next wave will only be harder.
@@Greywander87 i like that
Don’t forget- there should be no way the enemy should EVER be able to harm your towers/troops. They should be invincible and all enemies, armed or not, should run straight towards the end.
Ironically thats what makes Bloons TD 6 the best tower defense put there lol
At the same time, stunning towers for way too long every time they had *just* came back from being stunned for way too long is great boss design
This vid has inspired me to fail at making a tower defense game of my own! Thanks!
I love how he rants and gives advice at the same time.
Great video! My main learning at how to fail at tower defence games is, don't optimise code. Players love seeing bugs and feeling like the game is falling over.
idea: a little list at the end or during the video that keeps track of all the points you need to fail successfully, for more clarity while keeping the sarcasmn/irony :)
0:34 Plants vs Zombies (ya know, the second most famous tower defense franchise):
C'mon, you can't make a joke about how tower defense games are like that when the two main examples (bloons and pvz) change the formula so much
1:02 Bloons didn't start as a tower defense franchise, it started with puzzle games and the tower defense spin offs became so popular it turned into the main thing. A monkey shooting darts at balloons it has to pop to beat a level in a puzzlr game makes much more sense than in a tower defense setting
I am having a hard time separing the irony from the serious aspect because...Some things they say are true, others are kind of true and others are just wrong and each claim is so close together. Like, at the start what they say is partially correct, tower defense games are common for first games since they tend to be simple and likeable, but saying that they can only be simple and likeable and are only made by cowards or lazy people is just wrong! The fact that this is a "how to fail video" makes it so more confusing because if I end up agreeing with a piece of advice that means I'm being stupid while the person that gave the advice is not?
XD I liked your joke about baloons and monkeys making an original tower defense game, whats next? Plants and zombies XD
oh, that sounds like a good idea. :)
No joke, Plants vs Zombies 1 is the peak tower defense experience.
@@SoulHero7I sure hoped that would be a joke. PvZ 1 is a great game, but not quite near the peak. At least not nowadays when things like Arknights or Fortnite Save the World exist.
Yay! I was really excited by this video as I'm (or I should be) making a tower defense game too!
And luckly it meets all the points of this video! /j
No, it's really neat to see what kinda fails on tower defense games that end up making them sorta generic and bland, as this is one of my favourite genre of games but I really can't find any variety. Is like this video got re-uploaded as "How To Win At Tower Defense Games" and sent out to all mobile game developers with little to no sense of sarcasm.
Eitherways thanks for this awesome video!
I’m making a tower defense game, but since I have no experience with coding I have to make the game bare bones, but I’m glad that my towers actually are original and look very nice
Splitting paths the enemy/you can reroute (possibly by destruction of a thing) would be TERRIBLE! ... remember! levelution is simply EXCLUSIVE to fps!
yeah, plus it's hard to do that anyway. so super not worth it. ;)
Extra: Make the only useful tower the starter tower, the one that shoots a basic projectile and nothing else, zero gimmicks allowed. With the only viable strategy being spamming said tower, there's no way the player can get it wrong! They will have so much fun!!!
Bonus points if you make positioning not matter at all, so the only way the player will ever reach the highest wave possible is if they get good RNG with the enemy spawns.
"I can't think of anything to say, so I'm just going to be quiet."
me: *hears Artindi just existing next to the microphone* You're too loud.
I had to shift unnaturally in my chair to capture those "yeah I'm still here" sounds. Lol
Or, you could try making a hack of pvz1 that majes all zombies incredubly powerful and annoying! dont forget making doomshroom the only startegy that works and adding randomness in thing that shouldnt. if you made all these steps acordingly you will have one of the most popular tower defences ever while failing.
tower defense games are actual very versatile
on mobile platforms you often see the classic tower defense with 4 towers and a path
on steam its more custom to be creative and break out,maybe having an open space instead of a path and economy towers that add complexity to the game
on roblox(very surprisingly) its normal to have a wide selection of towers which can serve the economy,buff other towers,defend in the basic 4 ways,OR EVEN SPAWN YOUR OWN UNITS ON THE PATH
and while this is very surprising that roblox has both its own version of a genre and it being actually pretty good it still has its drawbacks compared to the steam type of games
so if you are to develop a tower defense game you could take inspiration from both
i really only mentioned roblox to let you know that even in the most surprising places you can find good qualities of a game
Ok other than the frame rate point I think alot of the things in this video, the Bloons games are pretty good at avoiding, there are towers thst move other towers, towers that prevent leaks, towers that give you lives, and an accessibility option to at least assist the frame rate and make sure you see what is going on.
And they are spicing the game up with paragons and unlockable making the grind less tedious when you're on round 253.
"once I get enough XP I can get the submarine paragon!" Is what you look forward to. And the community makes fun challenges to play was well.
They even have plans to make a fully fledged terraria style mod menu for the game.
I don't think Bloons is a great example for the tedium and such these games typically provide.
God bless you!
(and this isn't saying any of you need to im just stating it because it seems the end times are upon us)
Repent and seek the love and grace of the mighty lord Jesus! Allow him too cleanse your soul, and make you born anew in the kingdom of Christ!
Thank you! Now I now my game is bound to failing at succeeding to fail!
It will sell millions, for sure!
How to fail at survival games next?
Love the content btw keep it up it's a really original way to teach future game devs
Thanks for the tips. I think I have been following most of them. Psyched for the impending doom.
2:02, this is exactly how i feel about bloons 1d 5. the only real strategy is put down a ninj, upgrade it to double shot or bloonjitsu, then place down farms while the ninja holds off the bloons. then when you have enough money sell all the farms and the ninja monkey and get a 4-2 super monkey and you win
How coincidental, i just started development on a tower defense game. After watching your video, I've become enlightened to make it as generic and simple as possible.
Babe wake up! New How To Fail at game thing just dropped!
Best alarm ever!
I think it’d be nice to have a little “so to recap, don’t: *short list of things talked about in the video*”
I think it’d clear up any confusion, while also being able to express exactly what you’re trying to say without forcing it to be in reverse
You can also fail by adding too much characters and towers and enemies. Just make sure that: The Towers are just the same shooting with different skins, and if you get tired of reskining it over and over, you can forget its "special quirks" like fire or ice. The less you work, the more time you'll have for other towers. As for enemies, just have the same tier 1 with a different color because oh gee being BLUE is stronger or something. You want to both save resources, art, and precious time, so you totally are allowed to copy and paste the same guys but with different values.
BONUS: If you make a tower objectively better than the other, that's fine! The player will explore its way figuring out that the not so cool shooting tower gets outclassed by the other shooting tower with a different hat
And of course you have to add some towers unlocked later in the game, that are just another tower with better stats and the same/lower price.
What’s that? Making these replacement towers a part of some permanent upgrade system? That’s stupid! The whole point of a tower defense game is giving the player a wide arsenal of varied, balanced towers. A system to upgrade towers to a new tier rather than gambling your way to an OP tower right away defeats the whole point!!! 😡😡😡🤬🤬😡😡
I love your channel. Picel art fan. Plus its unique from tge usual game dev logs
These are always getting better
"... and tanking the frame rate to less frames than you have dream games released."
And I took that personally /silly
I generally don't like tower defense games... unless you also control a playable character in them. That's one way to really liven them up; not only do you need to be strategic in your placement of towers/traps, but also quick-witted in the points you defend as your character! Though I've never seen it in typical top-down tower defense games, so perhaps it doesn't exactly apply to this video.
To be fair : most collectable card games play like Tower Defense games. All the way down to the shuffling of decks and RTS resource icons .
I love these videos so much, and they're somehow more informative then how to succeed
being friends with this guy is probably a test of edurance.
Why not "How to fail at sports games?"😊
Step 1: make a game that you can literally play in real life!
you should do "how to fail at making a devlog" or "how to fail at game jam", I think that'd be pretty cool
Now I miss PVZ when it was good!
The balloon's franchise is the most popular tower of the french frand it's very successful
Hello! These videos are really good! I would love to see one that is about traditional 2d fighting games (such as street fighter or mortal kombat) as if I were to make a game, it would be one of those. Or don’t. Either way these are great!
Idk about Artindi, but I do got a few pointers of my own
The weak attacks should have extremely long wind ups and cooldowns, while the strong, borderli- *…actually* overpowered moves can be turbo button’d to be used every other frame, instakilling the opponent. In fact, even if they’re not ridiculously strong, attacks that stun-lock the opponent indefinitely are just as good.
Graphics remain more important than performance, even in fighting games, so you don’t have to worry about your game randomly dipping into the mid 20s when it’d absolutely ruin the genre-integral use of framedata, whatever *that* means.
Speaking of being as smooth as an asteroid poised to cause the extinction of any redeeming qualities of your new game, the online gameplay should feel like you’re playing on a dial-up modem. Not like one of those fancy “56k” modems, I mean the one your great grandparent used for his TRS-80.
I'm just about to reaveal my third tower defense on Steam. This time I took my first game, made it better, bigger and prettier.
Is it enough? Probably now, but the newest game was made in 3 months time frame and I'm proud of finishing it.
Hey, i am from Germany and learn english and the pictures from you are very good to Unserstand all. And the Video is soo good thx
@@Galaxy-c8q I'm happy it helped! Thank you! :)
This is so accurate lmao
I have actually made a tower defence game. It was a long time ago when I was just getting started programming. More made as a fun bit of programming, nothing too fancy. It is online. 5 internet points to anyone who replies with a link.
we'll I'll be. It's like Terrible Writing Advice back when it was short and good. I like this, and I'll sub now. We need more content like this XD
Snipers? Bombs? Why bother, just make recolors of a single building and give them different damage
Make more of these please haha
0:51 there's this td game called Infinitode 2, and it's imo one of the best tds I've played.
Yes, it's artstyle is basic geometry.
I'm not disproving anything, just pointing that out (because tbh that game is underated as fuck)
might have to try it out. I do like a good tower defense game. :)
Oh no, you've just created Plants vs. Zombies 3
D:
glad the GOAT was adressed
For all the powercreep Arknights has, it's at least unique.
So I'm assuming you guys know aobut tower defense games. Maybe you know the name of what I'm thinking of?
It's kinda top-down isometric 2.5D, in-between levels you can buy upgrades for your castle including dragons, machinery and build up the tower itself.
The levels have a PVZ looking grid, and sometimes obstacles around the road. I remember the characters being some kind of creatures, maybe demons, and you can place knights as one of you classes, I think.
Its graphics also remind me of PVZ and maybe the Candy Crush offshoot Farm Saga (?).
It has biomes, I remember there being a sunny orangy one with wheat fields, and a dark purple one. The first biome with its collection of levels has sunflowers.
Sorry for non-specificity, I played this game as a kid and was really hoping to find it again. 😭 If anyone has any tips at all, I'd love to hear it
I enter the video and get a ad for "The Tower" a game that suits most of the things he brings up
Here is my weird tower defense idea, I'm trying to make a tower defense but with no tower defending... instead a tower you control a ball that move like your snake game, that crush every monster infront of him. ^V^) yeah it is absurd.
Dang, the amount of strays I get for trying to make a tower defense.
Could you make a video about turn-based top-down games like Fire Emblem and Midnight Suns?
The squid game made me chuckle ngl
Nice.
Or because I enjoy Tower Defense and miss a couple that have disappeared over the years...
Another cool af video. I hope youll make a htfa Action platformer :D
the enemies stuff is SO TRUE O MY GOD, NO ONE WANTS TO EVEN TOUCH THAT ITS ANNOYING
Good video
Good comment
0:58 Balloons and monkeys? How absurd! Next you’ll be telling me a tower defense game about zombies and plants will be successful. How ridiculous!
from what game is the music at 0:53 ? if it's from a game, idk tbh
Legends say that the best way to fail at making a tower defense game, is by mixing it with a completely non-sensical genre, like kart racer...
Is that joke based on a real td game?
I forgot this was a joke video after a bit and listened to some of what you said. I'm a student game dev. That's NOT a good sign.
1:00 Ninja Kiwi starts laughing.
Tower defence genre would be good if they added another generic tower... Slowing is a good contender but that requires thought... Chain hitting?
Remember, add exactly 1 building that produces extra income, so people can play an Adventure Capitalist Sub-Game within your Tower Defense game.
Huh kinda funny I just did High School Musical for my school and got this completely unrelated video recommended.
everytime new tower defense game pop up and its build base foundation from bloon I'm instantly become uninterested, i guess i just wish different kind of game when playing tower defense one that let your tower be interacted by enemy, like in plant vs zombie and arknights, enemy can target and kill your tower
Ever try Battle Cats?
Its a really solid one.
Kinda grindy early game, but if you can get past that it is actually a great game. (Even for being a mobile game)
@@drakewahl7609 It's just a defence game. No towers.
@@NikodAnimations Uh. There are towers?
The whole goal is to destroy the enemy tower (or base rather)
(unless you are making some kind of joke)
Step 1:
Create a MMORPG
Damn bros throwing shade at tower defense devs. Btw can you do one for endless runners?
Idea: How to fail at farming sims
Is there an example?
having made a TD game, this one hits close to home 😅
Can you make a video on stealth games