Reprint--"How to make a good tower defense game"

How to make a good tower defense game? Recently, indie game studios, the classic tower defense game "Guardian Adventures" (Defender's Quest) developer level up Labs co-founder Lasse Ducet (Lars Doucet) wrote a column, sharing his studio production " 11 Principles of Guardian Adventures. Ducet said the tower defense game to maximize its potential, need to do to let players focus, and test the player's thinking. The following is the main content compilation of the 11 principles listed in Ducet.

1. Do not scroll the map

The scrolling map is the "focus" of the enemy. If a player is always concerned that an enemy is in his or her field of vision, he or she will be very nervous and unable to concentrate.

There is no scrolling map in Guardian Adventure, what the player sees is what they gain

Scrolling maps are available for certain game types, such as instant Strategy (RTS) games, but defending positions is the only priority for players in tower defense. As a result, developers need to design maps in a streamlined way. This may cause the map to be smaller, so developers are constrained in designing the level, but the downside of the plot is that it increases the psychological burden on the player and affects the player's focus on the game itself.

Scrolling the map reduces the player's ability to focus on the game, while not being able to better test the player's ability to think-more often, scrolling the map to test the player's responsiveness, but this is not the first skill the player needs to play tower defense games.

2. Inform the player of all information

The so-called "all information" means that the developer needs to let the player know all the status in the game and the resources that the player has. For example, chess is a "all information" type of game, and poker is not.

Data is an important element in driving tower defense games, including damage per second, maximum range, fire rate, enemy travel speed, and more. But in the vast majority of tower defense games, this information is not complete, we can only see the enemy's blood trough, but do not know its original health value. Some games don't even provide players with information about towers!

In tower defense games, players should always be able to click on each tower or enemy to know their current health and data information. Every monster needs a blood trough, a tower upgrade or a status should also have a view hint ... Similarly, the player should be able to know what type of enemy is engaged, how many enemy units are, and how the energy level is information. If conditions permit, developers may also consider suggesting defensive strategies for players, such as "Oh, the enemy can swim, beware of that tiled river." ”

By telling the player all the information, the Tower defense game tests the player's ability to think, rather than their memory or guessing level.

3. Give the player full control of the time

In addition to informing the player of all the information, tower Defense games need to give the player full control over the time. Players can pause the game at any time (and deploy the tower), or choose to play the game at 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2 or 4 times times.

Many tower defense games do not allow players to pause the game process, or allow players to pause, but do not allow them to perform any action during a pause. At some point, developers worry that this will make the game "too easy", but the problem is that tower defense is not a Tetris or an instant strategy game, it does not test the player's reaction speed, but test their ability to think.

At the same time, giving the player full control of the timing also embodies the "fairness" of the tower defense game. If the player is lost in the Guardian adventure, it is because they are not ready or make the wrong decision-not because the game cheats the player.

"Cursed Treasure" game

The Cursed Treasure (cursed Treasure:don ' t Touch My Gems) is a classic tower defense game, but if you join the Pause option, the game experience may be better. In a certain level, the last few waves of enemies have a special type (Ninja), the Ninja for a period of time on the damage immunity, to knock them down and achieve "perfect" evaluation, the player needs to launch a special spell damage (Meteor), the player to seize the opportunity is very high. If you join the game pause option, players will have more time to think about the best defense options.

4. Melee units must be strong

If a player never uses a melee tower in a tower defense game, it means that the game is very balanced.

In tower Defense games, remote units tend to be more popular with players because "range" is an important indicator: players want to cover the attack surface as much as possible and ensure that the average damage per second (DPS) is maximized.

Remote units have a wide range of attacks

In order to contend with remote units, melee units must have a much greater damage value or have special skills such as control, anti-armor, and elimination of enemy buff.

5. Game status should be easy to read

The game Information of Tower Defense game should let the player at a glance. Developers should design enemy types, subtypes, and variants that are visually sound.

Each enemy should have a floating blood trough, as well as a status mark. If the details are likely to disturb the screen, you can hide it in the context menu. For example, a player can click on an enemy to see its specific health value and the number of seconds remaining in the special effect.

6. No 3D screen

Tower Defense games often use a top-down perspective, and if you use 3D graphics, the visuals will be poor-you'll only see some brains and arms, and we're normal people who are more accustomed to seeing the world from the eye's height. Of course, developers can try some creative angles, but that means the cost of game production is soaring and the effect may not be better than the 2D picture.

"Siegecraft" 3D screen

In a 3D environment, designers need to figure out how to roll the map and zoom, as well as lighting, modeling, texturing, and shading. In addition, I think in 3D games, developers will be very difficult to show the details of the object.

7. Use special enemies with caution and provide multiple options.

In tower Defense games, some specially designed enemies are immune to the overwhelming majority of attacks, and only one defense unit can effectively damage them.

But the challenge is boring, which is actually scripted and requires the player to execute the only strategy. Players have no way of thinking, compromising, or subtly coping with the challenge--and can only answer questions by the way the teacher (the game designer) gives them. This does not give them any sense of accomplishment, nor is it a test of the player's ability to think.

My advice is to give players at least two more options to deal with enemies. A particular type of tower can be magical in a particular map, or dealing with a particular enemy, but in addition to it, there are other ways for the player to hit the enemy-even if the other is not the best.

For example, in Guardian Adventures, some enemies are equipped with armor and can absorb a fixed damage value each time they are attacked. The player can choose the Knight (Knight) to deal with these enemies, because the knight's attack can ignore armor or remove armor. But at the same time, players can take a variety of other ways to deal with armored enemies.

8. Use air units with caution!

"Flying Enemy + Air defense Tower", this set of design is very good, but in all of the tower Defense games I have played, as long as the developer design, experience is always very bad.

Why? Because 1) The flying unit is completely immune to non-aerial attacks, 2) The flight unit ignores the path and goes straight to the player base; 3) Many times, air defense towers are completely useless to non-air units.

In short, air units disrupt the general rules of Tower Defense games, and players have only one way to deal with them, and they can't solve problems by thinking about them.

9. Get rid of the "Physics Challenge"

The so-called physical challenge, refers to the player need to manually click on gold coins to complete the collection, or need to drag the mouse to attack enemies and so on. But in the vast majority of cases, these practices have no value in addition to increasing the player's operation. This is repetitive labor, very uninteresting.

Keep in mind that we are making tower defense games instead of farm games.

10. Avoid unnecessary diversification

If you have 24 different types of defense towers, then I am sure that at least half of them will not be used frequently. Because the array of data, tower types, special skills, and effects is always limited, the most important factor to consider when you make your choice is balance and precision.

A good design principle is to let each type of tower play its maximum role in different scenes. For example, a tower with an armor-piercing projectile is best at the end of a straight end, so you can consider making it four-way, reinforcing this usage; The tower is very powerful and you can design the AoE range relatively small ...

Regardless of the developer's design, my personal advice is to minimize the number of tower types. This is because when you design unique or special skills for each tower, their functional domains become too narrow and can only do one thing.

11. Maze vs Static.

Many tower defense game developers tend to set up a maze of maps in the game, allowing the player to build their own maze, "specify" the route the enemy travels-not the pre-designed path of the game. "Desktop Tower Defense" is one of the typical examples.

But one of the most important reasons why the Guardian adventure does not use this maze of gameplay is that we want to limit the number of options the player has for a limited period of time. We believe that if you use a labyrinth design, players will need to think from a defender as well as a wall at the same time when they are deploying defensive towers to defend their enemies.

Reprint-"How to make a good tower defense game"