Summary of the research findings
when I decided that I was going to create a tower defence game from my university project. I decided to research into many different tariff and schemes in order to get a feel of modern tower defence games and how they work. I listed a lot of points from each of the games which I will summarize my findings in its documents and layout are the foundation of what my tower defence game will feature in terms of mechanics and gameplay style.
The list of games that I reviewed to get a sense of tower defence game mechanics were.
. Balloons tower defense 5
. Ants Buster
. Super sanctum TD
. Plants versus zombies
. Kingdom rush
Each of these games I've felt had some good mechanics or gameplay styles and they also add bad to gameplay mechanics which did hinder the games open in this document I'm going to lay out the bad points and good points and then explain how I'm going to implement this into my game.
Balloons tower defense 5
Good points:
.Many different tower traces
.Vast upgrade trees
.Various different maps
.Different to terrian (water/land)
Bad points:
. To easily upgraded towers
. Not enough varying grades
Ants Buster
. many varying upgrades
. targeting system
. linear levels do not change
. no progression for players
Super sanctum TD
.Perk tree
.Path finding system
.Player controlled special abilities
Bad points:
.limited abilities to bring towers into levels
.limited abilities to bring special abilities into levels
.Limited tower placement
Plants versus zombies
. Tower infantry system (allowing players to store towers they've collected through levels)
. leaning mechanic/towers can be destroyed
Bad points:
. limited towers that could be brought into the levels
. no upgrading system
. mini games sometimes detracting from gameplay experience
Kingdom rush
. Profile upgrades
. limited towers
. basic upgrading
. limited special abilities
Summary of game research results
Good points:
Tower: From my research findings the towers are going to be used in the game that has to be a large variety of towers to choose from over 10 towers to select from as from some of the games are played limited number of towers tend to lose the play's interest fairly quickly.
Tower Upgrade: From the search is clear that a system in which towers can be upgraded is an essential part of progression in a tower defence game. From the research these upgrades need to be intricate and varied and also allow players to vary the towers in many different ways through branching upgrade trees. both these upgrades need to be difficult to obtain and need to take time to unlock but need to be balanced so they do not disinterest the player as it may take too long to upgrade certain things.
Enemy Paths: as for the enemy pass in which they will take to reach a certain objectives that the player must defend I think looking on my research a similar system to plants versus zombies may be a good idea in which the player has to defend the towers themselves from attack in order to carry on playing in which that if the player loses all their towers to overwhelming enemy units then the game will end. This is different from any other tower defence in the way that most Tower defence games makes the player protect a certain object which has health boards in the case of plants versus zombies because of the intricate layer of tactical play this offers because players have to be tactical in the way they used towers to defend against incoming waves I think this will offer greater gameplay experience with the players.
player profiles: the player profile was an icy year that seems to be circulating round many of the tower defence game. This is the idea that the player progresses outside of the individual tower defence games and keeps a saved profile of their progress this could record scores and even allow players to upgrades things about their towers for a separate menu I think this is a feature that is going to offer the greatest gameplay feature from my game as such an important part of building players interest within this game as players will become more invested the more intricate their player profiles are. The player profiles will consist of upgrades and various different towers the players have unlocked throughout the game similar to that plants versus zombies, super sanctum TD and kingdom rush.
special abilities: the special abilities feature which is featured a lot in tower defence game's is quite a unique gameplay aspect as allows players to take more direct control into the game and I think a shop that I'm going to utilise hopefully in my game but I will be careful not to fall into some of the mistakes some other going to have made and try make these special abilities as varied as intricate as the Tao upgrades meaning that players can customise their special abilities as much as their towers.
Bad points:
variation: variation is a part of the game that I'm going off to take into consideration as other games that do not show variation in their upgrading/Tower mechanics seem to suffer greatly from repetition and I feel that in order to make my game more keep telling to play and must offer a wide variety of variation with towers and upgrades and special abilities in order to keep the player interested and make the player feel like they are constantly repeating the same levels over and over again.
linear levels: another point and you have to take into consideration is linear levels this is were I think multiple different to rains and layoffs are going to comment I think if I implement a system in which players can progress through multiple levels this will break or this issue and other key players interested And avoid the game falling into the mistakes that and Buster did in which the maths doesn't ever change making the player feel bored in that map.
limitation in towers/special abilities that can be used in game: the issue this raises is mainly found in the game super sanctum TV and also kingdom rush which the player is only given a limited number towers to use in game at this issue can be easily remedied by offering to offering players the full list of towers similar to that billions tower defence from the start and allowing players to then choose which ones they want to use and experiment with.
limited upgrades: I think this issue is going to be the hardest issue for my game to overcomeas creating many varying difference upgrade trees which branch out is a very very difficult to design feature to implement as it requires a lot of time and balancing in order to make them effective. But I think offering players of vast array of upgrades will inevitably keep their interest high in the game and also keep them interested and playing the game you can then come back for more and having longer play sessions and will ultimately be worth it to implement a large-scale grading system.
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