
Show HN: Buggle TD – a free tower defense game for iPad - sabertoothed
Hi HN,<p>A friend of mine and I created a free tower defense game for the iPad. It is called <i>Buggle TD Tower Defense</i>.<p>You can find it here:
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;gb&#x2F;app&#x2F;buggle-td-tower-defense-50&#x2F;id952327380<p>I know there are thousands already. But at the time when I started the idea inspired by the Desktop Tower Defense game that I could not find on iPad, I was missing strategic TD games.<p>We are currently doing public beta testing to figure out if the game is understandable and fun to play.<p>So if you have any (harsh, but) constructive feedback we would be happy to listen to you and incorporate your ideas. We would also be willing to answer any questions you might have regarding the game or the game development process.<p>We put a lot of time and effort into the game. It is so much more complicated and expensive to get a product out there than we initially thought.<p>Thank you for reading this!<p>PS.: I also asked for feedback on r&#x2F;towerdefense. But so far, we did not get any comment. :(
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sabertoothed
Clickable link: [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/buggle-td-tower-
defense-50/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/buggle-td-tower-
defense-50/id952327380)

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icefox
Tried it our for a half hour. It feels like a clean desktop tower defense.

The game as it is today is too hard for new players. I have played a number of
these games before and I can barely get through the first few waves. It took
me three games before I figured out which turret I need to kill the bugs with
shields. The fact that the first level has the details of "Let us start easy
here" and I am selecting "green" difficulty makes me guess that you have
probably tuned the game for yourself. Sure if I play a handful of more games I
will no doubt do better, but it wasn't fun to lose so early.

Remember that it is never fun to lose. One approach you could follow is what
Kingdom Rush did which is that players unlock turrets as they play certain
challenges. They unlock new turrets on the levels where magically the level
requires the player use it and thus learn about it. By the end of the game
they have explored all of the turrets and seen some epic battles because they
can combine them efficiently.

The classic tower defense taught you the game with the waves systems. There
was plenty of time to explore the UI while waiting around between waves if you
didn't click the skip to next wave button. You got to build something horrible
and still survive 10 waves so you got to experience "a lot happening" and were
willing to come back. It was forgiving in its initial placement. For example
the first wave that has a shield bug there should only be 1 of those bugs. So
you learn the lesson to build one of those tower but don't take a big hit to
your lives. Shame on me if the next time those bugs appear I don't have at
least one of those turrets, but the first time I just had almost no way of
knowing. And the second time the shield bugs appear I should be able to make
it with just 1 lower level gun because the game is rewarding me for learning
that lesson.

It felt like I was being introduced to too many different bugs one after
another. When you click on bugs perhaps show the turrets that are best at
countering, provide multiple ways for players to learn something. Optionally
different music for each bug or at least on the "King" level would be a good
idea.

As you make tweaks keep watching new players and see how sub-optimally they
are playing they game. We don't spend the points as soon as we get them. We
put towers in the wrong spot. Tower placement will be horribly inefficient. I
would rather build something horrible and later in the game be completely
overwhelmed at my poor planning, but grinning knowing that next time I will do
everything so much better because of everything I have _learned_ that first
game.

Games are about teaching mechanics and systems. How do you want to teach the
game to players? Via waves or via challenges or something else. The first five
minutes should be magical and not frustrating. See the book "A Theory of Fun"
for more on this topic. Some games even dynamically adjust the difficulty. If
the player is doing badly you could slow the game down or introduce more time
between the waves.

Optionally head down to Starbucks and in trade for buying someone their coffee
let them play and _silently_ watch them and write down everything that
frustrates them and ask them to talk out loud what they are thinking. Very
quickly you will see what you need to tweak.

The rest of these comments don't really matter. Figure out the above where the
game is fun and then worry about the stuff below because if it isn't fun UI
tweaks or bugs don't matter.

The main UI annoyance has to be the fact that I am forced to scroll the list
of normal towers for no good reason. This is the new players main interaction
with the application and with scrolling you lose the ability to memorize tower
by its physical location on the screen (which is the _$^$_ # one that can kill
the bugs with shields again?).

The UI could easily be tweaked to not have this limitation. The list of
upcoming bad guys (along with the wave number and time to next wave) could be
placed above the map, the whitespace between the clickable spots could be
reduced, rather than having a game/settings tabs at the bottom just have a
settings gear at the top right which changes it to the settings and flip it to
an 'X' when in "settings" mode.

In the Turret description there is a little arrow to the right. I have no clue
what that means. Maybe speed? Perhaps use an different icon.

If you add a tiny bit of bright colors to the turrets to visually separate
them that might be a big improvement (worth testing).

Random bugs: \- Occasionally I wouldn't hear the guns firing, only the
soundtrack \- Can't rotate my ipad upside down

Edit: Lastly if the goal was to make a "Desktop Tower Defense" clone it looks
like you are well on your way to having a fun game, but currently there isn't
any sort of hook, something that makes me want to tell my friends about it.
Combine the teaching system of kingdom rush with the freedom of "Desktop Tower
Defense" might be a hook to go after. Have various challenges where you have
to build different configurations for example. That will change it from being
fun to being something I tell people about.

~~~
sabertoothed
Wow, thank you! This is even more than I hoped for.

I will carefully read through all of this and come back to you.

Many, many thanks!

EDIT: Your feedback is probably the most useful and richest we have ever
gotten.

~~~
icefox
Played for another hour+ and was able to make it to wave 22. A few more
comments:

* On the grid line make every other line double width. As all of the turrets are 2 spaces it is really annoying when you screw up counting.

* When a game ends it has some odd '_____' in the dialogs. Guessing some indenting gone wrong?

* If I drag a tower inside of the tower browser on the right the green box appears and seems to be stuck on the map if I release my finger not on the map.

* Other than getting a high score or getting to further wave achievements are a way to encourage players to try out different techniques. This is somewhat difficult with only 1 challenge, but as you add more challenges with different wave configurations it opens up a number of different achievements that can be obtained. This goes back to finding the fun. When a game ends why should I play another game?

* I can't think of a good method off the top of my head but it would be good to show off different level designs players have come up with. Maybe at the game over screen to give ideas for how other players solved the level to try? At least I know what I will try the same design over and over before switching to something else.

* Different challenges with different maps would be interesting. Maps with multiple entrances and exits. Maps where some spots on the map are already blocked off and can't be built on. The ability to build 1x1 'walls' that do nothing, but force bugs in certain directions and all of the various maps you can make that have pre-existing walls and players can either use and destroy and go for something else. You could also make Turrets be damaged and need to be repaired back to the lowest level. If there was a challenge where it already had turrets in a horizontal/vertical/diagonal pattern I would be really temping to keep that up to play it out and not destroy it.

I know Tower Defense games have typically used some path finding algorithm
such as A* or whatnot and the instant bugs know about a better path they
change direction. Something worth pondering would be to instead use a
diffusion map. Here is a tech demo I tossed together entirly in plain old
JavaScript showing just such a technique:
[http://meyerhome.net/~ben/towerdefense/](http://meyerhome.net/~ben/towerdefense/)
(Zoom in your browser to make it bigger) The bugs react, but not instantly and
allows for much more emergant behavior such as bugs moving away from the most
efficient path if all of its friends keep dieing on that path (at least for a
little while until they forget) or the bugs seem to cluster for a second or
two until they all charge forward. Anyway that is a very different direction
to take a TD game and outside the scope of the feedback your looking for but I
figure you would get a kick out of it.

~~~
sabertoothed
You're a star, mate. We should definitely stay in touch. Incredibly valuable
feedback for us.

Edit: typo

~~~
icefox
When the game ends can you make it so it doesn't cover so much? I want to look
at what I have built and think about how to make it better.

