It's not addicting. It is frustrating for many reasons.
The aim is not obvious.
There is no obvious logic and strategy in play. Don't know how to protect, don't know what to do in fact.
Maybe adding a beginner level where we learn the working principle of the game and the basic strategy one can use.
The apparent logic of the game is too basic.
Tower of defense is more interesting because the options are obvious and there are many way to try and explore.
However a more addicting game would involve randomness in patterns to deal with. Thus even if we manage to understand the strategy, it will have to adapt to the terrain pattern. This requires learning and repeated tries, which makes it addicting. Tetris is such kind of game. Very simple but introduces some randomness.
I liked it but the most frustrating part was aiming the pod. Why not have 32 or so different directions you can aim?
or, if you want to make the aiming very digital in nature, could you have the eight directions be fixed? it seemed to change based on the first direction I aimed.
The fun part of the game for me was the strategy of where to place and where to aim, not actual aiming itself.
Therefore how about having eight directions to aim, and the pods placed on a grid? Then you have to think about pods getting in each others way, and you can try and set up chains of the enemy's pods to be clever.
Also, the computer is too quick and accurate at placing pods. Make him a bit slower and stupider...
Agreed. The computer is perfect with his aim...the only time I did reasonably well was when the computer put his pod behind his base and was shooting himself (of course, eventually one of my pods starting shooting him and took it out of play, and the game ended soon after).
No. It's frustrating, and makes me feel like I can't control the pods. I gave up after three runs through...I couldn't aim the bastards, so the game sucked.
It would be addicting, if I felt like I could control my elements within the game...as it is, I feel like the deck is stacked against me. Computer games that cheat aren't fun. ;-)
In order for a challenge to be fun there needs to be some consistency or pattern to it. The actual pleasure of playing a game comes from the brain learning to recognize patterns. But the aiming seems completely random, making it frustrating, not fun. If you fix that though, the game has the potentially to be moderately addicting.
Very interesting. Kinda frustrating. The imprecise aiming and awkward click, click, click-in-tiny-zone-to-aim placement is not the most fun part of the game. (I suggest a real click-drag then on release, one more click to aim, with a larger aiming zone around the turret.)
Might want to add in some additional 'rescue' or defensive moves (walls?) to prolong the game.
Don't use 0xff0000 and 0x00ff00, they're painfully programmer-y.