State of the game two years later

Hello there. Long time no see.

If you asked me two years ago, I would tell you that I won’t be pursuing this project. If you asked me a year ago, I might hint that I am still interested.

Now? Well… I was working on the game for the past 15 months and there is still a lot to do. The good news are - I want to finish it this time, so I decided to share some screenshots from the current development.

Let me know what you think!

Please, remember that everything is still WIP and mainly UI is subject to change (I hate it).

1 - Main menu - most likely won’t see large visual changes. The world in the background is slowly moving.

2 - Old equipment menu - 98% chance this menu won’t make it into production. New menu is in the works (but making UI is a pain and I might ditch it :> )

3 - Settings - not exactly happy with those, but they most likely won’t change much

4 - Game mode selection - New Geode offers different game modes the player unlocks by playing. This will most likely go thru a visual overhaul.

5 - Map selection - this needs to get reworked really badly. On the right you can see an animation of how the rounds will progress.

6 - Gameplay - Here you can see the biggest difference. The game is no longer a top-down 2D, but an isometric one. I wanted to finally make a game that doesn’t look awful. Colored tiles represent the playable area in the given round.

7 - Few rounds in - The visuals around towers may need to be changed a bit, but I had to convey that the tower was placed now, versus being from a previous round.

8 - When placing a tower, affected tiles have a “shine”, so the player can immediately tell how the tower changes the game.

And what are the current challenges?

1. UI. This stuff is and always will be a nightmare.
2. Motivation - I have lost motivation to continue on the project several times and I burned out so much I even left my professional game dev career. Not for the sake of this project but for myself.
3. Is it even fun? - I am not a puzzle/strategy player. It’s probably not the best idea to make a game in a genre you would not play, but hey, should have told me that two years ago. Tho I guess I would not listen anyways… But I’d love to hear your opinion!
4. “Life” - Now I don’t mean my IRL life. That has nothing to do with the game. I mean the game’s life; or more like “the feeling of life”. At the moment, because of technologies used, there are no animations whatsoever and I feel like it is hurting the game quite a bit.
5. Grave silence - There is also no sound, no music. At least not yet.
6. Have I mentioned UI?

I will be putting up a discord link in the future, so if you feel like this game could be your cup of tea, please, stay tuned for more <3