Balloons of Doom (Demo)

[Stephen_Watson]

I’ve finally finished the second demo of my tower defense game Balloons of Doom.
I started making this game off the back of Glitch Garden, as a learning exercise. I’ve been working on it intermittently for over a year, I’ve had a demo on the Android store for about 6 months, and this is the updated version, with some fixed bugs and a new level.

It’s unlikely I’ll make any more of this game, though I do have ideas on how I can continue it, it’s not a type of game I’m too fond of and I think I’ve already spent too much time on it and I want to move onto 3D.

The links are below for the Android and HTML5 versions, enjoy!

HTML5

ShareMyGame.com by GameDev.tv

Android

play.google.com

Balloons of Doom (Demo)

The Balloons of Doom! are on their way, spreading their lies and generally just being a nuisance. For some reason it's YOUR job to stop them! Pop, burst and explode your way through the hordes of balloons and push them out of our land. I know you can do it, after all, they are only balloons, albeit of Doom! How hard can it be...

Free

[Plaban9]

Very nice game,
I cleared 4 levels, kept me engaged.
Animations look very good and smooth.
The story arc seems to be engaging (My hand got tired of writing this )
I like the artwork and the background, are they handmade in paint? (looks good)
I like the continue feature.

The fish jumping animation surprised me.

All in all, the game seems very good to play and is quite engaging.

[Stephen_Watson]

Thanks for playing and for the great feedback

I drew everything all in paint.net, and then put almost everything into Inkscape and turned them into vector images, to smooth them out.
The animations are bone based though. So all arms and legs and heads are separate images which are just moved/rotated in the animator.

The game auto saves, so when you feel like finishing the last 2 you can go to Continue on the start screen

Thanks again for playing.

[Plaban9]

How did you implement auto save feature?

[Stephen_Watson]

The level manager keeps track of what level you have completed, so every time a call is made at the end of a level to load the next level, it just saves the level number to the playerprefs . Then the Continue button checks the playerprefs when the title screen loads to see if anything has been saved in the level unlocked variable.

It’s also setup to ignore the briefing room and news reel screens, so their level numbers don’t get saved to the playerprefs.

[Duckfest_JF]

Cool version, the premise is nice, it almost creates a story. Absolutely original! On this site I see a lot of similar games, just clones of the course material, but also I see a fair share of people spending time on creating their own look and feel. But rarely I see a version where I don’t recognize the original (I do, but you know what I mean).

I know you are moving on, as you should, but I 'm giving you my tiny suggestions anyway, just for consideration:

Web GL
One technical suggestion, on the Web GL version the left and right of the screen fall off.

I don’t consider it an issue, since

• KIP (screenshot 1) in this context just means SKIP to me (After considering SKIP and UKIP )
• On mobile (Android) I noticed the issue is not there

On gameplay
My only true suggestion, if you want to spend some more time on the game, is to work on player guidance. It doesn’t take long to figure out that you need bowmen to beat the balloons, which fits the theme perfectly. But, while playing, it’s just vaguely apparent that you are in ´placement´-mode (just a purple border) once you have selected the bowman. And you can’t see where you can place them. I have tried placing them all over the field, but very few places worked.
When I looked at your screenshots it gave me inspiration to try again, because apparently you can place a bowman on top and bottom row and also on the other side of the river.
Apparently others don’t experience this, so I must be overlooking something. I have tried multiple times, but I have no clue where I can place my defender and why. In any case, I mostly can’t place my defender…

You have some potential here, but I wasn’t able to experience it

[Plaban9]

Thanks for the reply, I found the autosave feature quite useful (it will not enrage players to leave the game after a poor performance in a level).

Are you also keeping track of all enemy position for autosave or it saves the last level no. and generates enemy like usual from beginning of the level (when it is not saved)?

[Stephen_Watson]

Thanks for your suggestions and for playing the game
Yes I noticed “SKIP” being cut off on the web version, I have no idea why, maybe the WebGL version is locked to an aspect ratio for some reason, but since its a mobile game I decided to leave it.

The “How to play” screen is fairly basic and I wanted to change it to look like a book where you can flip the pages to see information about the game, as well as a section describing the controls and such.

The reason you cant place defenders in most places on the first level is because of the “barricade” that is set up, the yellow signs that stop the balloons on the first level, so you cant place defenders in that lane. It’s only in the next level that the balloons destroy the barricade that you can use those lanes.
Then on the next stage, when you see the big bridge you can use all 5 lines, so the game gets harder and harder.

So basically, use only the middle lane on the first level, after that you can use the 3 middle lanes, but the top and bottom lanes are blocked by mountains until the next stage. I just couldn’t think of a way to display this in a way fitting for the game, so I left it for now. See my very rough illustration below.

I do have many more ideas on what to do, and there is even things I’ve created for the game, and some are even in the game already, they just aren’t in the demo.

I think once I finish my 3D game I might come back to this and finish it off.

I appreciate your suggestions and you playing the game. I hope the illustration helps so you can try it again and get to the end of the demo

[Stephen_Watson]

Hi Planban9. Thanks for trying the game out, much appreciated

Your actual progress during the level is not saved, only the actual level. So you will always start from the beginning of that level.

The generation of the enemies is almost exactly the same every single time, so it can be hard but if you learn the pattern you can anticipate it and get your units down early.

Though there is a slight element of randomness just to keep you guessing.