A tower defense game with some interesting twists, such that it only requires a single button.
Also known as: “Whatever Floats Your Moat”.
Objective
Survive as long as possible / survive all the waves. (Not sure if this should be campaign/level or highscore.)
Input
There’s a moat around your castle. A little boat or flag or whatever drifts through it, following that path either clockwise or counter clockwise.
When you shoot, you shoot towards YOUR current flag position.
- Tap to shoot.
- Tap+hold to power up your shot first, sending it further.
Making it two taps is easier for some people, but also slower.
What do you shoot? Towers.
Map
Your castle is in the center. Enemies come in from the edges.
Towers will be placed wherever they land.
They bounce off walls and other towers, though. In a sense, before the tower comes to a standstill, it’s just a physics sphere that bounces around realistically.
Arrows will simply hit whatever they pierce through.
So nothing can ever go “off screen”. Preferably, it shouldn’t be near the side of the screen as well.
Implementation
Enemies just have two sprites: normal + while-walking. We simply flip ourselves based on movement direction. Animate between these two.
Take style inspiration from Kingdom Rush and Merge Towns.
Systems
PathComponent: pick a single target and move there, or follow a given path.
AutoAttack: attacks targets in range, on a timer (or other properties)
CircleAim: for aiming, getting power, and shooting in a circle around you. (Will need this for more games.)
Health: a continuous, more general health bar, given to castle and enemies
WaveSystem: given a fixed set of enemies, or properties of them appearing, divide the game into waves