TD Corp

Hi, heard about this from a mutual friend. I submitted a response on the feedback form, but I wanted to provide some additional comments / things I noticed:

First off, what a solid starting point. If this is what you call a prototype, I’m stoked to see your final product. This was a ton of fun to play. I only stopped to write down notes of things I saw but before I knew it, I’d dumped an hour and a half into this.

I have a list of things I took note of as recommendations for improvements / adjustments. Please take all of this with a grain of salt, I don’t know what your final design is intended to look like, and at the end of the day, you have a fun game, which is really all that matters.

• One thing worth noting - All of these comments and tests were done on Linux Mint, using Proton and Steam’s Compatibility Layer to run. It was quite smooth, all that considered.

Notes:

• In settings, the percent sign is on the wrong side of the number.
• Save Profiles start at index 0, which makes sense from a programming perspective, but a typical player would expect Saves to start at 1.
• Noticed a minor delay the first time I created anything. Whether that was a Tower or an ability being used. Specifically right after clicking the deploy button or clicking on the map, as they are being spawned into the level.
• On the planets: Level Design is overall really cool, but with the background and the road both being really dark, it’s hard to see the path the enemies will be traveling on. Recommend looking into color contrast. Keeping the dark background is fine and again looks really cool, but maybe put some kind of bright highlight along the edges of the path so it stands out, like all the buildings do.
• When hovering the mouse over a turret, the menu that pops up with details misspells Rotation Speed as Rotatoin Speed
• This is a dumb nitpick, I realize, but: the Pause Icon is a Settings Cog Wheel, which makes me expect to open to Settings, instead of a pause menu.
• In the Upgrades Menu: When highlighting an upgrade, it would be nice if the popup moved to fit on the screen, instead of getting cut off by the camera.
• Doesn’t seem like there’s a way to get back to the main menu by pausing? Quitting just exits the game. It wasn’t very clear how to return to the main menu at any point in the game (I found out by accident that hitting ESC in the upgrade screen worked, but a button would have been nice).
• Doesn’t seem to be any SFX for the Orbital Strike or any of the abilities? Or at least it couldn’t easily be heard over the towers.
• Clicking on the orbital strike then clicking on any other ability - slow zone or super charge - causes orbital strike to be shot and selects the next ability, rather than doing one or the other. I didn’t check if this happens with all of the abilities, but I suspect it might if each of the UI buttons were created the same way.
• Slow Zone doesn’t have any description in the UI like the other two abilities.
• There’s no way to cancel the abilities other than right clicking or selecting a different ability via the number keys. I would expect pressing the ability number a second time would deselect it just like right clicking.
• I know this is a prototype, so balancing isn’t necessarily the main focus right now. I’d like to note that I was able to get every first level upgrade (Except for the upgrade to unlock Tower Upgrades in game which cost 100) before being able to defeat the first level boss. Once I was finally capable of beating the first boss, I was suddenly flying through the 2nd and 3rd level’s enemies due to how strong I was now. Only the level bosses could stop me, whereas initially I was struggling to get through rounds 1-4 in the first level without needing upgrades. It would be nice if each round in the 2nd and 3rd level offered more of a challenge. The upgrade to start the next round preemptively did address this issue a little bit, but it never got too difficult I lost unless the next round was the boss.
• This might be by design, but in the 1st and 2nd level, there are areas where the path turns which seem like they’d be ideal locations for the Flamer tower, except that when enemies are near the corners of the turn, they are now outside the range of the Flamer, even after upgrading it. I didn’t notice this as much in the 3rd level, primarily because the new enemy type had me leaning towards more Tesla towers since Flamers couldn’t hit them.
• Selecting a tower to power surge will also open its menu for upgrades, which got chaotic and in the way during boss fights.
• Deconstructing towers don’t provide any amount of currency. While I don’t think it should be a full refund, maybe that could be an upgrade the Player purchases, so that deconstructing towers that aren’t in use maybe gives them the boost in money they need to upgrade one of the last towers near the objective?

Things I really enjoyed:

• Love how much polish has been put into this for something being referred to as a prototype:
  • The Mouse effect on the upgrade menu
  • The screen jitter effect to look like an old screen
  • The UI is all really fun and satisfying to interact with.
• The 3D models and the artwork in the game are all really well done.
• Enjoyed the voice work in the intro a lot.
• Even the Itch Page has clearly been shown a lot of love. There’s a lot of good attention to detail here, with a game that feels snappy and reactive and fun to play.

I don’t want to send the wrong message by my list of notes or critiques or anything. I really enjoyed this game, this is a really strong starting point for a prototype in my opinion. Excellent work to everyone involved, I’m excited to see where this goes!