Developers

@Aviox oh that's great so make it per battle instead of one time use.. good thinking!

@Barret-Vasilchik thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and feedback!

Here's my comments:

• We plan to add control support and will consider that control scheme as the default mapping.
• Charging the boomerang is a cool idea, we'll consider adding that in!
• We plan to add more puzzles, exploration, and story in the future.
• We will make sure it's apparent when the dash is ready, I too look at the bottom right and it's annoying to do so.
• We'll make sure the sound effects have proper limits so they do not stack and become loud or annoying.
• We'll make it more obvious when a wave ends and the next one starts. In general, I think we have a lot of work to do in regards to conveying incoming threats or when the battlefield changes.
• We plan to replace the red spawn progress circle sprite with an icon for what creature spawns next (it will still act as a timer).

@Scubadoo2 thanks for your first impressions, this is immensely helpful to us

First off, the practice level is entirely placeholder and was designed to let people try out turrets that were not in the first 3 levels. We might have a similar practice level in the final game, but we would make sure the player accesses it after completing the tutorial so that they learn the core mechanics first. We also plan to revisit the tutorial and make sure it covers everything more clearly. For example, a lot of people missed the recalling part. We also do not mention how the game decides which turret it recalls, or explain how the workbench works. We plan to make the tutorial much better in the future.

In regards to knowing where to place the turrets, we plan to have the player use newly unlocked turrets in multiple easy battles that show different placements or strategies. In a way, each battle will not only be a challenge, but also a tutorial in which the player is learning or practicing using a new turret. We also plan to add more indicators for when and where a garrison is spawning, what monster a garrison will spawn next, and when the environment is about to get destroyed. Level 3 was wayyy too hard for an early level. It plays more like a mid/late level in regards to difficulty. I think that adding the indicators and making the difficulty level-appropriate will make for a much smoother experience.

Also, we did not have the workbench in level 3 since we wanted to showcase multiple towers. In the actual game, you will be able to access it frequently so you can change your loadout.

For anyone just joining this thread, this post proposes solutions to the issues pointed out in First Session Thoughts - Alpha 0.0.5.

@Aviox Peter and I discussed these suggestions, and here's our thoughts:

"Change enemy spawns so they don't count down to the next spawn until all current enemies are defeated."
I think we'll do this in earlier levels since the player is still learning the game, but I think timing waves is important to creating interesting battles, so we might not do this as often in later levels.

"Change enemy AI so they don't attack towers unless they are blocking their path to the player (or some other goal)"
We thought long and hard about this one and decided that while we could certainly do this and make a great game, it does make Dwerve less unique and more similar to other tower defense games.

"Greatly increase the maximum number of towers."
As the player progresses through the game, they will get more and more power stones. Certain levels will also give the player Yellow Power Stones (one-time use) and Blue Power Stones (last until end of level). This lets us give the players additional towers as they progress through the level in a more controlled way.

"Add a sub-currency that towers cost per-build. (gears? -- then change current gears used for upgrades to gold gears?)"
Paying a currency to build turrets can make it difficult to balance: spending too much currency on building turrets makes the latter part of the level too difficult while spending too little currency on building turrets makes the latter part of the level too easy.

"The sub-currency would be gathered over the course of a round, perhaps from enemy drops. a max number of this sub currency would make sense."
A max limit would prevent the player from becoming overpowered from having too much currency, but each battle is usually designed for a specific number of turrets so I'm not sure this is the right solution. Let me know what you think of the Yellow/Blue Power Stones solution mentioned above.

"Add a cheap "barricade" tower."
I think adding a cheap barricade is a good idea.

"Remove timers from floor traps."
We'll experiment with removing timers from floor traps and see how it feels.

"Make the encounter areas larger, allowing the player to maze with towers."
I think this is a good idea since the 1 tile wide paths in level 3 made it feel wayyy too claustrophobic. Not to mention the level is much more linear than level 1 and 2.

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Final thoughts

So it seems that you'd prefer the game to play more like a traditional tower defense game, and I think making such changes would certainly make for a really fun game! But, I think it would also cause Dwerve to become a little more generic and blend in with other tower defense games. I think that you pointed out a lot of serious issues with our current design, but Peter and I feel confident that we can address these issues without having to default back to more traditional tower defense mechanics.

Let me know if I'm wrong, but I assume the majority of the issues revolved around level 3 being wayyy too difficult. I'm confident we can improve the experience without changing the core mechanics by:

• Adding more indicators to clearly convey incoming threats (garrison spawning from the ground, environmental tiles about to get destroyed, garrisons changing what monster they're spawning) and changes to the battle (different monsters start spawning or environmental tiles get destroyed)
• Adjusting the timing/waves to challenge the player an appropriate amount depending on the level (level 3 played more like mid/late game content)
• Properly teaching the player certain strategies before expecting them to use it in a battle

Let me know what you think!

@Aviox thanks so much for the detailed feedback!

• We plan to add a splash screen.
• We plan to add key bindings. We might even change the default controls to use WASD to move and 1234 to build, but only after we do A/B testing. We wanted to use arrow keys to move and QWER to build so that players would not have to constantly move their fingers around the keyboard. If we did WASD to move and 1234 to build, that would be the case. But if a majority of people prefer WASD and 1234, we'll make it the default control scheme.
• We plan to update the dialogue sounds and add character sounds, like an old man grumble for Esben. In general, a lot of the sounds are either placeholder or missing entirely.
• We plan to make the movement feel a lot better. Right now it is grid-based, but we'll probably change it to free movement.
• We'll consider letting the player throw the boomerang. We felt that if you were constantly throwing the boomerang, clicking would get redundant real fast, but we'll think about it.
• We definitely need to expand our tutorial to better teach certain things like recalling tower, and how the game decides which tower to recall, etc. We'll work on this!
• We plan to revisit the UI in the coming months. I like the idea of making Dwerve's name blue for the dialogue panel. Maybe each character's name text could have a color that matches their color theme.
• I fixed the bug where scrap and other items would get stuck near walls.
• I increased Dwerve's movement speed, gave him a dash, and am considering giving him a run (with stamina bar).
• We plan to add turret upgrades.
• "With mouse control, you could use right click to recall a tower of choice, and maybe even place them further away. (AND control the boomerang!)" - good ideas, definitely going to consider these.
• We'll make the game pause when it loses focus.
• I'll think about having floor traps not have a timer and letting them stay until recalled - this will be easy to playtest.
• We plan to add more indicators regarding when a garrison spawns, what creature it's spawning, when environmental tiles destroyed, etc.
• We plan to add more time between waves, especially when changing monsters or destroying environmental tiles.
• Level 3 is wayyyyy too hard. I'd guess it's about 4x as hard as it should be lol. My bad haha.
• We originally used scrap as a currency to build turrets, but that makes it hard to balance the level. If a player uses too little scrap early on, the latter part of the level becomes too easy. If they spent too much scrap early on, the latter part of the level becomes too hard. Instead, we plan to add special Power Stones: Yellow Power Stones will be one-time use, and Blue Power Stones will last until the end of the level. We can use these to let the player place more turrets as they progress through the level in a more controlled way.
• I like the idea of having the turret already exist in the level instead of telling the player where to place it, we'll consider doing this instead of having the player place it.
• Level 4 is just the practice level, so no worries. Level 3 is too hard and takes like an hour to beat so I understand your exhaustion. I plan to make it 1/4 as hard and take about 20 minutes.

Please make sure not to post a duplicate and to include the following when reporting a bug:

1. Version Number (on Start Screen)
2. Operating System
3. Steps to Reproduce
4. Screenshots if Applicable
5. Player Log File

• macOS: ~/Library/Logs/Unity/Player.log
• Windows: C:\Users\Username\AppData\LocalLow\HalfHumanGames\Dwerve\output_log.txt*
• Linux: ~/.config/unity3d/HalfHumanGames/Dwerve/Player.log

*For Windows, replace "Username" with your username.

@BreadSlice thanks for pointing this out! This is actually intentional. We wanted to remove distractions so users would focus on our call to action.