A sense of bloodlust rages amongst the people of the lands.
Neighboring tribes wage war against each other, vowing to wipe clean that which is heathen and does not pay proper homage to their deities. The beasts of the land are not immune to this hunger for carnage either, and are trained for devastating purposes. Something sinister, perhaps, is at the source of this newfound hatred.
The Amirans, however, seem largely unaffected. Noticing this, the outlander tribes, eager to spill the blood of weak prey, focus their efforts on the Amiran civilization. The Amiran defense rests solely on their primal turret technology, powered with the aid of their elemental gods. Will it be enough to quell the onslaught?
Primal Defense is a tower defense mini-game for World of Warcraft. At this point it is a beta release, and while all of the core game elements are in place and working, some are very likely to change. The game itself has been a bit of an exploratory project, detailed and followed in my blog at (http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/the-spark-of-imagination).
Features:
41 levels of enemies
6 different types of towers, some with unique abilities
A familiar map for tower defense veterans
Goal:
Defend the Amiran city from their enemies by stopping them in their tracks! The Amiran builders are skilled in the construction of defensive towers, and with the offering of enemy essences they are able to win the blessing of their primal gods, enabling new towers with destructive possibilities.
Towers:
Cannon - A basic physical damage tower. Cannot hit flying enemies. Upgradeable for higher damage.
Arrow - A simple tower which can attack both land and air units. Upgradeable for higher damage.
Fire - A tower with the ability to char the flesh of enemies. Early levels deal splash damage. Upgradeable to AoE damage.
Ice - A frozen tower that chills the spirit of attackers. Early levels slow their targets, while later levels slow all enemies in the area.
Shadow - A tower of darkness that consumes the soul of infidels. Inflicts a high amount of damage over time, but multiple shadow effects do not stack. Higher levels deal more damage.
The elders tell tales of a mysterious, chaotic power only available to those who gain the full blessings of the gods...
Blessings:
Blessings enable the construction of elemental towers, and can be granted by making an offering of 30 essences to the appropriate deity. Each new level of a blessing allows a higher level of that element's tower to be upgraded to. Essences are taken from the bodies of slain enemies.
Usage:
To show (or hide) the Primal Defense window, type "/primal" while in game.
To build towers, click on the tower icon under the Build Towers header and hover over the game map. A tower preview will appear on grassy tiles that are available to build on, and a range indicator will display the distance the tower's attacks can reach. To confirm the build, click on one of the available tiles. If you wish to cancel construction, hit the Esc key.
To request a blessing, click on the appropriate element icon under the Blessings header. If more levels of the blessing are available, the title will change to show the next possible level. If you have been granted all of the blessings of a god, it will show the message "You are fully blessed".
By clicking on a tower that is already on the game map, an informational sidebar will appear off to the side which contains the tower's stats, such as level, range, damage, and speed. Any special ability the tower might have will also be noted. There will also be two possible icons visible at the bottom of the sidebar: Upgrade and Sell. Every tower has the option to be sold to recoup 75% of the cost of the tower's current level, which can be done by clicking the Sell icon or by pressing the X key while the tower is selected. Many towers can also be upgraded to do more damage or gain new abilities. If this is possible for the selected tower, an Upgrade icon will be visible, and the tower can be upgraded by either clicking the icon or by pressing the U key.
When you are satisfied with your tower placement and are ready for the next wave of enemies, click the Start Level button! The invaders will spawn from the top-left part of the map, and make their way around the path to the exit. If they manage to make it all the way around, watch out! Each enemy that "leaks" through will cost 1 life and start making its way back around the path, eager to spill more blood.
If at any point you would like to start over, click the Reset Game button and confirm in the popup dialog box that you would indeed like to restart your battle from scratch.
Feedback:
Primal Defense is still a work in progress and definitely not 100% complete. I have a list of cosmetic features I would like to implement, the late-game is possibly a bit unbalanced, and the code itself is not the most well-written here or anywhere else. These are all things I will be addressing when I am able to get around to them!
I would love to hear any kind of feedback regarding the game, especially game balance issues concerning difficulty. Please send a PM my way either here at WoWInterface, or over at GameRiot, and I'll try to check it as soon as I can.
Finally, thanks for all the support from people on both sites. This has been a fun project so far, and hopefully not the last like it!
One suggestion I have: A double- or even triple-speed toggle, if possible, since we can't save our progress. It makes clearing the ones we've already mastered less tedious, and we could speed through them more efficiently to reach the ones we're still working on C:
Thanks again for the comments, I really appreciate it!
Those are both good suggestions, and I would love to make any changes or additions that will help the game be more enjoyable overall. Sound effects are an obvious plus (with an optional on/off toggle, of course), and the extra keybinds sounds like it could be a good idea as well.
I have been working on a couple other things recently, as well as starting some work on my own tutorial site, but I definitely have not forgotten about this =)
Hi! This is a great idea, and a very good implementation. I have 2 suggestions for the future:
1) Could you add a keybinding for constructing each type of tower? Perhaps buttons 1 through 5?
2) Does the game have sound effects? You could probably add some using the built-in sounds in the game. Simple sounds for tower building, enemies spawning, enemies dying, and maybe for tower shots would be cool.
Last edited by Wikwocket : 10-07-2009 at 02:09 PM.
I ran into that bug initially when I first implemented the new towers, but it seemed to be pretty rare and I couldn't reliably produce it, so I figured it was an extreme condition that wouldn't pop up very often. I hope to make the code a bit tighter and functional when I do my re-write, which should get rid of iffy things like this.
I haven't heard of anyone clearing it all without losing any lives yet, so I would be surprised! The boss levels can be either really easy or painful depending on how you set up for them, plus the later levels admittedly aren't balanced very well (I wanted to toss in something that might be a bit of a challenge, but didn't know how to best do it). I have some ideas brewing for the next big version of the game, so expect to see some fun new abilities in addition to some graphical cleanup work =)
Awesome! Had great fun with it. Managed to beat the final level but it certainly was close! Went in with 1 life remaining and a plan and barely finished them all off. Very fun, can't wait to see what changes come in later versions!
I just wanted to swing by and say that most of the changes I have planned for the near future are aesthetic additions and fixes for some issues with overlapping texture layers. I am happy with the way the game itself has turned out, though slight changes to the gameplay and levels could occur. As it stands now, it's definitely beatable... so if you are having some trouble clearing some of the levels, keep on trying!
Its peanut butter jelly time!
