[Prototype] Brewery Defence: Drunken Dwarves

Zaphire

Hello guys,

Me and a friend(Sonicay) has decided to start doing game development and we have been working on our first project since 1st of December 2014 for the Android platform using Unity 3d. We had no previous experience with 3d modelling or game development so we are really looking for some constructive feedback from you guys.



Genre: Tower Defence (Strategy)
Platform: Android

We are currently still in the Alpha version so you will need to join the google+ community in order to gain access to the play store for our game. We are updating the game almost everyday.

Brewery Defence Website
Brewery Defence Alpha Testers Community (Required for google play services)
Android APK (Direct Link, recommended to get the one from the google+ community)
PC Standalone (Not Recommended as its optimized for android):

SUGBOERIE

Looks decent. Wish I could give my feedback but don't have an android device. Could you make a web build?

Karuji

Unfortunately I don't have any android devices.

But I initially read the name as 'Drunken Brewery Defence Dwarves' which I thought was the greatest name ever!

Zaphire

ok I have added a direct link for the android APK as well as a PC version (not optimized for pc unfortunately)

Direct Link for Android APK (Google Play wont work if you havent joined the google+ community):
http://brewery.berzerkgaming.co.za/apk/BreweryDefence.apk

PC Standalone (Not Recommended as its optimized for android): brewery.berzerkgaming.co.za/standalone/Brewery%20Defence.rar

Sonicay

Thank you Karuji.
But any feedback in testing the pc version would also be appreciated.<3

vintar

Really cool game :)

I played the only version available to me, being the PC version and it was just fine.
Only thing I would say it needs is a message to say that you do not have enough money to buy certain towers. I was clicking and clicking and seeing green ticks thinking "why the hell won't my tower materialize", only to face palm myself realizing that I do not have enough coins. Maybe change the green tick to a red cross if not enough funds ?

Zaphire

Thanks for the suggestion vintar, will definitely be adding that today.

SUGBOERIE

As your first project. I'd say you doing well. I like the lore, especially King Ironbottom Brewtoe. :') I played the game until I couldn't any more which was up to stage 5

Bugs
Stage 5, just broken.
- Doesn't start the waves
- The HUD doesn't change as you buy towers, but doesn't let you buy infinite amount of towers. It's accurate but
doesn't show visually
Tried restarting the stage in pause menu, from main menu and closing the whole game and starting from stage 5.

Buying towers
I noticed what @vintar pointed out about the green tick that you still showing it when you can't buy the tower. What annoyed me was the triple step to buying a tower. I get that you click to select the tower and get the opportunity to read what the tower is about (missing, but I guess you're getting there).
Suggestions:
- At the point when you click to find out more about the tower, it'd be good to also show the radius of attack.
- Make it faster, at the moment it's 3 clicks/taps till you've got a tower. Could be 2 clicks/taps with the second one a click/tap and hold to see the info.

Why have specific places to place towers?
I thought it was too restrictive and made the levels dull.
- Maybe have the player pick the spots at the beginning of a stage.

Could be cool if you could carry your gold to the next stage. Will change the way people play may also change the way you can set up each stage or the entire collection of stages in Forest of Feldor or the other .

I thought the green fog looking thing was just aesthetics of wind but found out that it was the path the drunkards were following. It was a cool aha moment but I think I found it because I was being very critical on the game. If you want this to be information a player has it should be more explicit.

Zaphire

Hey SUGBOERIE,

I really appreciate the feedback!

*I have fixed stage 5 issue
*Added some extra things when building towers
*Really like the idea of showing the radius of attack so will be adding that soon
*I got the idea of the 3 clicks from the game "Kingdom rush" as they have the exact same procedure for building (Not sure if I will change that yet)
*The problem I have with allowing the player to custom place towers is that my AI pathfinding won't work like a maze in stages designed like stage 3 where your tower placement blocks enemy movement.
*Going to make that green fog effect look like footsteps later on


EDIT: One of the things we have added is special powers that the player can use which might help make levels less dull

Zaphire

I have updated the links with the newest version.

Changelog v0.4

• Fixed stage 5 and 6 not loading
  
• Added tower attack range indicator when building/upgrading
  
• Improved pathshower (indicates path AI will take)
  
• Player powers added (Such as Odin's Spear and Beer Fest abilities)
  

Sonicay

Please download the new version as linked in the first introduction.

Zaphire

I have updated the game

FEEDBACK WOULD BE AWESOME!
Type of feedback I want
-How entertaining the game feels
-How easy it is to play the game, controls etc (especially if I had a intro level which is planned)
-What you think is needed to make the game feel better/more entertaining

Changelog v0.4a

• Casting spells like Odin's Spear is now drag and drop
  
• Added a lock icon when upgrade of a tower is not available instead of showing nothing thus making the player never bother to check for upgrade of towers later on
  
• Added 3 new stages
  
• New model (construction site) added where the player can place towers instead of having a floating build effect
  
• Added new tower upgrades etc
  

Android APK (Direct Link, recommended to get the one from the google+ community)
PC Standalone (Not Recommended as its optimized for android)
Brewery Defence Alpha Testers Community (Required for google play services)

Zaphire

We have released Brewery Defence on Android.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.BerZerKStudios.BreweryDefence&hl=en

It has come a long way but we gave up on the development of it later on because it was just too much work to balance the game with the amount of levels and enemies the game had to offer. The main issue was that this is our first game we made and the code is very messy :D

Hope you guys will enjoy it and give feedback on it so that we can fix all the bugs we have not spotted.

Fengol

You should do a postmortem to document your journey. Each team member answers 3 questions: "What worked for them", "What didn't work for them", "What would they change or do different". Then put it all together in a doc and before your next project read it again.

Unfortunately I don't have an Android device, but I'll check out the PC build (it 404'd on me :( )

Zaphire

Fengol said:

You should do a postmortem to document your journey. Each team member answers 3 questions: "What worked for them", "What didn't work for them", "What would they change or do different". Then put it all together in a doc and before your next project read it again.

Unfortunately I don't have an Android device, but I'll check out the PC build (it 404'd on me :( )

The link to the pc build is still very old. I will see if I can get a link for the latest pc build for you but it would be buggy in a way because of the stuff that was written for android.

We are a team of 2 and I work very close to my partner so I know exactly what went wrong and what went right.

1- We were super enthusiastic when we started so we easily put 5+ hours into a day with our full time job on the side and even putting in hours there which made our progress go insanely fast.

2- We were probably not experienced enough to take on a project this big for our first game instead of doing something like an arcade but I think we learned a lot and our enthusiasm allowed us to do so much

3- Campaigns are hard work. To balance out all our enemies, towers and level design is what made us break after 2 months. It took SO much work to play a stage, tweak enemies, replay stage tweak enemies and then it might have broken the balance in other stages. We had a excel spreadsheet with the stats of the towers and enemies which we used to calculate everything which helped but the enthusiasm died down so much that we didn't work on the game for over 5 months.

I think the issue for us isn't skill anymore but rather finding something that will keep our interest. Our biggest flaw as a team is motivation to work as we easily become distracted by YouTube videos and gaming. The more we iron that out the better!