Tower Escape

Given that your in-browser demo and your reply about having changed what the demo contains make it clear you’re not restricted by “This is a custom engine written directly against Win32 APIs”, would you please consider offering a non-Windows option on GOG.com?

If you’re not willing to provide native Linux and macOS builds, is there any chance you’d at least be willing to talk to GOG.com about offering a non-demo browser build in a zip file as an extra?

I can report that the demo plays perfectly well in Ungoogled Chromium on Linux.

Hello!

I've just wanted to drop by and say what a wonderful game you've made. After playing the demo, and seeing your cats, I had to get it on  Steam.  At first I thought, uff, this is tough. And now, weeks later, I'm on Ascension 20. I don't know how that happened. :'D

I'm also very fond of the rainbow 'hat' mushroom.  Just when I thought I couldn't love the game more. I'm looking forward to see  you expanding on Tower Escape, I hope there are plans! But also what your next project will be. <3

Cheers,

J.

Just came back and saw there was a full game... <_< >_> im buying it

how does the unlocking of new minions work? i remember some units that costed a lot that arent in the shop anymore

Wow the game has gone so far ever since I first played now its turned into this amazing contraption

how to get sandbox

step 1: get a high speed high health combined bully

step 2: get the big zombie that gives more zombies

step 3: dont collect keys

congrats you have infinte money and cant lose no matter what

I love the game. Tower Defense is one of my favorite game genres and this is an insanely interesting riff on the theme.  I also can not tell you how gratifying the mouse mode is; my hands tremble sometimes and the mouse makes this something I can play even when I can't reliably get my fingers to do what I want.  

I've run into a bug on three play-throughs now.  One or more minions froze on the map rather than dying not letting the wave complete.  It happened with different minion types and on different floors so I don't know how helpful this will be. 

Love the game and the new updates.  The introduction of gems is a game changer and i like the new enemy skins and combining mechanism. 

I noticed a glitch when you have the game at double speed and you finish a level, the following round your snake will move at double speed.  Which threw me off and made me die cuz it was difficult to maneuver at that speed.

first win on easy 

zombubba is super op and when u give it health reducing gems so it makes more zombies its even better plus if you upgrade the zombies you get stiches from them best strategy

wow im an idiot i thought 3 zombabies = 1 zombie hah

i wonder if they will ever make a sandbox mode OvO then you could test builds when you go for a real run

i like the new mechanics like gems and how you have to reroll instead of it auto rerolling and losing a good shop.

insane update wow, thanks for your work:D

I love the mouse mode. It makes this game much more fun and easy to replay. You don't have to think as much or let user error kill your runs.

Have you considered giving manual mode a slight speed bonus to encourage people to use it? Making your minions move quicker while on it.

It rewards the difficulty of aiming the snake, and the mouse mode allows perfect precision.

This is a great game, and I'm looking forward to the updates. It provides a very fun experience.

Is it possible to play older versions of the game? I'd love to play 1.1

I'm back to try out the newest changes!

1) Baiting the snake with a mouse:

Honestly, not that bad.
Not having to deal on the fly with errors in my pathing felt nice.
Also, the fact that I could see the enemy range was even nicer.

A small issue I found is that I felt troubled by the automated pathing.
Like, I get that it tries to choose the shortest path (or something similar), but I found myself in melee range of an enemy at least 2-3 times, this because maybe I didn't notice it re-adjusted.

All in all, an interesting experience I will definitely try again.

2) A real captain guides it's man.

I will need to get used to it.
Honestly, I suffered quite a bit and it almost felt like a different game.
Still, I will win next time :D

3) You sure this is the right direction?

Honestly, the Maze is ROUGH.

Let me just tell you that the floor that killed me had a final stretch before the stairs with a level 2 melee on one side and a level 2 + a level 1 on the other.
I honestly felt it was a doomed situation.
I have a feeling Maze Floors will be one of the greatest challenges.

4) General thoughts, no cool catchphrase here,

Honestly, I didn't dislike all of this cool new shields, but they definitely felt less worth to go around to get them.

As a start, I feel like the Gold Shield should be worth more.
It can only take one hit, so I feel like making it be worth something like 2-3 coins would encourage players to take more risks.

Could I ask you what the "Stealth" ability does? I suppose it might give the unit a lower stage of aggro, but I feel like I might as well ask.

I tried a Swarming army this time, with goblins and imps and it did not work as well as the previous patch, so I guess next time I'll try to use  some big dudes and go in waves.

Have a great one!

Thanks for your hard work!

--

P.S.

Something to close off, before I forget.

I had the feeling that, from time to time, Mushrooms showed a delay of 2, instead of 3.
I might have just hovered over another unit, but I don't know if there is any way to check this.

I believe it might have happened in the shop.
As soon as the unit got added to my army the delay was the correct one.

I am not completely sure if it actually happened, but I believed it might be better to tell and be wrong, than not tell at all.

Have a great one, once again!

It was super fun, but would you consider putting maybe a x3 speed? Zombie vampire strat takes literally 15 minutes to finish one wave xD. Also the collapsing menu, but I see you've addressed it already.

Tbh, Chadpire and Pumpkins seem a bit strong, since you can keep farming the same level over and over. I think selling units or discarding units can help the game. It doesn't have to be for coins either just because you can go over the menu amount. 

I also think since it is a rougelike there could be a unit typing skill tree that could be cool to help with an endless run

A great game concept that has a unique set of strategies. My favorite wave is a swarm of goblins followed by the uh gnoll? yeah gnoll. The monster that gives shields to nearby monsters. 

I'd love some kind of cooldown reduction with monster synergy. I beat the demo, but I was having issues getting my troops to stay clumped due to the inherent long-cooldown nature of the bigger monsters. I got to a point where buying monsters was not a good idea because their cooldowns would throw off the timing on my line-up. The last half of the game didn't include much buying because it would be disadvantageous. That might be the intended gameplay, but the game entices me with the store at the start of every level.

and a few more ideas :D

1)monsters that can carry multiple items.

2)monsters with hooks, so basically with a few seconds cooldown they bring items that are scattered around them to the path, but they can't carry multiple items just bring them closer.

3)monsters that are stronger then the normal ones, but they can't carry any items and if they are the only ones that made it to exit, it doesn't count as a win, basically monsters that are stronger than regular ones, but you can't have army made just from them.

4)maybe bring some interesting things into snake stage as well, multiple types of snakes and upgrades for them, for example snake that can make portal once a wave, it teleports them let's say 7 blocks away, or snake that can place buff area 2-3 times a wave, in this area monsters receive certain buffs. upgrades will obviously enhance their skills.

5)monsters that get stronger after each death and reverse, monsters that are stronger but get weaker after every death, eventually getting useless if you are careless.

6)funny idea but I think it's too specific and hard to make I guess, so basically it's unit that can move only in a certain way, by jumping, it jumps from one turning point to the other, while airborne he can't be damaged, he can jump only 5 blocks, if he can't detect turn within this 5 blocks range he just walks and is vulnerable , so you need to make a turn with your snake once in a while for this unit to be useful...it's kinda complicated so I think we can reduce this to just a unit that "jumps" instead of walking and is invincible while he's jumping.

7)I'm not talking about new types of defenders, because it's too obvious but what about traps? areas on the map where there is some kind of bonus(chest for example) but it is surrounded by traps, traps can be elemental(slowing, poisoning, stunning), or they can just damage your units.

8)maybe bundle of units? so when you buy one unit it's actually a bunch of them that are deployed simultaneously. 

9)monsters that can interact with each other, so for example goblin and some kind of blob monster, when blob monster dies it leaves behind some substance, when goblin touches it, he becomes empowered. or goblin-lord, while he's alive every goblin-unit becomes stronger, lich-every undead unit becomes stronger and so on. 

10)or a kind of unit that becomes stronger every time once of his kind dies, but only for this wave.

...yeah so many ideas, I hope some of them at least make it to the full game, good luck once again ;)

A fun little game!  I do wish there was a way to redo my path when I eventually mess it up, but maybe that's just part of the challenge.  Also I get to about midgame and find my minions just get too separated and so blown up one by one by the defenders.  Probably just need to "git good"

new ideas:

1)maybe after completing the game you unlock sandbox mod or something like that where you just can have fun with all the units in the game, manually place defenders e.t.c

2)having debuffers would also be nice, monsters that can disable defenders attack, reduce damage or attack speed, make them miss attacks e.t.c

3)maybe some more information while choosing monsters? for example Nearby Death, how much is the radius exactly? btw I feel like it needs to be buffed for everyone because it's extremely hard to use it.

4)maybe some upgrades besides monsters? for example: "recharge time of first 10 deployed monster is reduced by 1" maybe it should depend on cost also, for example golem's recharge time will be reduced by 3 instead of 1, but it can't be reduced below certain amount.

5) being able to sell monsters also would be helpful.

6)about boss monsters, I had an idea that boss will spawn after certain amount of dead monsters, depending on their prices, for example: you buy a boss, it costs 25 gold and to summon it, enemies must kill units for 100 gold in total.

I feel like some kind of upgrades for monsters would be cool, maybe evolutions/mutations or something like that, i also had an idea about monster like slimes which if you have enough will merge into one more powerful slime, or something like combo, where if you have certain number and type of monsters you will get bonuses, this will bring more tactic and deck building aspect into the game, maybe some random events, or events that we could buy for money, or for new currency like mana, for example: event - graveyard, every third death will spawn skeleton, cost 2-3 coins(i think new mana stat would work better with this).

maybe more boss-like monsters, which are much stronger, have many abilities but are expensive as hell, there can be only limited amount of them,  maybe in order to summon them you have to meet some requirements or something along this lines.

this game has huge potential, I'm in love with the concept and I want this game to success, huge props to developer/s ;)

Something that would help is if you could unlock more slots to select minions. Or select a minion as your favorite so you get it more often in the shop.

Like if you could spend cash to upgrade your shop and with it get access to better minions more often. Or to get two rows of minions, so you buy the upgrade and see 8 guys instead of 4.

If I want to do a themed build, I have to restart around the stage where you have treasure chests start to spawn because going further and saving my cash just means I'll get obliterated and lose.

The ideal strategy is when your favored minion both shows up, and you have enough cash to buy them.

The fact that the price increases by 1 to reroll, and it never goes down again means you should reroll a few times and then never again, as it's always worth it to simply buy another minion over trying to get a specific one. If you've survived long enough to have enough cash to keep rerolling, you might as well keep doing what you're doing.

Perhaps you could provide some sort of passive reward based on the amount of cash you've spent rerolling? Maybe a gacha system? A certain number of rerolls buys you a ticket to spend on rolling and earning a random minion. Or some other reward, such as the amount of cash you spent on rerolls X2.

These tickets could be another item that appears in the overworld on missions. Perhaps when you complete levels, too? The prospect of guaranteed minions and cash means people will have fewer burdens on their cash flow.

Have you considered adding resistances? Possibly certain minions could be resistant or immune to different kinds of attacks which will have a major effect on your strategy. So the bone minions could shrug off damage from archers while being weak against knights and neutral to wizards. 

A similar deal for the mushrooms, being resistant to physical damage from swords but neutral to arrows and weak to wizard magic.

Another idea I had was “equips” where you have items that remain with you and can be given to a minion. Like a flag that makes the person holding it run faster and is dropped when they go down. So people pick up the flag and get their speed boost. 

In reference to the other person's comment about upgrading minions or them providing bonuses for you having a lot of them. You could have a camp of some sort for each minion type that provides this bonus.

So a kennel or encampment for the dog types, and some sort of pit that the demons live in. A crypt for the undead.

These could be upgraded to provide progressively better bonuses and enhancements to units of their types as you invest more into them. You could also create a unity camp, where it provides a series of bonuses for a multitude of types. Rewarding you for having a varied crew. 

Synergies, I mean. Like if you have mushrooms on your team, your undead will grow mushrooms on their bodies and become resistant to blunt attacks, removing their weakness. 

Thanks for making this game. I enjoy it. I saw it on a youtube video that you posted in the comments of.

The game is still super fun! The new UI is fantastic and makes a lot of things clearer. The biggest issue I have is that the lategame feels a bit dull compared to the early and midgame. This is mainly due to the fact that everything gets slaughtered unless you either have really good synergy, or jack/vamp scaled up from early. Maybe make it so that  some stronger units are introduced in later floors so you can feel like you're actually buying something that won't just get eviscerated.

Can't wait for what this game has in store! Keep it up devs :D

It seems like I have become pretty consistent at winning.

One small feature that I think it'd be nice to have is the ability to see your army after either a win or a loss.

I went with a strategy that focused pretty hard on vampires and I was curious about what value of health they reached.

Also, related, I feel like including the amount of permanent buff a stuff got would be a nice implementation for things like the vampire and the pumpkin.

Have a great day!

I like this, it's very entertaining and combines multiple unique challenges.

I've noticed that you're missing a menu button and a pause shortcut, and a small upgrade for the UI to display and explain more information would be nice.

The gameplay loop is really solid though and really the only missing feature I can think about is setting a custom item priority for individual units (so your tanks won't drop their shields for coins).

The game just crashed (awesome game btw) but it won’t let me back in no matter what even reloading doesn’t work

This could be a minor bug, but whenever I lose and click on "Quit" or win and click on "Play Again" the game freezes and I need to refresh the page to play once again.

It's pretty minor, but I still felt like it was worth sharing.

I managed to win again.
This time I tried an healing build with high health units.

Honestly?
Not that great.

What I found the least rewarding while playing was that units other than 3 speed undeads tend to mostly have 4 speed, so monsters like shamans, the tree and even the vampire got stuck in the middle of the pack with a limited ability to use the efficient goblins.
Also, more "demonic" monsters like Imps tend to have a bit too little health to be easily used, despite their speed making them useful while team building with the objective of a "healing, undefeatable army".


I feel like having healing units with different speeds among them could help for floors without "safe zones".

I recognize, however, that this might just be a feeling born from my choice of trying to avoid doing another undead army.

--

What will follow is just a feeling born while playing, so treat it like that, not as a serious request.
You could also just treat it as a rant.


Honestly, I would like something like a " Golden Base Unit".


With Base Unit I mean the 2 gold units like Goblins, Imps, Zombabies, etc.
I feel like, during my games, I WANT to take them as they help in delivering resources to the stairs and they act as a shield for other more important units.
At the same time, however, I can't avoid the feeling that I might be wasting my money.

I ended up feeling the desire for a chance of a stronger base unit with the same price.
Something that might tie back to the idea of "buying more of the same units give you certain bonuses".
Maybe, while stronger units give you certain buffs, base units give you something like 1% chance to find a Golden Unit of the same kind for each Goblin/Imp, etc you buy. Obviously, with a cap.

Something like :

I have 10 goblins, so I have a chance capped at 5% (10%?)  of extracting a 2gold cost Golden Goblin whenever I would extract a normal goblin,

Golden Imp, Golden Zombaby, you get the gist.

What they would have as a difference?
Idk.
Maybe they have slightly higher stats, but still no ability.

Maybe they have something minor that works in the menu and not in game.
I mean, every base units has its strength.

Goblins have cooldown, so maybe they give "-1 cooldown" to the unit just behind them (capped at 1, obviously)
Zombabies have health, so maybe they give " +2 health" to the unit just behind them.
Imps are fast, so they could give "+1 speed".
Fungi are Jack of All Trades, so maybe they simply give you "1 gold" back.

--

--

As I prefaced, this is just a feeling, an idea that came out while I was playing.
It's no big issue if it's unrealistic, but I still felt like it would be best to share it, even if just to get you to think about it before saying "No".

I hope it was not written too bad, I have not slept very well, so I might have explained myself to the best of my abilities ahahahahah

Still, I wish you a nice day!

I have just beaten the game, after around 5 times that I reached 1-2 / 1-3 and died.

Something I'd say might be a bit broken are shield-giving units in huge groups.

Like, all I needed was to find a square free from aggro and run around for 10 seconds, so that my shield wolves could armor up my entire undead army.

Like, I probably halved my frames at a certain point, but I stomped through with no issues.

Probably a way to nerf it would be to reduce the amount of shields it could give.
Maybe something like " can only shield up X units with each proc" or something like that.
Or, for example " X units + 1 for every other Shield Wolf".

Still, it's a strategy highly dependent on both the presence of one of those units that give you permanent monsters and, most importantly, on the presence of a safe square.

Honestly, this is the reason why I had previously noticed the presence of "faulty" range.

Still, I hope you have a great day!

Bye!

I am not completely sure about it, but I feel like the preview of the attack range of the enemy units might be slightly bugged.

I am 70% sure that it showed a certain area as "not targeted" and I got, immediately after, targeted in the same area.

During the next round preview, however, it was properly shown as targeted,

I have the feeling the reason might be found in the levelling up of the enemy units.

Does it happen after my path is done?
Maybe I was not shown that the enemy mage had a bigger range due to its evolution not having happened yet on the map?

If I am not imagining things, I feel like I should suggest making the evolution happen before my "shopping phase", so that I could plan accordingly my path.

Still, have a nice day and a great Sunday!

Really enjoying the game so far, I think adding a button to fast forward or being able to set fast forward to on more permanently would be a really great addition.

Looking forward to future updates! :)

I am here with a few other comments - probably because I am not good enough to beat the game (despite gradually getting closer to the end, Floor1-3  with 8/9 keys is my PB)-.

At the moment I feel like potions are really not worth it.
Like, they are tasty bait for my compulsive gluttonous Tiger Snake, but they certainly don't really help my troops.

I feel like they would be more useful to the player (not necessarily better for the game, I'll leave that to you) if the effects were more spread out.

Idk, maybe a Shrine of Healing instead of a Potion?
Something that heals a lot of monsters instead of just one, to be more clear.
It could heal everybody for a flat amount, for a percentage amount or heal to full until exhausting the healing (ex. it only heals 50 hp, they could be 50 on just one monster or  5 each on 10 different ones).

This brings me to my next point.
At the moment the only way to go forward is to get bigger and bigger, but it doesn't really feel that useful.
I feel like there should be incentives to getting more monsters, other than just having more monsters.
I feel like the constant push towards quantity gives a certain feeling of lacking quality.

There could be various solutions.
Of course, this will be all random examples.

1) Maybe the ability to sacrifice monsters of the same type to upgrade one of them? Or all of them? Like : 5 goblins in exchange for each goblin from now on having +3 to each stat.

2) Maybe the solution could be bonuses for having a certain quantity of monsters of the same type?
The Zombie build seems like a viable one, but I end up reaching the point where they are essentially spawn killed by 6 units all around a choke point.
It would be cool if, maybe, they gained  a bit of stats because of the fact that they are in a group. 
Something like "+1 to all stats for every 8 monsters of the same kind" just to make up some numbers with no basis.

3) What about Synergies? Everyone like Synergy! 
Or, at least, that's what office comedy from the early 2000s wants me to believe, but that's beside the point.
Necromancers + 5 zombies = Necromancers getting + 5 health and Zombies get +1 speed, but they also come out together with a shared , summed cooldown.

2 Stealth Wolves + 2 Shield wolves = All 4 of them coming out with a shield.

----------

I do realize that those ideas will probably be too much and that they could risk making the game too easy, needing more floors to be balanced.
Still,  they could be an inspiration for something good.

I am already grateful for the time you spent reading this comment and for the opportunity to play this entertaining game.

I hope you will keep up with the great work.
I will continue trying to win.

From a Defeated Loser, 
Be well!

I just wanted to say I absolutely love this game already, and am so excited for what it could be in the future. It's so cool how open you guys are to suggestions and how you've been interacting with comments and whatnot.  Plus the soundtrack is great!I have a few minor suggestions I haven't seen brought up yet, so here they are;

More specific stats on certain things, such as specific info on firerate and damage of the defenders would be cool to know.  Also as you brought up in another comment changing the description of the on proc stuff. 

Some way to spice up the snake section could be fun (personally I enjoy it but I'm a bit biased as I love snake) Maybe add different types of pathing like ones with walls to block shots or tunnels to completely block that you could either buy or obtain some other way.

Also more of an unrelated thing but a public discord for fans to suggest stuff and whatnot could be cool, but then again that could also be a pain to manage lol.

That ended up longer than expected but I'm just really excited to see where this game can go! :D

just 'cleared' the game! what kept me going was the super catchy soundtrack :D give my thanks to Joel.. these songs are gonna get stuck in my head for weeks lol

like many others have mentioned, not really a fan of the snake pathing phase. very hard to properly manage pinpoint movements

late game, when i have so many minions (4+ rows when i hover over the left side), managing them becomes very tedious. i also found it very hard to clump all minions together and they were trickling out one by one, causing all of them to die quickly.. partially my fault because i didn't read about the 'Cooldown' stat :P but the fact that i still managed the clear the game says something i guess? everything else is quite intuitive tho :D

took me one failed run to figure out i should hold off on clearing the earlier stages by not taking the keys and instead try to collect all coins to be able to afford beefier minions. but the coins don't respawn, correct? this strat isn't possible in the later stages tho since the Defenders spawn a lot more and if i tried to 'farm' too long i might not have been able to finish those levels

minions i was most happy to have (other than the big golem guys) were the wolf boys that spawn shields to all nearby minions when something dies. most underwhelming minions were the heals nearby units ones, maybe i just didn't realize how much they were actually healing, but it certainly wasn't noticeable (also my inability to clump up minion spawns might have contributed to it also)

great experience overall, excited to play this again after more stuff are added ^o^ thank you so much and keep up the good work!