Tempest Tower: A Tower Defense Platformer
Stomp on them creeps!
For the video version, click here!
What I’ve always loved about indie game developers is their willingness to put their twist or flavor onto genres. And I’ve seen some fun and interesting approaches in the Tower Defense genre.
I’ve found an intense fast-paced FPS/Tower Defense hybrid in Sentry,
Tetris Blocks instead of walls to build your mazes in Emberward,
Resource gathering and automation in Tower Factory,
and now platforming elements in Tower Defense in—
Tempest Tower.
Tempest Tower, a game developed by Half Past Yellow, is a unique tower defense where you use wind energy for your towers and can gomba stomp your enemies as this cute little guy named Fai, the janitor of Trip Space, whose main weapon is a broom, and turrets.
Half Past Yellow was generous enough to give me a key through Keymailer, which is why I was able to get a glimpse of this game.
It’s one of those tower defense games where it gives the player the ability to directly interact with the mobs; by giving you control of Fai, while also being vulnerable to pain. Which I think is cool and makes tower defense games more interactive.
I know there are people out there that don’t like the idea of placing towers and seeing them mow down hundreds of enemies, allowing you to bask in your excellent placement (crazy, right?) so this game is perfect for those people.
Let’s quickly go through the basics, while keeping in mind that this is only a preview build, meaning that there’s still more to come.
Buddy here is protecting this tower filled with these cute little colorful winged eyes in Trip Space from the soft, squishy, and also cute Creepers. Except the gunkers who want to ink and break your sh*t.
You defend the home of these guys by using wind power through wind turbine towers that can be either powered through these areas that constantly have winds flowing or sweeping with your trusty broom. They will then power your defenses that, for now, are the basic turret, a sniper turret, and an ice tower.
You also have traps that you have to manually have to trigger, such as spikes and mines, by sweeping your brooms at them.
The unique factor of the game shines with the map, what you have to do in it, and how you can traverse the map.
See, the maps are large, considering that you have to run around the whole thing to place towers and get resources, and each round reveals an area that was initially covered by fog of war, meaning, more places to traverse, and more places to set up your defense. This is when the game becomes overwhelming, and fun.
Luckily, there are what I call “utility towers,” which can be used to easily traverse the map, such as a trampoline or a speed boost, which will be needed if you want to save these little guys that, once you net enough, gives you an option to select between three choices to upgrade a tower.
Other things to do are clean up the blobs to open paths, lob bombs at your enemies, jump on them to reach higher ground or damage them, or push them away with your mighty broom. And there’s so many you can push with your broom.
Not only are there large hordes of enemies going down the routes, but there are only two ways to get resources for towers: one, you build your defenses around a plant that will eat them, and you can dig it out after the round, or two: you are there to collect their spirits when they die. There is no global pick up.
While I was able to beat the demo level, it was hard. Managing traversal, setting up defenses, acquiring upgrades, pushing these creeps away from my tower, though it was hectic fun. My only gripe was the gunkers. They disable your towers, and you have to manually run over there and sweep them to get them running. Thankfully, the developers were very responsive on their Discord, and answered a couple of questions, including these foul fellas.
Ink Creeps We are still trying to find the balance with these guys (we call them Gunkers in the code). There are a few things I would like to test, but we know that they need a nerf. Right now, you can stomp on them to remove their ability to disable your towers or deal with their mess with your broom. It is also possible to focus on grabbing turret range early and building your turrets farther back from the enemy path, or going harder in on Mines. In future I would like to have a water spraying tower/building that has a couple of uses, one would be to clean nearby turrets of gunk (no ETA on that).
Meta-Progression We are planning on having a simple meta progression. There will be a scoring system and your score will be transferred to progression regardless of it you win or lose a level. I can't really outline more at the moment.
AoE Towers We will have AoE towers, it wasn't a deliberate choice to not create one right away. We started by testing out a few tower ideas that were more unique to our game (movement stuff and gust activated stuff). The turrets in the game now were added a little later as we knew that we needed extra fire power, we just didn't get to AoE stuff yet. Other Plants/Resources Yes, we will have a range of different things that the player can pick up and use to help them defend. We will have fuel for non-windmill power sources, as well as other items that interact with enemies.
Windmill on Windmill Action We don't plan on windmills interacting in this way. We will have other Energy Sources that work in different ways. The windzone visual is slightly more constrained than the area of the wind to allow for slight leeway on placement. I would guess that the times when a windmill has powered another windmill would be related to that.
Who is the little guy The character's name is Fai. They are a janitor/caretaker of Trip Space and the heroes journey has been thrust upon them as there is no one else around to do the job. Tempest Tower will be light on story, just like our previous title, Time on Frog Island. We have a bit of a backstory and a strange world, but the game's narrative won't be a central part of the gameplay. I do want to write a short intro to the character and Trip Space for our blog and the Steam Community Hub.
Tempest Tower looks promising, not only because of its concept and execution, but also because the developers are open to feedback. I’m excited to see what other towers they add, how the meta-progression will affect the game, the other plants, and in-general, I’m excited to take out the trash. As a fan of tower defense games, this game is staying on my wishlist until it comes out, because then it’ll be on my library. I highly recommend it to those who want a more interactive tower defense game. Be sure to check out the game through this link!
Will you be getting this game? What do you think of the game? Let me know in the comments below!