Game: Tower Tower Defence Defence

Towers do all the work in TD games. But who will defend the defenders themselves? A recursive tower defence game we made for Ludum Dare 48, whose theme was "Deeper and deeper".

Play it here.

We've competed in other game jams too, but this was our best showing yet! I had a good feeling about it because already during development I found myself stuck playing the game instead of actually coding. The game manages to strike a good balance between tried-and-true tower defence mechanics and a fresh mind-bending recursive twist.

The game also has an interesting technical aspect: the way the path generation works is simply that the start and end tiles are chosen and then a random walk begins from the start tile, until the end tile is reached or there is nowhere left to go. If the walk doesn't reach the end or is below a certain length minimum, a new walk is generated. This is a Las Vegas algorithm that succeeds often enough to be efficient, and it's simpler to code than an algorithm that always produces a valid path.

Credits

(Also see Ludum Dare page for links to peoples' profiles)

• Honza @Aeternall (dev) -- also props to him for coming up with the game idea!
• Petr @petrroll (dev)
• Bety @Lavialee (animation)
• Vojta @DrCuketa (game balance)
• Vašek @IAmWave (dev)
• Ondřej Trhoň (music)

Additional help:

• Bouča @Colanderr (testing, bugfix)
• Chugg, Wark, Babkis, Sharpblade (testing)