I’ve had a difficult internal monologue the last few days (no, not about the election – that’s reserved for a much different part of my brain than making video games) about what I want to do next.
Originally, I had promised three mini-golf games, with the third to be more of a spin on mini-golf with added concepts. I even had the idea that it would involve Mega Man-like power-ups that you would have to unlock to beat the stages in a specific order.
I still like that idea. I may still make that idea.
But for a few weeks now I’ve had another, smaller part of my brain yelling at me to make a tower defense game, and after much internal conflict I think I’m going to follow that voice.
One of my favorite early internet games was Bloons Tower Defense (a spinoff of the equally fun balloon-popping game Bloons) and I’ve religiously played just about every single game that’s come out since.
In much the same way that golf games have captured my imagination, so too have tower defense games. The Bloons franchise, to be sure, but also games like Gemcraft and perhaps my favorite iterations, the Kingdom Rush series.
In tower defense games, your goal is to build units (towers) that will stop small waves of enemies from getting to your base. Generally, the enemies get harder and the towers can be upgraded as you kill more enemies.
It’s a wickedly addicting cycle, and one I’ve wasted hundreds of hours on over my life. I love these little games.
And so I feel like I’ve tapped out on golf for a bit – I wasn’t able to solve the physics issues I wanted, and the thought of grappling with that problem for another large game dragged me down a bit.
So, for now, I’m going to try this process over from the start with tower defense. I’ve already learned a ton by creating two mini-golf games and am excited to stretch my pixel art skills especially. We’ll start off with a single level demo just to get things rolling.
More to come soon!