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Against the Slime Storm
Grid tower defence | Economy & balancing | Brackeys Game Jam 2024.2
Against the Slime Storm is a grid tower defence, made for Brackeys Game Jam 2024.2. The real work in it was the balancing: three tower roles have to stay worth buying against two income curves that fill on their own, while the wave count keeps climbing. I set the tower prices and the upgrade steps on the mines, and those numbers are what decide whether a run is winnable and whether the player has a genuine choice at each wave. Art is by AnnusTheChosenOne; everything else is mine.
My role
- Balanced the tower prices and the upgrade steps on the mines: the numbers that decide what a player can afford at which wave.
- Built the two-resource economy, with gold and wood both accumulating passively and mines upgradeable to raise the rate.
- Split the three towers into distinct roles: a basic tower, a fast-firing submachine-gun type with low damage, and a slow magic type with high damage, all three upgradeable.
Systems I designed
- Two parallel resources: gold and wood, both accumulating passively, so what the player manages is how spending splits across two budgets that fill at different rates.
- Upgradeable mines that raise the income rate, which puts a question behind every purchase: buy defence now, or buy a faster economy and hold the next wave with less.
- Three tower roles, all upgradeable: a basic tower, a submachine-gun type firing fast for little damage, and a magic type firing slowly for a lot. Keeping all three in play is a pricing job.
- Rising waves: the enemy count keeps growing, and that is the deadline the income curves and the prices are tuned against.
Core mechanics
- Place towers on a grid, then upgrade the ones sitting where the pressure is.
- Spend gold and wood as they come in; both tick up whether or not the player does anything.
- Upgrade a mine to raise the rate at which one of the resources arrives.
- Survive waves that grow each time. Which mix of the three tower types you can afford by then is the run.
Gallery
Click any tile to open it full size