Day #1 - Post #1: When I played the first level, I was lost because of the lack of a tutorial. I honestly didn't know what I was doing. I didn't figure out until I restarted the level that I had to place towers to defend my Lich. There really needs to be a tutorial that shows you how to place/upgrade/sell towers. Also, I noticed that the towers are a little blurry. I think that this game doesn't look nearly as good as Elf Defense does. Elf Defense looked much more attractive and brighter. In addition, this game doesn't bring anything new to the table in terms of TD games. Day#1 - Post #2: For the buttons in the top left hand corner, you honestly don't need the "Play" button. I also noticed that when you press the speed mutliplier button (x2 and x4) that you can't toggle it back to normal speed unless you press the "Play" button, which is pretty irritating to me. You relly only need to have 2 buttons: the "Pause" button which would should you the in-game pause menu and also stop the game, and the speed mutliplier button, which would toggle between normal speed, x2 speed and x4 speed. I think that there also needs to be a tutorial for the in-game menu and also the shop. There also needs to be some guidance on how you should upgrade your Lich and what towers do what. As someone previously stated, this game would not be very welcoming to newcomers to the TD genre. This was sent at 11:49 PM (July 11th)
Day2 On the one by one map I noticed the first wave was a lot harder then the next 10 or so. I know there is a quest to not build towers till after the first wave but I wasn't sure if the difficulty was supposed to stay the same after that or not. As it stands its a bit weird that it's so tough then not tough at all. Suggestions: 1. In the shop there are lots of things that are Jelly coins only which I don't really like. You should have it so most items have both a coin purchase price and the jelly coin purchase price. Lots of people see IAP as a terrible thing and just but having an option to buy with coins would give those folks less of a reason to voice their opinions on how they think IAP are unfair. I don't think having a coin price would discourage people from using IAP too. 2. I think being able record maps and share them with your friends would be a great feature to add. Not only would it be a good way to spread information about the game if you added an option to post the videos on social networking sites, it would provide players who were getting stuck on stages help to make it through. For example if I was stuck on the last level in the lava map and needed help I could ask iANiMex to show me how he was able to do it. 3. On the record page the second line says strengthen but I feel it should say upgrade rather then strengthen. Bug: 1. When you use the lightning power between waves it will just stay on the screen till the wave starts then go off making it pretty useless. Instead of it waiting till the round starts it should not let you use it then. 2. The total play time on the record screen does not seem to record properly. I currently have 13 hours play time but I know that is incorrect I have only played around 4 hours so far. I think it may from switching focus of apps while I am in the middle of a map with it on pause.
On initial impression I wonder how Lich Defense is different from Elf Defense and not just a reskinned level pack. The backgrounds even look like Elf Defense just recolored. On one hand LD has the cool undead theme with a Lich being defended (which is odd because logically the godlike Lich should not need protection from puny towers) but on the other hand the towers are very redundant (there's a tower defense game with a freeze tower?!?) I agree with Jdragoon19 that the tower designs and game mechanics are generic tower defense; but there are some differences I discuss further down that could be emphasized in the promotion material. Initially seems like Lich Defense is mainly more of the same for tower defense fans. The early levels (at least 1-3) are not very engaging because they feel too easy so I would recommend against a lite/trial version containing that content. Basically plop down a few towers and sit there until the next level shows up. It would be good to label them as "tutorial" levels and allow advanced players to skip them. As I type this in level 4 at wave 20 with 9 near max upgraded towers I just pushed fast forward and put my iPod down to see what happened... and I died so it's obvious there is some strategy required but selling that early on isn't apparent and dull intro levels derail the early appeal. Also early quests do not feel relevent until the 4th levels when you have to finish with less than 80% health but not get hit more than 5 times to complete all quests. I love the quest system, that is one great way to encourage replaying and reward players for diversifying tactics. For example with the 80% or less health I am trying to figure a way to damage the Lich without him auto-healing between waves or over time. As others have said I too would prefer a way to easily access quest material from within the level, but I would advise against a button for it cluttering up the screen. Incorporating quests into the pause menu screen might be one solution. Aside from the basic quests it might be worth adding "optional" quests emphasized as being designed to be difficult for players who want a challenge to vary difficult level. The Lich upgrade and customization system is good adding a good bit of detail and customization and implying a sense of tactical depth (plus making LD somewhat different from traditional tower defenses). I noticed the Lich auto-heals and that seems like a flaw the macho hardcore Lich should not participate in sissy auto-heal; can Lich auto-heal be done away with? The magic system is golden, there's nothing better than ploping down a stream of lightening on unsuspecting crusaders. The cool down times are typically minor enough that magic feels avaliable enough to be fun. I like that there are different magics to try and change out. So far the magic system is my favorite part of the game. It might be worth considering setting up some levels to depend more on magic and less on towers (for example limiting space for towers so only a few can be used or temporarily relaxing cool down times) and making played zap invaders instead. The magic system also adds character and personality to the Lich making Lich feel more interactive instead of just another building to defend. One thing that would help is to emphasize a story component. Why are these soldiers after the lich? Much is implied but gradually rewarding players with story elements is one way to make LD a more immersive experience. Currently players are gradually rewarded with tower unlocks/upgrades but that alone does not seem compelling at first because early gameplay is so easy. Earlier I mocked the generic design of soldiers and Lich but I would feel better about the artwork similarities to other games if there was a stronger plot here. Show me a good screenshot or two of a Paladin and Priest excising the Lich and I'm sold... or a splashscreen of the lich nearly impaling a knight and my interest would soar. I like that on first death you can revive the Lich for free before having to IAP revives. That is a good way to make the game fun and IAP not feel essential but sell people on optional IAP. One way to make the game more meaningful is to offer a perma-death option, I would prefer it if my Lich died it cleared all my progress so having that option would be fun. This is consistent with the RPG elements and would up the ante for advanced players. Regarding petty translation issues, the current build can be improved but overall the content is understandable. For someone, like me, who mainly cares about gameplay I do not see the current translation as a big problem. In fact, emphasizing the game as a popular international title might be a way of increasing interest and remeding any pettiness from players about language. Initially Lich Defense crashed on my before I could start any games, I reinstalled and it now works. I went back to look for the crash logs from yesterday to send in but could not find any. I found crash logs from other games/apps including, for example, multiple Crash logs for the jrpg Ash from February 2012. I am not sure how crash logs are generated or programmed but I wonder if LD is not properly generating crash logs(?), although it is possible this is user error. Pros: Magic, Quest System, Lich Customization Cons: Generic Towers, Lacks Plot Detail, Early Levels Easy I like that tower range does not increase because increased range always seems intangible and LD's upgrades seem more immediate. This is one different from traditional tower defense that I think improved LD because it goes against convention and feels fresh. Traditional tower defense range upgrades at times feel too powerful when suddently at max power your tower can cover half the map. LD benefits from ability to craft stronger towers with limited range which makes the placement more strategic (otherwise poor tower placement can just be upgraded to ignore placement error).
Day 2 #1 I don't know whether others have noticed or not. You can even see the breath of Lick on the main screen! Amazing animation! On the main screen, in the left bottom corner you can see Game Center and Jelly Net icons. These 2 icons are still crude. As well as the JellyOasis welcome screen. About the speed up feature. Before you touch it, you can see it's like >>. Then one tap to be X2, another tap to be X4, 3rd tap to be X2 again. It should be a loop be >>-X2-X4->>-X2-X4. In Upgrade menu: Gold will be consumed. Are you sure? (Will you continue?)
Day 2 #2 BUG: I am sure the freezing after background is real for me. I think this is not a bug. It's acceptable. The white range layer is composed by many circles. You can see these circles very clearly.
Day 2 post 2: Maybe it's just me but I do notice when you upgrade a tower in game the range does actually increase it's just not a huge increase so it's not too noticeable. This makes sense because with these maps being much smaller then some on Elf Defense having too big of increase in range would be overpowered. Suggestions: 1. Friend system with gift and message abilities. It would be really nice to have a system like this in place so people can message each other and provide help to perhaps create a community for those who love TD. 2. Multiplayer system. Having a option to play against friends would be really great and there would be a couple options to do to enable this. You could have a map creation and then be able to share it and download other peoples and play them or you could have some maps set up for multiplayer where one person is playing the lich and the other is the humans and can control which units to use and such. 3. Mini games while progressing through the maps (or story if it's added) to give it a bit of variety. These could be simple games like swipe or target practice with some flying units to something along the lines of spell mastery where you would have to draw patterns that are shown to use and increase in difficulty and if you complete it are able to earn a random number between 1-3 of skill points for your Lich. 4. I like the destroy buildings aspect of the game but I also greatly dislike it. Sometimes I have clicked on them by accident trying to get out of the build menu you and all my units focused on them instead of the enemy and a bunch attacked the Lich. I know you can click on it again to stop it but sometimes I click too many times. I think a better solution is that the towers main focus would be the enemy but if you click on a building they will target it while enemies are out of range.
Day 2 Post#2 Ok, lets start. Finding typos and mistakes is popular work here, so I don't have a lot of new findings new. The only things I haven't noticed in posts are: 1) Here soulstealer must be changed to Soul Stealer. 2) Here Immortal Contrast=>Immortal Contract Wisdom Contrast=>Wisdom Contract Berserker Contrast=>Berserker Contract Wealth Contrast=>Wealth Contract 3) Here mystery must start from the capital Mystery ------------------------------------------------------- Now for bugs and holes: 1) I'm not sure it is bug, but possibility of improving stats after filling the bar looks weird. 2) Now about the cheats. Of course game can be hacked with Gameplayer app(artmoney for iOS, Cydia), it is normally for the offline games. BUT it can be hacked with simple save HEX-editing. For example I set the money and jelly amount as 65535 (it's FF FF in HEX): Now let's find something like Jelly amount in data2.dat savefile: Yes, F0 0F F0 0F is not FF FF but it looks a bit similar. It makes save-edit hack a bit harder, but still possible. You see the 00 00 00 00 bytes after F0 0F F0 0F. After changing those bytes to F0 0F 00 00 we have 16777215 jellies, which corresponds to FF FF FF in HEX: Done with jellies. Wanna hack gold too? Open data3.dat in HEX-editor and watch the same situation: Voila! 3) I'm not sure it is bug, but skill cooldown time in normal speed mode and high speed mode is the same(I thought that in 2x mode cooldown time must be 2 times less) 4) And of course, confirming that BGM is not looped perfectly(iPhone 4 iOS 5.1.1), I think it's optimization problem. There is optimization problem in Shop too-screen splashes with black for a moment while changing tabs. ------------------------------------------------------ Now for suggestions: 1) As I posted once, there should be a quest list wirh complete/incomplete flags during mission(I'm not a painter, so sorry for bad draw xD): 2) I think Main menu button name must be changed to Campaign menu; in game menu button must not be as gray cross, better variant is the same rectangle but with small font word 'menu'.
Day 2 post 1: Lich Defense should have a facebook recommendation system where you get some Jelly by recommending friends through referral codes or tweets.
Day 2 post 2: Maybe Lich Defense could have extra cosmetic items like a mustache or hats for your Lich and your tower units.
Spelling Mistake: I'm pretty sure that contrast should be contract Bugs: When you use the lightning spell in between waves it stays on the screen until the next wave starts. I don't think you should be able to use it until the next wave is on screen.
Regarding in-app purchase options, the IAP set-up seems fair but confusing and un-necessarily complicated. It seems like a ton of stuff that can be confusing to players... you can IAP Jelly and/or Gold and/or Lich armor and/or super towers and/or super spells or some combination of above. For example, rhetorically how does the IAP Caster Robe differ from IAP Solar Robe? Do I want both? Which is "better"? The "Expansion Pack" IAP terminology suggests expanding content but it just seems to allow stronger towers so the terminology is mis-leading. In US "expansion pack" is a term used to indicate additional levels so it feels misleading. IAP is something that turns off a lot of gamers so including such a diverse IAP system will likely result in some backlash which may not be worth income gains from a few who will purchase IAP (I, for one, never have purchased IAP boosts). Like iAniMex said IAP is optional so the confusion seems un-necessary. As Megalitum showed gold/jelly can be readily hacked and I am more likely to hex-edit gold than purchase. If I were to IAP I am not sure how I would best determine what purchase to make. When being defeated on a level, it would be nice to receive some gold for partial victory and to fortify ranks. At an extreme this might also be a way of "rewarding" weaker players who get defeated repeatedly on a level by giving a slight gold bonus for number of times defeated to help them along (i.e. after 1 defeat get 20 gold... after 10 defeats get 200 gold...); granted this might hurt IAP but it would improve gameplay. I am unsure but it seems the game rewards gold over time rather than just for level completion (my gold seemed to mysteriously jump from 77 to 83?), if so that is a nice addition. The Record section needs clarification. The I love that LD tracks play time and "total play points" (I assume this is a score). However, it would be good to elaborate on what factors play into total play points or score (is it based on time per level, number of attacks successful agaist Lich, remaining points in a victorious level?). Also, "S Rank Stage" is unclear as well as "Strengthen Points". It's also a nice touch the play time only clocks time spent within a level and not sitting on the upgrade menu. The record is a great addition but need explanation. Post-level stats seem unclear. Apparently an A is inferior to an S? I admire LD's attempt to squeeze a lot of stat detail onto my small iPod screen with details like quest completion indicators below levels. It might help to show hard level additional quests at each level as unavaliable to reduce any confusion by quest "Q" indicators showing as blank. It took me a while to realize I could not access 100% of the level quests unless I returned after beating the game. Also, showing unattainable quests would motivate the completist in me to keep playing to get them all. Pros: Stat Tracking Exists, Easily Hacked (good for me), Many Levels Cons: Unclear Record/Stats, IAP Overload/Confusion, Overly Similar Levels I have not experienced this, cooldown times appear to be quicker when I play in 4x mode. ? I feel silly accessories would take away some of LD’s appeal but I agree that additional customization items, even just cosmetics, would be nice. The more the merrier. I like how the game pauses to let you see the next wave in advance but still allows you to que actions in the interim, it feels like a polished touch to me. If the whole game just froze for a few seconds it might feel disjointed.
Day 2 Post 3: 1. One thing that would be nice would be to add achievements for gamecenter. Lots of people love getting achievements and I know some people who would buy games just to get more achievements as silly as that sounds. 2. Having some of the maps have certain restrictions would add a lot to the game. Currently the game is kind of you standard TD to set it apart and perhaps make it a little more challenging and fun adding restrictions like not being able to build certain towers, not being able to destroy buildings, having your mana be drained while you play so you have to build faster, things like these would really make it be a bit different and challenging. I am impressed with the small amount of bugs I have encountered so far and there have been spelling and grammar mistakes I have noticed but other folks have already pointed them out.
Day #3 Post #1 (1) Improving the Pause Menu Currently, all the Pause button does is to freeze the game. While this is simple and perhaps effective, I do believe it can be further polished and that both the Options Menu [X] and the Pause Menu [II] can be merged. When the pause menu is pressed, A translucent black overlay comes on. A top bar comes on with the toggle for "Sound Effects", "BGM", "Weather Effects" and "Effect" (each to be represented by an Icon? audio for sound, musical note for BGM, cloud for weather, brush for effect?) At the centre, a questbox appears. the player's current quest status will be displayed (what quests has he completed/not completed) At the bottom of the questbox, will be the "QUIT", "RESTART", "RESUME" buttons. For those who play Jetpack Joyride, this is where I got the idea from. (2) Making fancy the Quest Completion/Ranking Once again, Jetpack Joyride does this very-very well. Each quest give the user a star. After getting a required amount of stars, the user gets treated with a fanciful "All Missions Achieved" screen and a new badge to celebrate his achievement. Similarly, Lich Defence can do this, each completed quest can give the player a Q-coin! If the player collects all the Q-coins and completes the stage at 100%, the player ought to be treated with a fancy SS! ranking (each S should appear with a flash of the screen!) (3) Social Integration The game's Main Menu (with Play/Option/Shop/Help) should include buttons for Twitter and Facebook beside the GameCenter and JellyNet icons. The Facebook/Twitter Icons can have a little notification beside them to tell players to Tweet/Facebook about the game which would grant them rewards (such as free Gold or Jelly Coins) every 24hours! (4) Going Online? The team can also consider conducting special game days/weekends where Jelly Coins gained are doubled, etc. I understand that this can be a little complicated to implement. Alternatively, whenever the game is hosting a sale on the IAP, it should coincide with an in-game event/contest. So the person to reach the highest possible score on the hardest stage (in the shortest amount of time) will win some fabulous reward (iTunes GC?) or some special in-game equipment for bragging rights! more to come
Yeah, but if you put down the lightning spell before the next wave, it's used instantly as the next wave start and is there for wasted. I still think you shouldn't be able to use them in between waves. Also I think the game really should have some achievements for Game Center. It would help give the player something to aim for when going back and playing the game again.
Day 3 #1 The auto orientation is not that a must, I think. Because as for me, I usually turn that feature off to prevent annoying orient when reading in bed. In iOS 5+, you can use AssistiveTouch to change the orientation manually. It's far more easier to reach your requirements.
great suggestion! but I would think that many users do not actually turn on AssistiveTouch. Have auto-orientation enabled right from the start is better. Let it be an opt-out option for users to disable
Hehe, it can be. But AssistiveTouch is really a good virtual Home button to prevent the physical damage.
Day #3 Post #2 I have come to realize that Lich Defence has many interesting and well-designed characters. It would be a HUGE waste if they are not catalogued at all. I have the following proposal: (1) Create a Bestiary - This would allow players to view all the enemies, towers, bosses, Lich of the game. They would be able to access the "Lore/History" of the enemy, bosses, towers and the Lich. If the team is willing, the earlier drafts of these characters can also be added in the Bestiary. The Bestiary should not be an immediate unlock but a gradual unlock. As they play and encounter new enemies/towers, the characters are respectively unlocked in the Bestiary. (therefore, an achievement can be given for a full bestiary unlock!) Alternatively, the team can consider making an "Unlock entire bestiary" IAP for 0.99 to allow players to support the team (donate to the team). I really look forward to this as it can be really quite awesome! more ideas to come and added to this post, probably I turned it on for my iPad. Most don't actually but I guess the team can consider providing a tooltip! to encourage players to do so That would be pretty neat, aint!
Day 3 #2 Suggestion: #1 Add a background of the story. Either in text or a small cut scene. #2 After the beta period, developer should give a list, which suggestions you have taken, which bugs you have resolved, which ideas you might add to the final version. Thus it's a good feedback to us. #3 I suggest the upcoming enemy reminder can be an area in the middle of the screen instead of the side of the screen. And the background is not transparent. Thus it can cover the backgrounds and you can see the upcoming enemies clearly. Now it's in a mess like this: Bug: #1 New tower Rocketeer not Recommend #2 Today the game crashes for the first time since I have played it. How it happened: I am playing, the game is paused. Then a push comes and I tap the push, the game runs in background and I'm using the pushed app. After that, I return to LD, the game crashes. If necessary, I can send the crash log to you. Script Error: #1 Longest range but highest cost
