EDIT: Beta starting soon! We'll be sending invites out via our mailing list. Sign-up at the bottom of the page at zombiematchdefense.com Hey all! I met up with Jared at GDC last week and showed him an early version the game I'm working on. http://toucharcade.com/2015/03/04/gdc-2015-zombie-match-defense/ I was totally unprepared to launch into a Let's Play with him, but I think it ended up pretty okay: GAMEPLAY: Zombie Match Defense blends the casual match-3 genre with the strategic nature of a lane defense game. The resulting mechanics require the tactics and luck of both game types. Match-3 has been used in a variety of ways before, but never like this. Keep your eyes on the playing field the entire time. The game isn't divided into two sections where the matching is merely a mechanic to generate a resource that is used elsewhere. Zombies mindlessly trudge forward across the board, mindful to only take a step after you make a move. Do so by swapping the locations of two bordering brains. Match 3 or more in a straight line to remove the brains. Any zombies snacking on the removed brains are also removed from play. Keep the zombies from escaping into the world at large. Equip your scientists with items to defend themselves. The simple rules are easy to understand, but you can quickly become overwhelmed by the horde if you stop paying attention. As the game progresses, you will unlock new powerups and encounter zombies with special behaviors. FEATURES: - New tactics on top of familiar match-3 gameplay. - All the action takes place in the match field, no filling mana bars or missing action happening elsewhere. - No time pressure, play at your own pace. The zombies are very polite and only move after you do. - NO IAP OR ADS. Buy it once and you can play it forever, as often as you like. - It's really silly. One of the power-ups is a slurpee that gives the zombies brainfreeze. - Unlock new power-ups using the zombucks that you gather from slaying zombies. - Endless mode - see how long you can survive against an overwhelming horde, then compare your score against your friends. - Encounter new zombies as you progress, including the IMMOVABLE SUMO ZOMBIE. - It's got zombies. Zombies aren't played out yet, are they? Right? Guys? Crap. I'll be active in this thread and I also just started up a dev blog on our site at http://blog.zombiematchdefense.com
You got me at "premium". This looks great! Apologies if it was mentioned in the video (I only watched for a few minutes; enough to know I am interested); is this going to be Universal?
I'm aiming at June right now. It seems pretty realistic and I'll be sure to keep everybody updated if anything changes one way or the other.
Thanks guys! I just updated the blog with a new post about how we're trying to make our tutorial system non-invasive and spare the experienced players (i.e. folks on this forum) from being spammed by messages that are obvious to you. http://blog.zombiematchdefense.com/post/113521764879/tutorials-part-1
Looks like a awesome blend on the traditional match-3 game with a tower defense twist. I think the artwork looks fantastic and the gameplay looks like it's gonna be a lot of fun. This being offered as premium, is an instant buy for me as well when it comes out.
Really good job on mixing two well worn mechanics and making it look irresistible. Looking forward to this for sure. I emailed you about beta interest b/c I was not sure exactly how to sign up. i hope that's ok.
Ooh, this looks FUN! Love the animation along with combining match-three and tower defense. Is this still being released in June? I will definitely be looking out for this. I know I'm going to lose endless hours to this game.
Hey guys! So sorry for dragging on replying to this thread. I'm just getting settled back into things after a crazy week at E3. Unfortunately we're not going to be able to finish this in June. However, I am still hoping to have the beta started before the end of the month. We got a new website that goes over the core mechanics of the game. At the bottom of that page is a sign-up to join our mailing list. As soon as we're ready to get the beta going, we'll be sending out invites via that mailing list. We had a few changes to the way we're handling our animation system, which is going to let us to some suuuuuper cool things that I'll be posting about on our dev blog soon. That was one of the big contributors to pushing our date back, but I think that it's going to be a big win in terms of what it allows us to add to the game. More on that soon! Also, I met up with Eli at E3 and he recorded some new video of the game. I hope that goes up on the main Touch Arcade site soon, but I imagine that everybody there is pretty slammed with the Patreon stuff as well as digging through all the rest of the E3 news. Thanks for the interest, and I'm happy to answer any questions!
Can you make your icon one of the scientists? I always loved the Leage of Evil 2 icon, the art style is similar enough in a way...
Oh, I like League of Evil as well! We can't really use the scientists as an icon, for a super top secret reason that I'll be revealing soon. This is what our icon looks like at the moment: I made some stickers from that image that I was handing out at GDC and E3 this year.
I'm glad everyone is as excited as we are! Here's a preview of one of our idle animations. If anyone is gonna be at Pocket Game Connects in San Francisco next week, we'll have a table there at the "I <3 Indies Showcase." Swing by and play for a bit!
Congrats to your win at the Indie Pitch! I am dyiiingggggg to play this game, tropes may be abound, but they're all good ones.
Thanks so much! It was totally crazy, there were a bunch of other really good games there! We're getting really close! We could really use your guys help on finding the last few bugs and getting feedback on the balance. If you haven't already signed up for our mailing list, that's the address we'll be sending the beta invites out to. Head over to http://zombiematchdefense.com and put your email in the field at the bottom of the page.
