Cosmic Courier

1. Does the hectic aspect seem more balanced than before? And if not, what aspects aren't? For example, enemies being too quick/slow, etc. 
   1. Not sure what it was before, but the gameplay pace felt ok. Levels went on for far too long though. The purple gems seemed to drop at a slower rate. (if it was pure random, then it’s a 25% chance to drop (or 75% chance for it to not drop, so levels felt longer than they really needed to be, especially at the start))
2. Are towers (now with variety) more balanced together, or are certain towers over/underpowered? 
   1. The effects of the towers were oftentimes hard to tell. (there was something i could buy at the start of level 1 for 10 yellow that seemed to do nothing). There needed to be text that explained what they do.
3. Does the elemental aspect of towers to enemies feel smooth/intuitive to understand? 
   1. I did not notice this at all.
4. Does the flow of the game feel moderately smooth(er), and in what ways if not?
   1. Seemed smooth. But at times tedious. I couldn’t collect my gems fast enough. It got tiresome to carry crystals from a lane to the Blackhole.
5. Is the UI intuitive and understandable? Any comments on adding/removing/clarifying anything to it? 
   1. Add a brief description for what the weapons do (and the upgrades)
6. Did you find any interesting strategies during your gameplay? If so, please let us know what you found, and if not, tell us how we can give you more opportunity to strategize. 
   1. My strategy was to make a meat grinder near the gem deposit and just stand in the lane collecting gems and depositing them without moving.
7. What do you think about the multi-tiered currency? Does a currency dedicated to the blackhole give more incentive to complete it than before? 
   1. I think it felt fine. The currency drop rate felt random, i would probably have a more tiered approach (dont drop blue crystals very often until the player can actually use them.
8. Is the wormhole tower (if used) sufficiently helpful with collecting currency? 
   1. Wait? What? What is the wormhole tower?

Overall: This game has a solid foundation. The game does get repetitive after a while, as the levels tend to drag on (though i only played the first 2 levels). But the core gameplay loop is pretty solid.  The weapons and their power-ups could use more explanation. The elemental portion, I didnt notice in my brief playtime.  There is a lot of fun potential here.

The enemies felt a bit slow at first, but as soon as they got past my defenses, I was glad they moved slow enough to panic place new towers

The only balance issue as far as the towers are concerned, I thought the ringed planet felt a little underpowered until it was upgraded. I used a lot of the asteroid belt, but it didn't feel overpowered in my opinion

The elemental aspect was the most confusing part, it wasn't clear what was good against what element, and I didn't know what elements there were, the only thing I discovered was that fire or solar enemies were hard to deal with

the UI is absolutely fine, concise and makes sense

I have one problem with the tiered currency, in that there is no way to exchange the lower ones for the higher ones, I found myself just hoping for a black hole piece and drop rates were screwing me over a little bit

The wormhole tower was a godsend, it made things feel so much better, a possible upgrade should you want to add it is a range upgrade

Does the hectic aspect seem more balanced than before? And if not, what aspects aren't? For example, enemies being too quick/slow, etc.

I didn't play much of the first playtest but the gameplay does feel very balanced at the moment. After a few runs, finding the right strategy and being familiar with the towers let me play smoothly. I think the enemies are balanced pretty well as well.

Are towers (now with variety) more balanced together, or are certain towers over/underpowered?

I feel like Cassini's Halo was an underpowered tower, but I didn't test it out with its upgrade. I think Sol V was my favorite and most used tower, it may be a little bit overpowered.

Does the elemental aspect of towers to enemies feel smooth/intuitive to understand?

I'm not sure what you mean by the aspect of towers TO enemies but I feel like the theme is done pretty well. The towers have their elemental aspects but I wasn't sure if they were having different affects to the enemies themselves.

Does the flow of the game feel moderately smooth(er), and in what ways if not?

The flow of the game feels really smooth after running a few rounds. It really does give off the Bloons TD and overcooked feel to it. 

Is the UI intuitive and understandable? Any comments on adding/removing/clarifying anything to it?

I think adding a speed-up option on the UI and the waves would be a good touch. I know Bloons does it and I think it would be a nice addition to your game to let it speed up a little bit during the slow times. 

Did you find any interesting strategies during your gameplay? If so, please let us know what you found, and if not, tell us how we can give you more opportunity to strategize.

My main strategy was placing the towers at a good distance from the Blackhole and Astral Chest so I can have the fastest time to collect and store stardust between the two. I also would be able to upgrade my towers the fastest. 

What do you think about the multi-tiered currency? Does a currency dedicated to the blackhole give more incentive to complete it than before? Is the wormhole tower (if used) sufficiently helpful with collecting currency?

I think the multitiered currency is an interesting aspect and it's being done pretty well. I think a currency dedicated to the black hole isn't needed since it already is the main goal to complete the level. The wormhole tower is a great addition and is very helpful with collecting currency. 

One thing I wanted to add on was that I think the dark matter and the currency should be differently shaped because sometimes I get it mixed up with the currency.

1. Does the hectic aspect seem more balanced than before? And if not, what aspects aren't? For example, enemies being too quick/slow, etc.

I was extremely pleased with how balanced the game feels! I was so confident that I would be able to outsmart the game, just sitting there literally forever, upgrading each tower to its fullest, but there was a point where I would become overwhelmed by the enemy. I like that the game reached a point that it was able to do so, because it keeps me excited by the challenge. I actually had a lot of fun testing how balanced the levels were, including seeing what wave I could get to before losing all of my life points.

2. Are towers (now with variety) more balanced together, or are certain towers over/underpowered?

I felt like they were balanced, and I saw the value in having a variety of tower types. I felt like I was limited in space along the path (in a good way), so I had to strategically place my towers where they would be most effective, both to make the space efficient and to maximize the effect of the towers. The variety of towers makes the game very fun, and seems to exponentially increase the amount of strategies the player can take to victory.

3. Does the elemental aspect of towers to enemies feel smooth/intuitive to understand?

I actually did not initially grasp, or remember, that the elemental aspects of the tower are used against certain enemies. I couldn't figure out, during my initial playthrough, why there two different types of tier upgrades, but now it makes sense. My strategy did seem somewhat effective though, which was to have a diverse range of towers along the path, striving to have one of every tower type. I was able to understand the tiered upgrades on blind playthrough, but I did not connect that types of tiered upgrades were elemental-focused.

4. Does the flow of the game feel moderately smooth(er), and in what ways if not?

The game does feel smooth, especially in regards to the flow of enemies. There are no jitters or dysfunctionalities with the player character or the enemies. It took me a little while to become comfortable with the keys, but I think part of the challenge is also having discipline with key clicks, so as to not accidentally toss something away when spamming. I also feel that the currency falling off of the map was a great touch, it definitely evokes emotion to see the high-tier currency you were waiting for get knocked off by my own hasty steps.

5. Is the UI intuitive and understandable? Any comments on adding/removing/clarifying anything to it?

I think that the UI, and the instructions for the game in general, are intuititive and easy to understand. I think that the UI on the bottom and sides is fitting for the size of the playspace, and the large buttons fit the toonish-style of the game. I didn't understand the difference between the different tower tier upgrades, as I had forgot that some enemies only respond to elemental towers. I think it would be cool to have some sort of instruction that ties into the story somehow, like showing how a certain type of tower is used to defeat a certain type of enemy because this is how it would be in the lore. (I hope that made a bit of sense at least) A legend may also be helpful, even if toggleable, for reference about which towers are effective against which enemies.

6. Did you find any interesting strategies during your gameplay? If so, please let us know what you found, and if not, tell us how we can give you more opportunity to strategize.

I was actually not too focused on completing the levels, rather I was interested in seeing how long I could hold out for, by just building and not putting the pieces into the black hole. My strategy revolved around utilizing the various towers for their strengths (ie. ranged, contact damage, etc...), and placing them around the playspace in a way that maximizes their efficiency. I did not understand about the elemental effect of the towers at first, but this will augment my current strategy, by having a diverse array of towers.

7. What do you think about the multi-tiered currency? Does a currency dedicated to the blackhole give more incentive to complete it than before?

I think this was a great addition! Unfortunately, a currency dedicated to the blackhold was not the most robust incentive for me to complete the game, as I just found myself tossing them off the side or out of the way, so that I could obtain tower currency to finish my 104th wave. I do like having some higher value currency because of the emotion it evokes, both in the excitement when one appears, as well as the despair when you accidentally knock one off the side of the map. 

8. Is the wormhole tower (if used) sufficiently helpful with collecting currency?  

Upon blind playthrough, I actually didn't know what the wormhole tower was for. I think one of the reasons was because I was more focused on using my resources towards combat-related towers. Now that I know about it though, I will make sure to use it in future playtests. I think it might be cool to have a chart or legend of the different tower and elemental types for reference, so that these mechanics may be a bit more apparant to new players.

I very much enjoyed playing your game, and will admit I was addicted to fighting "just one more wave" during my time playing. Your game has a very fun core gameplay loop, and I look forward to playing the final release of it!

Since I played the first playtest, I'll try to list the improvements I experienced with this second playtest.

First, the overall balance of the game is much better than the second. With more towers to try out, there was definitely more choices and experimentation we can play around with the tower combos and placement. However, I did feel like some description for each tower would be nice since some of the time was figuring out the range and what the tower actually did rather than finding the synergies and their effectiveness against certain enemies. 

The level design and flow was easier to grasp initially so good work. However, the collection of the stardust is still a bit of a chore, even with the added tower to aid with this. Like some others said, it is still mundane enough to affect how we played the level, like putting towers closer to the chest to speed up the collection process. This might affect how well the towers were able to clear the waves if there were no clear winding paths or choke points. 

The level layout was a nice touch. The different groups of levels were nice, especially the 0 levels that showed the player the basics of the game, like feeding the blackhole stardust to complete the level. The improved UI also helped, and the extra shake when the enemies moved past your towers and drained the health was a nice feature (not sure if was present before because of the busted Saturn tower in the first playtest).

The level art itself was interesting to see, especially the different enemies that appeared in the different terrains (like the snowy field). Even though the level structure is pretty similar and there doesn't seem to be interactable or added effects, the different field map provide a change of scenery to an otherwise similar experience across different levels. It would be cool if there were terrain effects that changed how the towers are able to deal to the enemies (like a certain elemental affinity is boosted while another is resisted, like boosted fire attacks and weakened water attacks in a fire terrain). I haven't played much with the elemental attacks but it would be nice if we got a list of enemies that may appear in a given level, giving us a better way to prepare instead of purely experimenting with the different towers available.

Finally, thanks for putting the frame rate cap. I could play the game without worrying about toasting my machine.

Does the hectic aspect seem more balanced than before? And if not, what aspects aren't? For example, enemies being too quick/slow, etc.

* I was not able to play the playtest 1 version so I could not say much about that but I think that the hectic aspect is balanced very well. I was heavily invested in the game all throughout the 3 levels I played. 

Are towers (now with variety) more balanced together, or are certain towers over/underpowered?

* I think that all the towers were balanced together pretty well. They were unique enough from each other but still form a cohesive defense. 

Does the elemental aspect of towers to enemies feel smooth/intuitive to understand?

* I guess I didn't really understand this part of the game. I didn't know that the elemental aspect affected the gameplay much outside of styling/aesthetic purposes. 

Does the flow of the game feel moderately smooth(er), and in what ways if not?

* The flow of the game was pretty smooth. The game honestly felt like it was made by professionals with many years of experience and I was heavily addicted from the start. It does the tower defense very well. 

Is the UI intuitive and understandable? Any comments on adding/removing/clarifying anything to it?

* I didn't understand what happens when the play button turns green. I know that was mentioned in class but I didn't remember it and could not figure out that part. 

Did you find any interesting strategies during your gameplay? If so, please let us know what you found, and if not, tell us how we can give you more opportunity to strategize.

* My strategy was mainly following general tower defense strategies of putting towers in places that the enemies cross more that once. Whenever it got overwhelming and I don't have the wormhole tower yet, I try to sort the gems instead of running all the way to the crate and the black holes during waves. I then pick what I need the most during then, if I need upgrades or more towers, etc. This allows me to prioritize and achieve what I want to be done first. It was a bit hard to pick up what I wanted so doing this helped out with that. 

What do you think about the multi-tiered currency? Does a currency dedicated to the blackhole give more incentive to complete it than before? Is the wormhole tower (if used) sufficiently helpful with collecting currency? 

I think the multi-tiered currency was pretty interesting. I was confused on whether some gems were more rare than others. I was thinking that it might be better if the upgrades doesn't require too high of a certain gem if some are more rare. I think having the currency specific to the blackhole was a good idea. The wormhole is sufficiently helpful

1. The feeling of hecticness is absolutely much better than before. However, the underlying mechanics of gathering and depositing stardust still is a bit flat. Having more hazards in the map and/or from special enemies would go a long way to mix things up and require more skill and focus from the player when they move around.

2. It's hard to say, though the asteroid and sun towers feel a bit samey apart from their appearance and elements. That's not really a huge problem though, as getting different elements out there is an important mechanical difference in its own right. I'd love to see more variation in the future towers now that there's a way to get each element, however.

3. Not really, an in-game text prompt explaining the system would be quite useful. Also, after being told how the system works by one of the devs, I feel like the system could benefit from being flipped. Instead of enemies resisting the element they are, they should resist everything *except* their element. That way you will need a diverse spread of tower types, as currently you only need two elements in order to cover each other's weaknesses.

4. The game flow is good, although sadly there's not much in terms of progression between the levels, they're all quite similar to one another with the lack of hazards and other special environment features besides the colors.

5. The UI is great right now, good job on the implementation for the auto-play button.

6. See #3.

7. The multi-tiered system feels very good!

8. Absolutely, it seems to be at a good balance right now, slow enough that it doesn't entirely remove the need for collecting stardust manually. It may or may not need a slight cost increase though, I'm not sure.

Questions:

Does the hectic aspect seem more balanced than before? And if not, what aspects aren't? For example, enemies being too quick/slow, etc.

The game seems more balanced than before, except that those fast enemies went by too quickly, over there looking like Sonic. 

Are towers (now with variety) more balanced together, or are certain towers over/underpowered?

The interstellar bridge that collects stardust should be worth 5 red stardust instead of 10 yellow/white stardust. The interstellar bridge needs to have a way wider collection range because it takes a while to collect 10 to purchase it, only to be disappointed by the range of it, or have it so it can be upgraded. 

I thought the towers help balance each other but the Goliath tower is better than the other two, it makes the other two seem weaker. I would say increase the other two a bit to match the Goliath tower. I liked the Saturn tower but just make the range a bit larger, especially at its original state. I made my brother play it and he just spammed the Goliath tower and disliked the other two. Also, said that it would be nice to be able to return towers in exchange for stardust to buy a different tower. I think a description of the towers, their range, and upgrades would be insanely helpful. It felt like a gamble buying them or choosing the upgrade.  

Does the elemental aspect of towers to enemies feel smooth/intuitive to understand?

I think that needs to be way more obvious or explained in some way because I didn’t know there were type/elemental advantages/disadvantages until I read this question.

Does the flow of the game feel moderately smooth(er), and in what ways if not?

I felt like it ran smoothly. 

Is the UI intuitive and understandable? Any comments on adding/removing/clarifying anything to it?

I think it's intuitive and understandable.

Did you find any interesting strategies during your gameplay? If so, please let us know what you found, and if not, tell us how we can give you more opportunities to strategize.

I didn’t have much time to strategize. I just panicked and placed down more Goliath towers. I felt like I needed more time between the waves. 5 seconds was not enough time! I think maybe 30 seconds would be better or a minute with the option to skip to the start of the next wave would be nice. 

What do you think about the multi-tiered currency? Does a currency dedicated to the black hole give more incentive to complete it than before?

I think there should have been more clarification on what the different colored stardust were for. I was annoyed at the green stardust at first until I realized what they were for. I also didn’t like that I had to run back and forth with the black hole currency. It should have at least been collected by the expensive interstellar bridge. I personally would prefer the game without having to collect those. I found that I would chuck the black hole currency to the side to prioritize the other colored stardust. Perhaps if the black hole was closer I wouldn’t feel as lazy to go for it. 

 Is the wormhole tower (if used) sufficiently helpful with collecting currency? 

How do you get the wormhole tower? 

Etc.

Please make it so we can dash like in overcooked. Also, the stardust that accidentally falls or are accidentally thrown off the map should respawn.

1)Does the hectic aspect seem more balanced than before? And if not, what aspects aren't?

Yes, I believe that they seemed more balanced. It was still hectic, but in a good way.

2)Are towers (now with variety) more balanced together, or are certain towers over/underpowered?

Great variety of towers, thought that was very fun to find out power each had. When they did seemed to be overpowered a HUGE set of enemies came and seemed to even things out.

3)Does the elemental aspect of towers to enemies feel smooth/intuitive to understand?

After several rounds of getting used to (as it should), it was great and I understood what needed to be built, it was smooth.

4)Does the flow of the game feel moderately smooth(er), and in what ways if not?

Felt very smooth to me. 

5)Is the UI intuitive and understandable? Any comments on adding/removing/clarifying anything to it?

UI I thought was very intuitive and understandable.

 6)Did you find any interesting strategies during your gameplay? If so, please let us know what you found, and if not, tell us how we can give you more opportunity to strategize

I thought one good strategy was to make sure you put you towers next to your chest. This way you can put the jem's inside right away.

7) What do you think about the multi-tiered currency? Does a currency dedicated to the blackhole give more incentive to complete it than before?

I thought the multi tier was great, made you grab certain ones with purpose not just the closest one every time. Blackhole was great, often found my self trying to upgrade quite often. But It often snapped me back to finishing the level

Does the hectic aspect seem more balanced than before? And if not, what aspects aren't? For example, enemies being too quick/slow, etc.

It seems more balanced, but I find it a bit slow to pick up items. I wish there was a somewhat balanced way of picking things and dropping them off a bit faster. 

Are towers (now with variety) more balanced together, or are certain towers over/underpowered?

I love that there are a variety of towers, as well as upgrades. 

Does the elemental aspect of towers to enemies feel smooth/intuitive to understand?

Everything definitely feels smooth no glitches, the mobs move smoothly as well

Did you find any interesting strategies during your gameplay? If so, please let us know what you found, and if not, tell us how we can give you more opportunity to strategize.

I think I found that it becomes easier if you throw all your stuff near the chest and then somewhat easily drop them in the chest

What do you think about the multi-tiered currency? Does a currency dedicated to the blackhole give more incentive to complete it than before? Is the wormhole tower (if used) sufficiently helpful with collecting currency?  

The multi-tiered currency was a bit confusing at first but then as I progressed I figured out what each was associated with. 

• Does the hectic aspect seem more balanced than before? And if not, what aspects aren't? For example, enemies being too quick/slow, etc.

It does seem to be more hectic than before and the constant pace is now broken up with my constant engagement with the shop.

• Are towers (now with variety) more balanced together, or are certain towers over/underpowered?

I could not find a reason to use the interstellar bridge, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention as much as I should have but I missed it. The price of the towers all being the same price is definitely interesting I’m not sure of that idea.

• Does the elemental aspect of towers to enemies feel smooth/intuitive to understand?

It does make sense and I understand that to deal with the elemental enemies I need to upgrade the towers. But on multiple occasions I was not able to collect enough elemental crystals to upgrade a single tower. I feel that the elemental crystal rate needs to be increased or the wave in which the elemental enemies spawns be pushed back.

• Does the flow of the game feel moderately smooth(er), and in what ways if not?

The gameplay seems relative the same to the first playtest in the same aspect of the player having to move between the crystals and the collectors.

• Is the UI intuitive and understandable? Any comments on adding/removing/clarifying anything to it?

Yes the UI is understandable and easy to recognize what applies to another part of gameplay.

• Did you find any interesting strategies during your gameplay? If so, please let us know what you found, and if not, tell us how we can give you more opportunity to strategize.

I felt like I needed to set up my turrets around choke points and places where paths cross multiple times. Also, I focused much of my towers around the two collectors to cut down on run time.

• What do you think about the multi-tiered currency? Does a currency dedicated to the blackhole give more incentive to complete it than before?

I feel like the separation between the crystals is a smart idea but it needs some work, the spawn rate of the yellow and blue crystals needs to be increased. On multiple occasions I encountered waves that couldn’t beat because I could not upgrade my tower. Not the fault of my own mismanagement.

• Is the wormhole tower (if used) sufficiently helpful with collecting currency? 

 Felt almost no effect on collection of currency, I feel like this is just a waste of yellow crystals in all honesty, I felt like I needed to do more and more dps.

I really did enjoy the game even though my responses say otherwise. I'm sad to see the settings button didn't make it into the game this playtest. 

I love tower defence games so this was a real blast to play. I love the idea of the person making the twoers is actually involved in the game, that added a whole new element that was really fun and different.  I have a few notes but I'll get to them as I answer your questions

Does the hectic aspect seem balanced? And if not, what aspects aren't? For example, enemies being too quick/slow, etc. 

The enemies were all too easy to beat. I set up one tower right on the corner and it pretty much took care of everything. and if it didn't I had a second one placed anywhere that wiped them out pretty easily. But the waves were cool and I liked the designs

Is the balance between using stardust for towers and using it to feed the black hole sufficient? 

Again the problem of easy enemies kinda made it hard to tell if the balance was good or not. I never needed a lot of stardust for towers since two was enough. I will say though getting through the third level was way too long

Do you have any particular ideas for towers?

Put  a monster on a platform and have it attack the other monsters like a pet

What different terrain/level topography ideas do you think would be fun and interesting?

Add a whole level of ice that was fun to skate around on and it'd make it harder to get your towers down.

Does the flow of the game feel moderately smooth, and in what ways if not?

Game flow felt smooth just kinda ran around getting everything set up

Is the UI intuitive and understandable? Any comments on adding/removing/clarifying anything to it?

The UI worked for me. I think maybe add a little area where the controls are but aside from that it worked just fine

There is currently no elemental effects/immunities implemented, so besides these, what kind of different behaviors might be interesting for enemies?

Maybe take some inspiration from plants vs zombies and add like jumpers or ones with weird physical traits that come into play as they move. Also I would say make it possible for the player to get attacked by the enemies and maybe make them lose their crystals or something so the player can actually feel like they're doing something and you make the most of having a character in a tower defence game.

Did you find any interesting strategies during your gameplay? If so, please let us know what you found, and if not, tell us how we can give you more opportunity to strategize.

I think right now the best thing to do would be just add more towers and some tougher enemies, but you already plan to do that probably

Unfortunately, I did not play much of the game because of a nitpick (more because of my personal setup) discussed at the end. Though, what I played of the game so far was certainly enjoyable and it had a good twist on the old tower defense formula.

The character we control (Ophi) is quite interesting mechanically but a lot of the issues I have with the gameplay flow do stem from the side stuff we have to manage with Ophi. The decision to decide whether to use the stardust to fill the blackhole and complete the level faster or use them for towers and upgrades definitely adds a layer of depth to the game. However, unless the game was balanced in such a way that punishes players that just try to put as many towers/upgrades on the map (e.g., enemies eventually outpace the towers in terms of health and speed), I think that the choice of stardust isn't as impactful anymore. The player could just focus on towers until enemies aren't a threat anymore and then feed the stardust to the blackhole. Also, the process of having to collect the stardust, much less trying to decide how the stardust should be used, as the enemies drop them is quite monotonous. Especially when more towers/upgrades are added and we want to experiment with different tower combos and placements, I can see the collection of the stardust to be a mundane part when we just want to see how the towers perform in different scenarios.

It is crazy to already be asking for quality of life features, but it would be nice if we had some way to auto-collect the stardust (maybe as an expensive option in the shop or just a permanent feature after we collect X amount of stardust in general, regardless of its usage). Then, a slider or some way to immediately specify how much we want to store in the chest (for towers and upgrades) and how much to feed to the blackhole would streamline the break period in between waves. 

As others have said, the Saturn tower is pretty busted and would probably need more balancing (maybe start with that first before trying to add new towers so it would be easier to figure out the damage scaling and damage distribution for the other towers). I know the interesting part are the towers (at least for us, the players) but it might actually be easier to create different enemies first. The reason for this is because if we have all these different towers and upgrade paths with different elemental affinities but no specific enemies to exploit them with, then the strategy aspect of the tower defense game would effectively be nonexistent even if the towers were balanced. 

The towers can be created on a need to counter basis -- if there is some enemy (or in some wave with increased health and speed) that cannot be handled by the current set of towers available, that is when another type of tower should be considered. Another person already mentioned the area of effect (AOE) attacks of the Saturn tower but maybe gate that tower till later in the game (or as a more expensive option) and have a simple tower that only does single target (ST) attacks early on. Gradually introduce the different mechanics of the towers with higher tier upgrades and stronger towers, but only when necessary. I would rather have a tight knit group of towers and upgrades to work with (maybe with only a couple of elemental attacks) that are well-balanced and enemies that requires certain placement and combos of towers that aren't directly countered by a single tower (like AOE towers should have lower damage than ST towers but may have special effects, like slowing enemies).

As for the reason why I didn't test out the game fully...The innocuous end bit to the description above "(Settings button does nothing at the moment)" was actually a bit disheartening. When first loading up the game at the main menu screen, everything seemed fine (besides the louder fan noise than normal). But when entering a level, the fans started revving up pretty quickly...For a simple game, I didn't think it was that intensive until I looked at the FPS counter in-game. It is certainly a weird experience to have a game be bottlenecked by the CPU, and to reach over 1000 FPS...frame caps would certainly help here. Case in point, maybe cap the frame rate at 60 FPS (or some other reasonable number) or have some way to limit it in the settings because I was pretty surprised when everything started to run really hot and immediately closed the game when running it for the first time.

1. I feel like the sheer quantity of stardust should be toned down somewhat, dropping less often while having more buying power. Reason being, things currently feel tedious more than they do hectic. Maybe adding more things to do like additional places to spend stardust or different kinds of drops or dynamic hazards from the enemies could help alleviate this as well.

2. Stardust costs seem more or less fine, though the black hole cost is teetering on the edge of being too much, especially on the third stage.

As for tower balance against enemies, the Saturn tower is far too strong. Multi-target towers should always be more expensive and deal very low amounts of damage to each individual enemy. I'd also recommend having a simple single-target tower be the starting tutorial tower once you have one implemented, instead of starting the player out with Saturn.

3. Here's some ideas:

Sun: Absolutely would be fire elemental, though lots of possibilities for how it attacks.

  A. A large, single-target beam that melts through enemies. Maybe weak and constant, maybe strong and periodically goes on cooldown.

  B. Launching fireballs.

  C. Solar flares that pulse out to deal bursts of multi-target damage.

Earth:

  A. Bolts of water.

  B. Flurries of 'tiny' rockets/nukes that either focus on multiple targets or go to one target and move onto the next if they die before the flurry is done. Humanity going nuts with its bombs or something, could be neat.

  C. The Moon constantly orbiting around, damaging enemies as it passes through them. Upgrades would increase the orbital speed.

Jupiter:

  A. Single-target lightning strikes.

  B. Preiodic gusts of wind that push enemies back.

Pluto:

  A. Freeze/slow effect to nearby enemies.

  B. Upgrade path where Pluto periodically freezes/slows all enemies on the map for a short duration, but goes on cooldown for a long while. Something something joke about pluto flip flopping its planet status over and over.

  C. Pluto and Charon together, launching out icy projectiles (irl they often trade material due to being so close).

- Some kind of asteroid-related tower(s) or something with the Kuiper belt

- A comet tower that costs a lot, has a purchase cooldown, and only fires one attack before destroying itself, but it causes a huge comet to rip across the map and take out all enemies.

- Similar to the single-use comet tower, maybe a meteor shower that bombards the map randomly for a duration of time, lasting for a while instead of being instant.

4. Occasional hazards/obstacles beyond ice, like moving blocks or timed spikes or something of that sort could make the levels a lot more interesting. Alternate routes to areas would be good as well, so you don't always go through the same choke point and have more options in movement. Perhaps some routes are faster but more hazardous, etc.

5. With how overpowered the Saturn tower is right now, most of the time spent is just walking back and forth to grab stardust and fiddle with the selection reticle, lots of laborious downtime between waves. I will say though that standing in the middle of a pile of stardust and spamming E to spew them all out quickly is really satisfying.

6. The UI itself is good, though I'd recommend having some text for the next wave button. The selection system is very neat, though sometimes becomes a struggle when I'm trying to toss stardust (especially in large piles) since it loves to latch onto towers, often forcing me to move things a distance of one tile at a time.

I'd recommend having a setting that lets the mouse interact with things (same as E) if the player clicks on anything other than a UI button. Constantly going from WASD to tapping E can get a bit clumsy at times.

Along with that, I'd love to have a setting which allows the player to, when standing still, use the mouse to aim the reticle on any specific tile they want within range, for more precise control.

7. Not sure.

8. Adding more towers, enemy types, different things to do or focus on, and more interesting level layouts and hazards will go a long way for fleshing out what the player can do and strategize over.

Quite honestly it felt like the game wasn’t hectic enough.  Since wave starts are triggered by the player it’s very easy to just waiting for everything to end and then clean up points and work on towers.  If you want to have the players engage with the map during each round, you could make it so points vanish after a little bit so players to collect them quickly.  You could also have rounds start automatically after a certain amount of time, so the player feels pressed to always be doing something.

Regarding stardust it didn’t feel like there was any reason to feed the blackhole early on, so I’d always just get maxed out towers and then when money wasn’t useful anymore I’d begin feeding the blackhole.  If you want it to feel like a choice every time I might suggest either making it so the blackhole meter decays and you lose when it bottoms out or having a wave limit so the player has to make sure at least a certain amount of money always goes to the blackhole so they have enough in it by games end.

The UI was smooth and simple to use.  I have no complaints.

Easiest strat to set up a Saturn tower in a loop where it gets lots of coverage and farm stardust until it’s maxed out.  You cannot lose once this is done and the rest of the money goes to the black hole

Ideas:

• Terrain
  • Portals would be fun, having a map broken into fragmented sections so you can only build towers on certain areas would be interesting.
  • Rivers which speed up one way and slow another making it useful and frustrating
  • Maybe breakable objects which have a small amount of stardust that players could use for extra money
• Enemies:
  • Enemies that eat uncollected stardust
  • Enemies that appear mid track so you can’t plan around loops and choke points.
  • Enemies which affect towers maybe being invisible, or disabling certain ones
  • Enemies that appear and disappear at certain intervals allowing them to avoid attacks.
• Misc
  • It would be interesting to see temporary deployable that the player could use.  It would add an additional element of chaos to the play by adding the ability to maybe place mines or something so you could save a game at the last minute.

1 - Does the hectic aspect seem balanced? And if not, what aspects aren't? For example, enemies being too quick/slow, etc.

The game overall is too easy for sure. I was able to complete each level with the second upgrade of the first tower. The game length or difficulty needs to be altered by increasing enemy health and possibilities of variants.(regen, armored)

2 - Is the balance between using stardust for towers and using it to feed the blackhole sufficient?

No, it is not, the upgrade to the first tower is too strong and I could kill every enemy before they reached halfway through the level.

3 - Do you have any particular ideas for towers?

I would like towers that had ranged attacks or attacks that could be controlled by player choice, like selecting a spot on the map to point towards

4 - What different terrain/level topography ideas do you think would be fun and interesting?

I feel like having a tower that could only attack from a distance fun idea with topography, the higher the tower the further range.

5 - Does the flow of the game feel moderately smooth, and in what ways if not?               

The game runs at 160fps on my machine and I didn’t find any real issues running the game itself.

6 - Is the UI intuitive and understandable? Any comments on adding/removing/clarifying anything to it?

I feel that the arrow to advance the level is still not enough to register that innate feeling that this is what I need to press in order to start the level mentality. Maybe making the box green and changing the arrow to a Go button would help with this.

7 - There is currently no elemental effects/immunities implemented, so besides these, what kind of different behaviors might be interesting for enemies?

I feel that the possibility of destroying the tower with some kind of its own attack, would force the player to actually spend the gems collected from defeating enemies.

8 -       Did you find any interesting strategies during your gameplay? If so, please let us know what you found, and if not, tell us how we can give you more opportunity to strategize. 

The games overall length per level is not sufficient enough to allow players to develop strategy other than placing the ring tower where two paths intersect. I did find an issue where if an enemy was killed while they fell to a lower level their gem would not spawn.

Hey,

This game was very stable. and cute. I think the major issue with the game is the balancing of the game. Implementing more towers will definitly change how you'll want to balance the game later on, however you'll still need to do balancing. This Saturn tower is way too strong for the current wave system. At one level up and with some good placement you can get to level 23 without moving a muscle while astral gems just pile up. You reach this state within 3 waves, giving you have a solid 20 waves of gems to collect.

I think the waves are very well designed and really good for balancing a game. The waves have a good variety of tanky and slow, squishy and fast, and even in-between enemies.
The Saturn(1+) tower is overpowered for a variety of reasons. It has a very large radius which means that any enemy fast or slow will stay in its range for a very long time. It has multi-targeting which makes it really good against all enemies. Multi-target makes the amount of enemies irrelevent since they all take damage the same. Multi-target can only be countered by different enemy types. Typically really fast  or really tanky enemies would be a counter for this, but the large range counters the fast and squishy enemy types. I would recommend cutting the tower's damage a lot and possibly not increasing the range, or only increasing it with another damage cut.
After some testing the  the base tower looks pretty balanced
The general movement and feel of the games core mechanics were really good and spot on. I particularly loved the ice and the gem pickup/toss mechanic. I loved stacking up gems and then pointing in a desired location and spamming E.

A label when hoving over the storage, shop, or blackhole would improve first time understanding of the game.

This game is very nice and relaxing, I've enjoyed playing it and testing it quite a bit.  I think the game will get more hectic with more towers and better balancing. I think a solo-target push back tower like a Jupiter tornado or the winds of Neptune (700mph average).  Another tower could be  single target projectile like the dart monkey in bts would really help in finding a good balance for things. I think the ability to craft the gems into a higher worth gem (yellow gems) can greatly help the gameplay. I do like how the towers are stationary during a wave, but I think a system that can induce more hecticness is to allow the player a certain amount of tower moves per wave.

Overall, very high potential game with a really solid grounding.