Room Builder
A downloadable game for Windows
Room Builder is a fast-paced wave survival shoot 'em up where you have to defend yourself from enemy cats. Unlock new gear, build walls, make your own strategies, make turrets and master your dodging/shooting skill to overcome the final challenge!
Note (2022): I see a lot of design flaws in this game, which was one of my first. The game tries to be about building turrets and walls strategically, but that part is actually boring: the best strategy is simply to make as many shooting turrets as you can afford. The game is most fun when you have very few turrets, because then dodging and landing your shots really matters. But now I see a lot of ways I could fix the design, so in the future I might develop this game into a comercial release.
Controls:
- [WASD] Move
- [ARROW KEYS] Shoot
- [E] Accept/Interact
- [Q] Go back/Building menu
- [ESC] Pause
- [F11] Window size
- [M] Music and volume
Feedback is appreciated :D and feel free to ask questions!
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Comments
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awesome thanks! looking forward to learning from you - perhaps make a youtube channel?
Maybe in the future...
shit, glad this is getting another look. ill play it again and post any thoughts :)
played it again, its nice. very simple. if it was me i'd make the turrets as powerful as your weapon, so they both have equal importance. I liked the balance of maybe leaving walls left open to harvest money for turrets.
To clarify, I haven't modified the game yet. I just updated the exe to fix little bugs.
Currently, leaving walls open doesn't give you more money, because the number of enemies is fixed per round, but changing that is one of the ideas I have to make the game more strategic.
The problem with making turrets stronger is that they accumulate, so quickly your attacks would be meaningless relative to the sum of all your turrets'. A possible solution would be making turrets breakable (with a health bar, but repairable), so then the game would become more about channelling the enemies away from the turrets and managing your time and holes to ensure you don't get overpowered. For example, there would be a manequin "turret" that attracts monsters, and turrets that apply typical buffs to monsters (slow down, poison, etc.). Since time to build would become so important, there would be ways to buy more time, and maybe buffs or special attacks that stop time in the middle of a round...
interesting ideas. i was actually saying that weapon does nothing in comparison to turrets. It feels like you're making a CODzombies type thing, so a survival shooter with some basic strategic choice added in. In that case id do more to level design and weapons, plus some more to give each run a narrative, like bosses, weapon upgrades, path choice upgrades..etc. Just an idea. You need to really hone in on what you're trying to make with this, and look at other models that have worked :)
Oh ok. Thanks as always for your comments. I agree the game will need some kind of long term choice path affecting your abilities or your weapons, and that could be done in many ways. However, I think weapons should be kept rather simple, since I suspect the most interesting part will be the turrets and building/repairing stuff, so emphasis on weapons would take away from that. I think bosses without turrets would be very fun, and again I should figure out the best way to integrate that with the core gameplay.
Can you explain what you mean when you say that you'd "do more to level design"? Like more complex room layout? I also agree I could benefit from looking at similar games. Did you have any specific ones in mind? I did play COD zombies, but don't know many more in the "survival shooter" genre.
just look at arcade survival shooters online and tower defense where you put turrets along a path. Your game is those two genres combined.
Levels i mean basic variation on the empty room. maybe four pillars, maybe a small dividing wall in the middle, maybe an area of lots of little rocks, any little variety which adds a bit more strategy. That's the tiles i added to still not dead, it just adds a little more thought about how to approach the fight, and incentives to use different weapon types, movements or tactics.
can you post the source cdoe for this?
The game is GREAT. However, i noticed there is a turret you can't buy from the shop. Can it only be accesed after buying the crown?
Really well polished game and super fun! However, I wasn't sure why the building phase began when there were enemies still alive.
When all enemies of a wave have spawned, you have limited time before the build/buy time, so you have to kill em fast! thanks for playing!
Really fun game, but one my first run i played for a while and didnt find a single use for magic nails. Am i supposed to get much further to unlock another turret? The turret/building mechanics are far more fleshed out than the dodging/shooting ones.. is there any chance i can see the source for this, as i took a browse of your jam version and i think i could learn a bit, as well as help you to improve your projects.
Yeah, you need to unlock the new turrets. I uploaded the source code in the game page, you can check it out. You'll probably find some bad coding, but this is over 1 year old and I learnt a lot since then. What do you mean the turret mechanics are more fleshed out than the dodging/shooting? I think you mean that the game has too much emphasis on the turrets but there arent any shooting powerups. That's true but it was intended. If you could powerup yourself, making a nice turret combination wouldnt feel as powerful.
It is under the Tower defense tag, that includes priorotisation on towers
I absolutely LOVE this game!!!
Everything in there is so well put. The fast pace, the music, the graphics, the gameplay, the style, smooth controls. I seriously wanna see it moving forward!
Just please, pleeeeease add the option to play with mouse!
Some feedback:
1. A highscore counter or something would be nice!
2. description about each hat/body
3. The bear body is pretty weak
4. I don't see the point of fixing holes if enemies always break them again? What benefit does it bring to me by fixing the holes?
I agree it needs balance and some tweaking. I don't think I'll get back to it cause I'm working on newer, better, projects. Each game is gona be better thant he previous one. I'd rather do this than keep polishing the same game over and over again. I thought about the mouse controls but the mechanics would change since the mouse has 360 degrees while with the keys you were limited to 8 directions. I could've fixed it to just those 8 directions but it might have been kinda uncomfortable to play.
Thanks for the feedback! I didnt wana make a description of each hat so the player has to guess and experiment to discover what they do. The bear body is kinda weak, especially against the boss. I know. The thing is, if you dont fix any wholes, you'll have enemies coming in faster and from all directions. If you fix all the holes, say, in the right, you have a more controlled enemy stream.
Glad you liked the game! :)
The game crashed on the boss fight.