A New Project
As hinted at in our last post, we've been quite busy this year and are excited to announce our next project, Tempest Tower! It is an action-packed Tower Defence game with Platforming elements. We are bringing the much-loved character feel and animation style of Time on Frog Island to a new type of game. You will have to dodge and weave through waves of Creepers while maintaining your defences and herding the local critters to safety.
If that sounds like your kind of game, then I have good news for you! You can wishlist the game on Steam right now and get notified when the game launches.
A Tower Defence with Platforming elements?
The perfect mix of strategy and action. Tempest Tower offers traditional Tower Defense base building and wave-based gameplay with an added layer of player interaction. Push enemies around, personally activate traps, and jump on enemy heads while you save critters and collect resources.
Our goal for this project is to add a new level of tension to the Tower Defence genre by placing the player right in the middle of the action. You will have unlimited time to structure your defences and plan. When you activate the wave, you must trust your defences while you dodge, push, and stomp your way through hordes of enemies to collect resources and save cute little eyeball creatures called Peepers.
Push back the horde and claim victory
My favorite mechanic is related to how we have structured the levels in Tempest Tower. At the start of a level, only a small portion of it will be available to explore. The rest of the level is covered in a thick fog. After successfully defending a wave, you will push back part of the fog and reveal a new section of the level.
Once you dispel the last of the fog, you will have one last wave of enemies to deal with before you claim victory on that map.
Pushing back the fog means pushing back enemy spawn points and gaining access to new strategic locations, but the Creepers will soon be back, and in greater numbers!
This structure makes designing levels a really interesting challenge. We have spent a lot of time figuring out the right size of level, how much to reveal per wave, what tools the player needs to make traversal exciting, and so much more. Stay tuned for an in-depth level design blog later in the year 😉
HPY is going to Gamescom!
Remy and I are in Cologne for Gamescom this week. We will be showcasing an early version of Tempest Tower at Courage Cologne 2024 on the 20th of August and we will be available at the event center during the rest of the week. If you manage to catch us at the showcase or on the show floor, you might be lucky enough to grab a Tempest Tower postcard.
Stay up to date
Going forward we will be publishing a new blog post every 4-6 weeks, mostly about the development of Tempest Tower. You can get more frequent updates by joining our Discord or following us on Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). You can also get less frequent updates by signing up for our newsletter.
See you next month!