Changes:

• Activated monoliths increase number of enemies spawned
• Knight's swing is less flashy
• Increased mob mass (less kickback on hit)
• Don't pickup heals on full health
• Increase portal max health
• Towers have a brief summoning cooldown

Watch the dev play (rebroadcast of Next Fest event)

Changes:

• Physics engine tweaks to reduce collision calculations and improve performance, especially with large numbers of mobs and fire
• If too many mobs are on screen, new spawns will combine into "giant" mobs with increased HP
• Remove cat speed upgrade card (it didn't do much)
• Double Portal HP
• Buffed acid & ice effects

It's been 4 months since my last patch and I apologize if the game seemed abandoned! I had to tear everything apart to completely redo the physics so that I could roll out a huge performance boost, since that was one of the primary complaints of the game. I've added lots of additional changes too while I'm at it! Changes:

• Quiver size is now 4 (was 6), and can only get 1 of each special arrow
• The portal now opens and closes itself on a timer
• Knights have a proper melee attack
• Wizards have a proper spell attack
• Cats are now obtained with cards (and you can get multiple)
• Added cat upgrade cards
• Decreased music volume

Watch the dev play Tower Survivors!

Watch the dev play

Lots of small tweaks and fixes today, but one big new feature: PETS! Right now, I've only added one, a small brown cat who joins you at the beginning, but I have plans to make this into a full feature of the game. There will be multiple pets that can be upgraded and you can build up a little army of critters. The idea is that pets will follow you around and serve some of the assistance functions that Tower Guardians do back at your base. Currently, pets cannot die, but when their HP is exhausted they'll lay down and nap for a bit. They also can't be directly controlled, but will basically just follow you around and take a swipe at anything they run into. Full change list: Added cat Performance optimizations around target acquisition Mob distance spawn fix (may have also been causing performance issues) Tower targeting fix (prevent targeting enemies who have died and respawned in the same frame)

Lots of updates today! I didn't intend for this to get quite so big, but I was on a roll and I'm very pleased with how it all turned out! Pretty much a UI overhaul here and I think it looks much better. I've added tooltips to the skill upgrades shown on-screen, as well as to the tower guard purchase options that tell you more about their stats. I'll be expanding on this much more later as well, with more full stat displays. The biggest gameplay addition is the introduction of torches. These will spawn periodically throughout the game (always nearby), so it's worthwhile to try to find them. I'll add more loot soon, but for now they have a small chance of dropping food (which heals 5hp) or if not they'll always drop a coin. Magic effects are even better now, as you can still get an effect proc by hitting an obstacle, so hitting that tree next to a minion coming at you might still kill it with an acid splash. Arrows also now have a small knock-back effect (which scales with damage boosts) to help counter those new charging minions from the last patch. And of course I think the most frequently requested new feature is adding health bars to the portal! It will reset each time the portal is activated (to 10hp), and the portal will not deactivate until it hits 0. This should give players a little more of a chance to keep the portal going even if a stray Imp or two happens to breach. Changes:

• New menu screen, with story and instructions
• Health and gem progress bars
• Portal now has a health bar
• Added tool tips
• Clarified card text
• Added single display event-based tips
• Added torches with item drops
• Added food
• Health upgrade now permanently increases max health
• Fixed minions spawning outside of map
• Fixed map borders being shown incorrectly
• UI improvements
• Fire will now stick around after a minion's death until it burns out, and can catch other minions running through it
• Magic arrows that strike obstacles will now leave their effect on the ground where they struck
• Added knock-back to arrows

I had a bit of inspiration this evening and decided to put out another new build because I really want to know what you all think of it. First and foremost, I've made some additional performance enhancements in the pathfinding algorithms, which may have been why some were still seeing late game slowdowns even after the fire fix. While I was in there though, I decided to split out the active portal pathfinding a little, and came up with what I think is a pretty good system. The way it works is that the minions will always rush straight for the center, until they run into a defender (tower). At this point, they'll make one attack, then try to find a route to the portal around it. If there is no route, they'll keep going and try to bash through the defender. If they did however find one, they'll attempt to go around. Since they always take that first swipe, you can't just set up a maze of archers and force them through. Walls, with 20 hp now, are a must-have in securing your perimeter so that it won't fall immediately as the minions take their pot-shots. If you can hold it though, you'll have plenty of opportunity to take them down as they go around. The only exception to this is any minion with a new "gate crasher" attribute flagged. This means that no matter what they'll just bust straight through any defenses to try to get to the portal. While I was at it, I also implemented a "charger" behavior where some minions will have short bursts of extreme speed. I'll leave it up to the player to find out which ones have it, but as a word of warning they have a pretty nasty bite. Enjoy, and as always, tell me what you think in the comments!

This update should fix the late-game performance issues when flames begin to spread. I had some underlying problems in my physics layer that were causing the engine to detect collisions in a very sub-optimal way, so when all those fire elements are on the screen checking for spread, it was making quite a mess. I've refactored the physics layer completely, so you may notice some things move a little differently than before, and some things are a different speed than they were before. I'll be tweaking this moving forward to try to get back to the balance I'd found in the last patch, but for now I wanted to get this out so that everyone can enjoy the end-game without a supercomputer!

• Enemy pathfinding - they will no longer get stuck behind trees and other small obstacles, and will instead go around
• New Defensive structure - Wall. Has 10 hp but cannot attack. Enemies may attempt to go around it, but will break through when they are in crowds. Walls will also block arrows.
• Tweaked spawn rates
• Rebalanced defender stats and costs
• HP bars on all defenders

Updates today:

• Added new upgrade cards that give elemental attacks to Guardians. They start with 1 standard arrow and an upgrade will add a special arrow to their quiver, so one upgrade will be every other attack, a second will be an effect on 2/3, and so on. Only one per element is available, but their effects are affected by the normal Boost upgrades that the player can purchase.
• Added a health bar to the player
• Ice and acid duration reduced
• Performance improvements

Balancing games is hard, and my tendency is toward games that start slow and gradually increase in pace, which is what I'd been working towards with the last few patches. Following some playtesting and feedback from amazing youtubers like Chef Beyers, I've realized that while that pace might be great for balance, it's not nearly as fun as just going full-force into a murder machine. In that spirit, I've cranked everything to 11 in this build to see what happens! Might as well try these things now while it's all new, right? Major Changes

• Default shoot speed increase
• Special arrow boosts (like multi-arrow and fire damage) increase with each level, so level 1 is +1, level 2 is +2, etc. This gets very silly very fast!
• Fire now spreads without direct contact, so it can jump to nearby enemies not touching
• Spawn speed and size has been increased significantly
• Activating the portal now kills all enemies and drops loot instead of just disappearing them
• Default health is now 20 (was 10)
• Healing cards can now increase health beyond the max
• Effects can now replace other effects instead of being ignored, so for example striking a frozen enemy will a fire arrow will now catch them on fire
• Enemies are greater in number but mostly have reduced health
• Reduced the "get to the portal" time delay