(1) Tower Defense Tycoon

Business Plan:
Step 1) Build Towers
Step 2) ?????
Step 3) Profit!

Welcome to Tower Defense Tycoon, a single-player tower defense adventure! You are in control of a Tower Defense theme park where spectators pay big money to see your towers mutilate defenseless creeps. Build bigger and badder towers to attract more spectators to your park, crank up admission rates to earn more money, and score bloody kills to make the crowd go wild! Meanwhile you can build special facilities such as hotels, family restaurants, bus stations, and bathroom facilities to improve your park.

Each day your spectators will pay the admission rate to enter your park, and each night you will put on tower defense shows with increasing difficulty. Plan your strategy well, because leaking units from your tower defense maze will make your spectators lose interest and your park rating will go down. Upgrade special abilities for your towers and research advanced technologies to prevent your park from going out of business.

Map Features:
The game offers 50 levels-- survive all 50 shows and retire with loads of money.

Five mini-boss levels (special events) and five boss levels (main events). Boss levels are fully scripted levels where you will see unique challenges that you haven't seen in any other tower defense game.

Units with special abilities will give you a run for your money. Enemies can stun or disable your towers, blink, heal, drop wards, and much more.

12 types of attack towers, and 6 support towers. Each type of tower has been carefully designed and balanced to have a unique role in the game. Figure out the best way to use each type of tower to optimize your defense.

Many of the towers have new and unusual effects.
Blood Tower - Becomes permanently more powerful with each killing blow it makes.
Kraken Tower - Teleports between two different locations, it's like two towers in one!
Burnout Tower - This tower can be overclocked to provide incredible burst damage for several seconds, but the tower will overheat and become unusable for several days.
Solar-Powered Cannon - Powers up before each show and loses power with each attack, it's most effective when it attacks infrequently. An excellent tower for occasional leaks.

Each tower has a unique technology bonus that improves it in some way. You can give your towers bouncing attacks, add freezing effects, or even gain the ability to relocate your towers to new positions. Your research is limited, so you must carefully choose which towers you upgrade.

Every 10 levels you get to choose one of several upgrade effects that allow you to fine-tune your strategy with your favorite towers. Whether you want to maximize the money you earn, focus on crowd control, or improve your survivability, there's an upgrade effect for your strategy.

The game has characters, scripted events, a pseudo-story, and a TON of surprises. Good luck, tycoons!


About the Project:
I came up with the idea for this game about a year and a half ago with the intent of eventually making it for Starcraft 2. SC2 was delayed, so a year ago I decided to begin working on this map in WC3 as a prototype for the final game I would make in SC2.

Well, Starcraft 2 still isn't out yet and this map is complete. While it may be a prototype, it's also a complete game, fully polished and balanced. It was developed using the standard editor, without any custom models or effects.

At this point, I'm hoping to get some feedback on this map-- good or bad. Since I will be completely remaking this game, you can be sure that any feedback will be considered and will likely make into the next version.

There are additional features that I will be adding in the remake that are not in this version of the game:
-Multilayer support: Up to 6 players can play simultaneously, including a cutthroat mode where players can run the competition out of business.
-Difficulty levels: Multiple difficulty levels that not only increase the creep stats (HP and armor), but also change the structure of the levels and make the enemy AI more difficult to handle.
-New Stuff!: More special upgrades, research bonuses, and towers.
-Better Graphics: With the new SC2 engine, you can count on your kills to be bloodier than ever.


Screenshots!

Hidden information: Collect admission each day and receive bonuses for your park facilities Shown here is the Hotel, which allows spectators to stay overnight. Upgrade to a Resort to retain even more spectators!

Hidden information: Pass your park inspection to become a fully certified theme park!

Hidden information: Watch out-- some units can stun your towers

Hidden information: WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP THE BABY SEALS?! Looks like the baby seals didn't make it :(

Hidden information: A pyrotechnics display is set off to rally the crowd

Hidden information: Special events provide a fresh experience to even the most seasoned tower defense players

Map Progress:
Complete! Please let me know if you have any suggestions or find any bugs.

Enjoy the game!

-Skrow

Wow, this looks fun. I'll have to try it sometime.

Such an Awesome TD

This sounds daft enough to work.

Just a random not-really important note: On Day 22, there's a typo "Tonight's Showt".

The game itself was definitely a fresh experience. It was quite fun, and even though most towers were basic enough to fit in pretty much any tower defense I did like the way schematics and the upgrades worked. One flaw I see is that it is incredibly hard from what I have experienced so far, especially when the park inspector came. The 4 tests made me lose about 50% park rating, and I eventually died out at Wave 25 (the one with the Crypt Lord). I guess that's just how the game goes when it's your first time playing, but perhaps a difficulty option/choice at the beginning of the game?

Thanks! This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping to get. At this point the game is incredibly easy for me so it's impossible to tell how difficult it is for a new player.

I'm going to try to add difficulty levels to the game, especially because my friends have taken on average 2-3 attempts to even get to the later stages of the game.

Added neat custom icons and made some balancing changes.

I decided against adding difficulty levels. Since you can't dynamically change a unit's max HP with triggers it becomes a difficult change. There are some game mechanics that I wouldn't work with varied HP pools.

I made some changes to the tech tree so that it forces the player down the best possible path early in the game. It opens back up as normal after you complete the park inspection at night 10.

Also updated the post with some better screen shots. High rez! More color!

Use Player Handicaps to set the hp (use values over 100% to increase the HP).

Wow, that was a snap. Took me about an hour to put in difficulty levels. I can't believe I never knew about player handicaps.

I posted some comments in the testing forum thread for this map here.