4 ms·

Polycraft - A WebGL 3D tower defence game

55 points by jamesaustin 13y ago

gotofritz 13y ago
looks nice - haven't got far enough to see the tower defence side of it though
- jerguismi 13y ago
  I was also too lazy to get there, but I got far enough to see their business model...
  - hobs 13y ago
    Yeah it seems quite nice, but as soon as I started putting down buildings and it was like "Hey this is how you unwait, by paying us!" and I still hadnt gotten to the actual gameplay I knew this top down toucher was gonna be a problem.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
benvio 13y ago
Gameplay trailer here: youtube.com/watch?v=pSDp5srTgrA
yamalight 13y ago
pretty impressive visuals. it seems like running something like Torchlight in browser will be pretty simple soon enough. the game itself is still just another boring f2p cow clicker though :\
- 10098 13y ago
  Well, to be fair, it looks more like an N64 game or one of those early 3D games for SNES (Star Fox?). After reading the comments, I was expecting something more like this: http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/05/Torchlight-2-8.jpg http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/05/Torchlight-2-8.jpg. I was slightly disappointed.
  - yamalight 13y ago
    well, it could've looked like this, I don't see why not. I was speking more about poly count, rather than textures and their quality. I think they just didn't cared/had time (or artists) to do pretty textures.
willvarfar 13y ago
Why is this special? What a horrid user-experience trying to actually get to the game though. Everyone wanting to be wowed by webGL can go browse the latest crop of Ludum Dare entries instead.
Deestan 13y ago
Technically impressive, but the shoddy F2P kills the game. If the game is tedious and boring without burning premium currency, you've failed at F2P.
nakovet 13y ago
I have the impression that many games are way more expensive nowadays because of this special currency business model. I usually would buy a game in a range between 20-60$ but those pay-for-my-currency games have packages between 2-100$ and if you are really addicted the 100$ one won't last a month, at the end I don't buy anything, when sometimes the game is awesome, I buy a package to "support" the company.
Yuioup 13y ago
Technically wonderful but man do we have to have achievements all over the place? What is moving your mouse pointer and clicking an achievement now?
raphar 13y ago
Is there any blog or article by the authors with a behind the scenes description of the game? (team or solo, artist, technologies, infrastructure, ...) The game is nice but I prefer reading about those as I see a lot going on the tech side.
- benvio 13y ago
  Yeah, we post a fair amount of high level development stuff on wonderstruckgames.com
kunil 13y ago
That is quite awesome! I am not a fan of pay2win though. Also nice domain.
donpdonp 13y ago
The technology is impressive - it felt responsive and looked decently detailed. I stopped playing almost immediately though once every action had a slot-machine audio/video feedback to it. Its straight out of any Zynga game and it reduces gameplay to 'push button A' 'go to location B' 'repeat'. I was hoping for "Torchlight on the web" but got "Farmville in WebGL".
orthecreedence 13y ago
This game (like everyone else is saying) is technically and visually impressive. My advice for this game: drop the up-front PAY US LOL bullshit. Don't make people click through 18 menus to play the game. Drop the stupid achievements: "You clicked exactly where we told you to! Here's a diamond!" just isn't doing it for me. Let people start right away by building a town. No weapons, no build restrictions. THEN once people have something to protect, start laying on the "That's a nice little town you've got there. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it." Town under attack? Need a new tower fast? One dollar won't kill you. Not that I ever play any F2P games (ever), so take this with a grain of salt, but suck people in and give them a reason to pay you. Everyone likes games where they build stuff. Now make them pay to fight entropy... but you've got to get them building right away, because I lost interest pretty fast.
TwistedWeasel 13y ago
When will we reach a point where the use of WebGL is no longer a headlining feature? WebGL is cool and all but I have never wanted to play a game based on the current coolness factor of it's underlying technology. Games should be about fun. I'm interested in WebGL but i'd rather be seeing links to posts about how people use it and how they performance tune it than just links to games built with it. I don't learn anything from just playing it.

55 points by jamesaustin 13y ago

gotofritz 13y ago

looks nice - haven't got far enough to see the tower defence side of it though

jerguismi 13y ago
I was also too lazy to get there, but I got far enough to see their business model...
- hobs 13y ago
  Yeah it seems quite nice, but as soon as I started putting down buildings and it was like "Hey this is how you unwait, by paying us!" and I still hadnt gotten to the actual gameplay I knew this top down toucher was gonna be a problem.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

benvio 13y ago

Gameplay trailer here: youtube.com/watch?v=pSDp5srTgrA

yamalight 13y ago

pretty impressive visuals. it seems like running something like Torchlight in browser will be pretty simple soon enough. the game itself is still just another boring f2p cow clicker though :\

10098 13y ago
Well, to be fair, it looks more like an N64 game or one of those early 3D games for SNES (Star Fox?). After reading the comments, I was expecting something more like this: http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/05/Torchlight-2-8.jpg http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/05/Torchlight-2-8.jpg. I was slightly disappointed.
- yamalight 13y ago
  well, it could've looked like this, I don't see why not. I was speking more about poly count, rather than textures and their quality. I think they just didn't cared/had time (or artists) to do pretty textures.

willvarfar 13y ago

Why is this special? What a horrid user-experience trying to actually get to the game though. Everyone wanting to be wowed by webGL can go browse the latest crop of Ludum Dare entries instead.

Deestan 13y ago

Technically impressive, but the shoddy F2P kills the game. If the game is tedious and boring without burning premium currency, you've failed at F2P.

nakovet 13y ago

I have the impression that many games are way more expensive nowadays because of this special currency business model. I usually would buy a game in a range between 20-60$ but those pay-for-my-currency games have packages between 2-100$ and if you are really addicted the 100$ one won't last a month, at the end I don't buy anything, when sometimes the game is awesome, I buy a package to "support" the company.

Yuioup 13y ago

Technically wonderful but man do we have to have achievements all over the place? What is moving your mouse pointer and clicking an achievement now?

raphar 13y ago

Is there any blog or article by the authors with a behind the scenes description of the game? (team or solo, artist, technologies, infrastructure, ...) The game is nice but I prefer reading about those as I see a lot going on the tech side.

benvio 13y ago
Yeah, we post a fair amount of high level development stuff on wonderstruckgames.com

kunil 13y ago

That is quite awesome! I am not a fan of pay2win though. Also nice domain.

donpdonp 13y ago

The technology is impressive - it felt responsive and looked decently detailed. I stopped playing almost immediately though once every action had a slot-machine audio/video feedback to it. Its straight out of any Zynga game and it reduces gameplay to 'push button A' 'go to location B' 'repeat'. I was hoping for "Torchlight on the web" but got "Farmville in WebGL".

orthecreedence 13y ago

This game (like everyone else is saying) is technically and visually impressive. My advice for this game: drop the up-front PAY US LOL bullshit. Don't make people click through 18 menus to play the game. Drop the stupid achievements: "You clicked exactly where we told you to! Here's a diamond!" just isn't doing it for me. Let people start right away by building a town. No weapons, no build restrictions. THEN once people have something to protect, start laying on the "That's a nice little town you've got there. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it." Town under attack? Need a new tower fast? One dollar won't kill you. Not that I ever play any F2P games (ever), so take this with a grain of salt, but suck people in and give them a reason to pay you. Everyone likes games where they build stuff. Now make them pay to fight entropy... but you've got to get them building right away, because I lost interest pretty fast.

TwistedWeasel 13y ago

When will we reach a point where the use of WebGL is no longer a headlining feature? WebGL is cool and all but I have never wanted to play a game based on the current coolness factor of it's underlying technology. Games should be about fun. I'm interested in WebGL but i'd rather be seeing links to posts about how people use it and how they performance tune it than just links to games built with it. I don't learn anything from just playing it.