'Oh No, Cowboy Vampires' - Screenshot Saturday

I have completed my second game of the summer! Whereas my first game was an hour long tactical RPG, this game was a much smaller project. If you look back at my last screenshot saturday contribution, I said "I decided to work on something much smaller, something I could finish in just two weeks". Hahahah. Oh, how naive. 'Oh No, Cowboy Vampires' took me four weeks to complete, screenshots below:

Main Menu for 'Oh No, Cowboy Vampires'

The name, yes, I decided to go for something that would ideally make players curious about playing it. I'm not fully happy with the title screen's design because there is nothing about the screen that says 'This is a tower defence game!' I went through several iterations of ideas, and this was the best of the bunch. Perhaps if I do a full post-mortem of the game later I'll dig them all out and we can talk about them.

The game has a rather British absurdest sense of humour, which is reflected in the types of enemies the players must face (as well as, of course, the game's name). 'Ghost Moon' is the second boss, the first boss having been the moon, and if you look closely at the screenshot, you'll see the fire tower has set the moon on fire. The suited narrator-character you see there introduces every new wave, as well as talks to the player through the tutorial. A little touch, but a box that says "Click this to do this" doesn't suit the game's flavour as much as "Click this to do this OR WE ALL DIE" being said by a panicking FBI(?) agent.

Since the development is now done, I'll throw a few thoughts about that experience off the top of my head. By making one gameplay related decision I immediately made the development much harder, I wanted players to be building the maze themselves, rather than plonking down towers at predefined locations. Having to redo enemies path mid-wave was a tricky bit to code without the whole game slowing down for a second or two, yet I think spending the time implementing this makes the game far more enjoyable. It's not a case of simply building and upgrading the right towers at the right time, now it's also a question of building them in the most effective maze pattern. It also adds something of a geometric, tetris-like, puzzle flavour, fitting the towers most efficiently in a limited shape. Overall, I'm really rather happy with how it has turned out, starting and finishing a game within one month is rather refreshing, I thouroughly recommend it to fellow game developers.

Oh! I almost forgot. The game is up for Flash sponsorship, so if you would like this game to put on your site, and to spread around the internet with plenty of people clicking the big "Visit Sponsor's Site" link you see above, then drop me an email at .

posted by Matt on 10/9/2011 at 11:9 Return to blog