Revenge of the Titans Beta

By: Derek Yu

On: May 26th, 2010

The beta version of Revenge of the Titans recently came out. Puppygames, the creators of Droid Assault and Titan Attacks, have worked their mojo over the tower defense genre this time, crafting a fun game that looks and sounds great. Hats off to Puppygames’ artist, Chaz Willets, for creating a distinct art style that improves upon his previous work in every way. It’s awesome.

This free demo is quite long, and features some 20-odd levels that charge you with protecting your home base with turrets and other, more exotic, weapons. In between levels you can also research new lines of technology to bolster your defenses. This research costs money that’s earned during battle, either from destroying gidrahs (the game’s requisite hostile alien race), collecting power-ups, or harvesting energy crystals using refineries.

Reloading turrets and collecting money from refineries is handled manually by the player, by clicking on them. One of the main challenges in the game is keeping track of your turrets and refineries and making sure that they’re always firing or collecting whenever possible. Although it makes the game feel more frantic, it also reeks slightly of unnecessary micromanagement. That, and I think it might impact the strategy of the game negatively, putting too much emphasis on keeping your buildings close together (the strange acceleration of the map scrolling doesn’t help).

Another problem is that you can get kind of screwed later in the game if you’ve done badly, either by not harvesting enough crystals or by frittering away your research on things that you don’t end up using. It is possible to start over at any previous level, but right now the game doesn’t appear to update your starting state with subsequent replays. And alas, there’s really no way to know what kind of research you need until the challenge starts ramping up dramatically. Oh well.

Those issues aside, I’m having a good time with the beta and decided to purchase it for its pre-order price of $13.37 (the final game will cost $27.72). Unlike many tower defense games that move at a plodding rate, Revenge of the Titans is very fast-paced, and the production values are top-notch. I also like the levels are somewhat randomized each time you play. It doesn’t seem like it’s making any sweeping innovations to the genre, but the execution really enhances what makes these games so addictive. Definitely my favorite Puppygames project so far, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Posted in Action, Casual, Linux, Macintosh, Previews, Strategy, Videos, Windows | Tags: Puppygames

http://davioware.blogspot.com/ davioware

Looks amazingly polished and fun. Loving the art style. Going to try.
SimpleSyrup

Been following the ups and downs of Puppygames since the old Dexterity forum days. RotT looks like the first tower defense game that interests me. The style is beautiful and it just looks really fun. Too bad placing a refinery crashes my Mac right now :-P — looking forward to trying it more!
Tom

If the mouse scrolling feels awkward, I recommend using WASD to pan the screen.
http://www.tinycolossus.com Ciro

The title didn't grab my attention at first. I thought it was some anonymous MMORPG about titans…
But this game looks incredibly cool, I'm downloading the demo right now!
jlowgren

Loving the style, so I pre-ordered. Seems they're have trouble with that though, as I can't register the game yet (paid for it several hours ago).
http://nathandemick.com Nathan

Pretty impressive trailer… I like the fact that it looks much more fast paced than other tower defense games. Plus the art is rad. I'll have to try it out when I get home from work =]
nem0s

Noticing Toccata in D minor by Bach in the music there.
http://www.puppygames.net chaz

A hats off, nice one! We're completely chuffed by how well this is going down, even after 3 days of chaos with servers and key gen collapsing under the strain :)

Game register problems all now fixed btw, fix to Mac refinery bug on the way, either tonight or tomorrow.
Mimsy

None of the other PuppyGames-games will work on my computer, for some reason. Revenge of the Titans appears to work just fine, somehow, but anything from Droid Assault and downwards CTDs before it starts.

Arrrrgh! X(
phubans

Wow, these graphics look delicious.
http://www.puppygames.net Cas

All other games broken on ATI Catalyst 10 drivers :/ only solution is to downgrade until they're all updated, which won't be till RoTT is finished – sry
Dodger

I really like the look and feel of this Tower Defense and Derek states most of the same things that I felt about the game. I actually look forward to the challenge and new items in the later levels, but I also had a couple of problems:

1) The game is extremely easy but also a little bland for the first 8 levels or so. They did help set up the game and what's to come, but it still felt a little “samey” until the difficulty spiked a bit. Still, this is the beta and I know things will keep improving along with the games development.

2) Refining Ore is a bitch! I hate the fact that I have to click on my refineries in order to “cash out” the ore that has been collected. I didn't mind having to manually reload the towers so much because that's a little new in a tower defense game but as Derek said I'm a little worried about the micromanagement that's going to be happening later on when things become even more frantic. Still, I did like finding and having to click on power-ups and bonuses within a certain amount of time because that element added to the frantic nature of the tower defense game in an entertaining way.

3) The scrolling is, as Derek also said in so many words, erratic. It was sort of smooth, but it was lightning fast and constantly lightning fast, there are no options to slow down the scroll speed so that you're not all over the map by accident. However, this will probably be an added (and welcome) feature in the future.

4) The speed-up isn't exactly smooth either. My PC runs the game silky smooth, no problems or hiccups (and is above the requirements AND the recommended specs) but it just feels as though the fast forward feature makes the game stutter along at a faster speed rather than a more fluid fast forward. Might be hardware related, but I totally doubt it since I also tried it on my laptop with similar results (even though my laptop isn't as remarkable as my main Desktop PC).

Aside from those, I have been enjoying the game and both the look and feel of it thus far. As a tower defense game the experience doesn't feel samey, just the first bunch of levels feel samey when compared to each other, it does look and play like a unique entry in the genre though. Even with my short list of gripes (pre-release gripes at that) I will be buying this one and I can't wait for the final release!

I'm a big fan of puppygames and enjoyed each new take they've recreated with each of their titles so I only expect the same polish and solid gameplay that their games are known for. The demo is a decent length and should give the general idea of what to expect and whether or not this game is for you. I certainly appreciate that sort of thing in a demo.

Great job so far!
Mimsy

Thanks for the reply. Though it's a shame they are unplayable for that amount of time, it's at least good to know that you're aware of it.

Just for the record, though – you guarantee that you have plans to fix it?
http://www.puppygames.net Cas

definitely! all our code is broken though thanks to RoTT. My fault.
http://www.derekyu.com Derek Yu

FYI, the limit on nested replies has been removed.
Mimsy

Those are good news. I actually bought Droid Assault, and I'm looking forward to finally getting to play it.
http://www.puppygames.net Cas

new versions ahoy.
http://www.derekyu.com Derek Yu

Whoa, version 1.1 addresses pretty much every issue I had (and some I didn't realize I had!). Awesome work.
anthonyflack

Cas and Chaz! Long time no see! The new game looks great, and that distinctive Puppygames style still looks as fresh and classy as ever.
Mimsy

I re-downloaded the demo, but the in-game menu still tells me I'm on 1.0…
Erolunai

Same here, and I don't notice anything different… not yet, anyways…
http://www.derekyu.com Derek Yu

Hm, maybe it's not actually out yet? I only saw a list of fixes on the Puppygames blog:

http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=338
Evilish

Am I the only one hearing clockwork orange at the start of the game…
http://www.puppygames.net Cas

pesky cacheing seems to have gone awry. Refresh download page for updated links.
PHeMoX

I love that art style and it also looks VERY playable to me! Excellent job done so far! :D
OneMoreTime

From the release notes: “Going back a few levels to try a different tactic now works as you’d expect it to”.

Bug report: Try going back to a previous level, then saving and quitting. Uh oh! Your progress is gone. Or at least mine was. ;_;
Mimsy

The game menu still tells me I'm running 1.0…
http://www.puppygames.net chaz

Hiya Anthony – indeed, been about 3 years? Sorry to hear about your XBLA problem, good luck with getting that sorted somehow… Cletus needs to see the light of day!
jlowgren

Something you might want to take a look at is the awkward pathing going on at times. When the monsters are trying to get around turrets, they often end up suiciding on a mountainside.
http://www.puppygames.net Cas

Now fixed… new 1.2 build uploading… many tweaks etc
Anonymous

Love it, preordered!
jlowgren

Awesome!

Another bug I noticed today was that if you have a collector and a refinery connected to it, and the collector is destroyed, the refinery will continue to auto-collect. Maybe you already fixed that with 1.2, haven't had the opportunity to try it yet.
Perludus

I'm still waiting for someone to make an art game called “Clash of the Titians”
http://www.jouluserver.com/~cce/ cce

Tried the demo and love it! A bit repetitive gameplay but oh boy the artwork…
Jay

Anybody had any luck with sound in Linux?
apnea

Very good-looking game, as always from Puppygames.

Though I must say I don't see the point in having to micromanage continually empty turrets or full refineries. The turrets already have a rather long reload time, they're not overly powerful (far from it), and they necessitate plenty of exterior add-on structures in order for them to really stem the enemy tide in the later stages. I really don't feel that the whole “reloading” mechanic (having to click on them in order for the damn things to reload themselves) is necessary, or fun.

The refinery emptying I can live with.

As things are, you end up having much, much too many things to click on (which could be what you had in mind) and you don't have the luxury of appreciating the end result of your meticulous planning (one of the essential thing in a tower defense game, for me at least), or even the nice little details on the maps.

Anyway, apart from this little criticism, I feel the game is a really great genre game with an amazing amount of details, personality and very good visual design.
fikee

While it looks brillinat and have a spirit, the learning curve is unbalanced (recalls more steps than curve) and controls are unfriendly (how many times did you click on refinery while in blaster mode and nothing happened ?). Also not very satisfied with screen scrolling, single screen would fit better, at least for first stages.
Tyler

I was playing the demo on linux and I was amazed a java based game ran so well (most of the one's I've played had stuttering problems caused by the garbage collector or had huge latency problems with controls).

As fun as this game is, I think they can polish up the controls a bit (I hate clicking on everything constantly).
Tyler

I haven't had any problems at all in linux (on Ubuntu 9.10 or 10.04).. except maybe a long load-up time.
really annoyed man

ehm, there is no better gaming experience than reunning garbage collector in the middle of battle. weak programming, use pools next time, puppies.
http://www.puppygames.net Cas

there are no garbage collection pauses.
http://www.puppygames.net Cas

New version out! 1.3 – Mars Invaded! All hands on deck!