Research on writing for Tower Defence Games (10/1/2014)

* Today I decided to research numerous examples of existing tower defence games, in order to see how they are written. More importantly I hoped to get a better understanding on how they address important details without becoming boring, something essential for our younger audience who unfortunately often have shorter attention spans.

As a friend of mine recommended one of the most popular examples, 'Plants vs. Zombies' I decided to see how that game did things.

• It keeps its dialogue short but simple, making sure to explain things whilst also making them slightly odd and/or funny.
• Text is hardly used during gameplay, so it doesn't distract the player's concentration. When it is used however, it tends to be cartoon-like sound effects. 
• Item descriptions and objections are clear cut. 
• Spoken dialogue during cutscenes is nonsensical, therefore I guess this adds to the overall bizarreness of the game and cuts down on the amount of recorded lines needed. Sometimes the random things the characters say are also quite funny. 
• The only clearly spoken dialogue appears to be when the wave of attackers are about to show up. Thus, this is a good way of preparing players by clearly telling them what is about to happen. We could do this ourselves or achieve the same by making it a fire alarm. 
• Has descriptions of all the encountered enemy types. This could be quite useful to include in our game as another means of our players finding out more information about the types of fires and how they are started. After all, we often learn better if we decide to research subjects ourselves.

I also tried playing a 'Mario' themed tower defence game which was made by a fan. Overall, I am glad I did as it proved to be a good example of how NOT to do a tower defence game.

• Despite having instructions that you can look at, they didn't make the game clear. The screen is so tiny that it was difficult to find what I was looking for and how to access other options available to me such as upgrading or destroying.
• It also has three symbols at the top which are all meant to represent certain things, but I never discovered what they were meant to mean. Coins were obviously currency, but I hadn't a clue about the others. 
• Whenever you try and do something you don't have access to, it wouldn't tell you why (or at least I couldn't see an indication explaining it). When trying to place defences, only for them not to spawn can be really annoying. Thus having something to tell you that you don't have enough ??? would have been more useful and less frustrating.
• Sounds were useful in telling you that you were hitting enemies or an indication of what was next, but otherwise the music was incredibly repetitive.

Harvard Referencing: 

• Pop Cap (Unknown) Plants vs. Zombies [Online Image]. Available at: http://www.popcap.com/plants-vs-zombies-1 (Accessed: 10/1/2014).
• PKcoolgames (Unknown) Mario And Friends Tower Defense [Online Image]. Available at: http://www.playtowerdefensegames.com/games/1074/play.html (Accessed: 10/1/2014).