Cosmoids TD - A reintroduction

Hi all!

Happy 2019! The last 5 months have been a blur! Having a baby is serious business and takes a lot of time. But we love our baby Caleb and wouldn't change anything for the world.

It's been so long that I wanted to start fresh. I wanted to reintroduce myself. So..

Hi, my name is Samuel Otero and I'm a game developer by night, by day I'm a Software Developer, Husband, Father, Friend, Brother, Son.. everything.. and once upon a time I made a game called Pokemon Tower Defense, which you might have heard of.. (okay it's the real reason why you are here, who are we kidding!) and a lot of things happened and now we are here and I'm making a game called Cosmoids TD.

Very similarly to Pokemon Tower Defense (PTD), Cosmoids TD is a Tower Defense Game with Creature Collecting elements mixed in, let's just called it a Creature Collecting Tower Defense. In this game you play as the Wishmaker.

The Wishmaker!

The Wishmaker is the prince of the Makers, an immortal race that create and oversee galaxies across the universe. He is the creator of the Cosmoids, which are a group of creatures that live in the planet Eden. Unlike Pokemon, Cosmoids can all speak the common language and some wear clothes and use tools and weapons.

Chamleaf, a Nature Type Cosmoids

 Planet Eden is in danger and the Wishmaker is weakened, so he must recruit the Cosmoids to help save the planet.

On a mission

Some trouble nearby?!

Like in PTD you will be able to recruit enemy Cosmoids into your party. You can level up your party and they learn new moves and even evolve!

But I really cannot do this without all of you, I want to make a game that we can all enjoy and have fun playing just like PTD. This time it's harder because everything is being made from scratch, while we can be inspired by Pokemon we cannot copy Pokemon. And so I want to make this game openly in front of all of you, so we can go on this journey together. I would love to hear your feedback about what you would like this game to have. I will post really early and buggy version of the game so you can play while it's still being made. In fact here is a screenshot of the current work in progress.

Work In Progress Level, with Fire Hyena and Stick figures guys..

So what do you say, are you in?

As always, let me know what you think!

A new story direction!

Greetings!

Let's get right to it! But first...

Baby Update

A little bit less than a month is left before Caleb is born, we are very excited we have all the things ready for him and can't wait!

A new story direction!

When playing games I have found that personally for me having a story makes me more likely to finish a game. Even if the game wasn't that good, if I got invested in the story (even if wasn't that good) I felt more compelled to finish it. 

This was the reason I choose to add a story element to PTD. I notice no tower defense games had a big story and I thought it would be a great addition.

So naturally for Cosmoids TD I also wanted to have a story. Originally I envisioned Cosmoids as something very similar to Pokemon. Over the years I've thought about the origin story of Cosmoids and it has changed here and there but some of the same elements have remained the same.

The story started with a powerful alien being known as the Wishmaker that encounters a young boy and grants his wish to bring these Cosmoids to Earth. I was pretty committed to this story line until a freelance artist that I hired made a concept art for the Wishmaker. I thought it looked so cool that I decided to make the Wishmaker the main character.

The Wishmaker

Along with changing the main character it was more interesting to also have the game take place in the Cosmoids original planet. This will allow for some creative environments that you wouldn't find on earth.

The next major change that I wanted to make is that in pokemon, while the pokemon are smarter than your average animal they mostly co-existed with humans the way pets do. For Cosmoids now that we are exploring their planet. I thought it would be very interesting if the Cosmoids were more humanoid like. They could speak a language, they used tools, clothing, communities. So instead of capturing them as beloved pets. You will recruit them for your cause. Below is a small preview of how a cosmoids like Chameleaf will look like. Keep in mind this is an early work in progress.

Chameleaf - Creature like (left) to Humanoid (right)

I've been mostly focused these past few weeks to working with my artist, trying to nail down the new direction so I haven't work a lot of the prototype but next week I will talk about how to focus on features and task that are needed versus wanted.

As always let me know what you think about the new story direction in the comments below, or twitter or by email at sam@sndgames.com

Have a great week and thanks for your continued support!