LedgeWizard Games

Towers is currently in the process of being released on the iOS App Store. It works on all iPads (running iOS 5.1 and up) and contains all of the same levels as the XBox version, but with a redesigned interface to allow for super-touch-screen-wonderfulness™. There are also leaderboards to measure your wizarding achievements against the masses.

Here’s the blurb:

In the land of Sarcastia, all is not well. The magic crystals have been disturbed and now the wizards are in danger. As Elweiss, only you can defend the crystals and save your wizardly brethren.

* 10 different endings, based on your skill and progress though the game.

At the time of writing, I believe it’s already live in New Zealand and is making it’s way around the world. I’ll post some links up once I know they’ll work.

I’d like to thank everyone who has helped. You’ve been a big part of getting Towers to the iPad.

Finally, as is customary on this blog, I’d like to apologise for the incredible rarity of any new posts. If you’re in the neighbourhood and fancy leaving me a message, your best bet is to find me on Twitter: @AdamSteppens

Thank you everyone!

Although sales have never been fantastic, there has been a steady trickle of buyers. Combined with the entirely positive feedback that we’ve received, I can say that we’re very proud of our little tower defence game.

Incase, you’ve not bought Towers and have found yourself here, wondering what all the fuss is about, here’s a video that I came across the other day. This is actually the first time I’ve seen the game running on someone else’s XBox, so as you can imagine, it was pretty cool.

It cuts to Miner Dig Deep half way through. Another good game if you’ve got 80 points spare.

Wow! I think that’s a new record for not updating this website.

First off, sorry for not replying to your emails and for not catching up with the latest comments! A combination of a ton of spam and an email breakdown led to me only catching up with some messages very recently. I’ve now cleared everything up, fixed everything in the background and everything is much better.

To save time, I’m going to be ambitious and cover virtually every comment and question I’ve been asked in this post.

Firstly, to those who gave towers a 5 star rating. You are truly awesome and I am incredibly grateful.

I’ve had a couple of comments about the credits. Thanks again. I always wondered if someone would ever read them all! My brother, John, put together a very quick song to shove in the background, which was way way way (way way) longer than I’d written credits for, so I extended them to fit.

I’m sorry to say that Towers 2 development has slowed down a lot recently due to my hectic workload and personal life. It’s still ticking along, but I’m not finding a lot of time to work on it. Also, I’ve spent a tiny bit too much time working on random bits and pieces that may or may not be pieced together into a completely different game. Sometimes, it’s nice to just try out ideas. But that’s for another article.

Most of the new towers work, infact it would be more accurate to say that they all just need balancing now and some graphical tidy up. I’ve got more than enough level designs and drawn most of them up in rough form. It’ll all need balancing and testing which is going to take a big chunk of time with so many towers to balance out (but luckily, I have many volunteers, ready to help). A lot of time was spent with the first game, trying to make sure that no particular tower seemed too incredible compared to the others in most situations (which I think we nearly got right, but we’ve already made some balance changes in the existing towers for the second game – by replacing certain towers with upgraded variants).

The other big change that I’ve been working on is the story elements. The current plan (because things tend to change) is to have a small story section between each level, where the various characters do their bit. Due to my ‘limited’ art style, this has gone a few different ways in attempting to get something that I’m happy with. At the moment, it’s looking like they’ll usually be 2 or more characters having a conversation, moving the plot along.

Speaking of characters, Elweiss is more of a background character in the second game and there’s a lot more from the different coloured wizards. No idea how the endings are going to work yet (after having 10, it almost seems cheap if I make less in the sequel).

Anyway, time permitting, hopefully there will be more news in the not too distant future.

Sorry about the recent lack of information. Life has been hectic recently for me, so work on games has been a little more infrequent than I’d like.

The good news is that things are taking shape, with at least half of the new towers now in place. Plenty of game balancing is yet to come, but to give a few quick examples, the Fire, Ice, Quake, Seeker and Sonic-Link towers are now playable in the new levelset. Hopefully, I’ll have some rough screenshots to show soon, once I’ve got things a little less rough looking.

In other news, the new dashboard/interface has arrived on the 360. I’m not sure when, because I wasn’t paying attention, but according to the game development forums, the indie games are hidden away a little too well, so there’s been an initial drop in sales for many people, including some of the most popular games judging from the numbers that have been reported. On the bright side, they’re made it so that a larger number of games are now visible. The jury is currently out on whether this change is going to work out well for the service.

Towers itself is doing quite well in the strategy category (and has been for some time now), with a fairly strong rating and a not-too-bad number of downloads. It could obviously be doing a little bit better as, according to the stats that I can gather, we’re just a tiny way outside of the top rated list in a number of countries. So if you love Towers, feel free to show your appreciation with a nice shiny rating. If you don’t love Towers (ouch!) then feel free to rate up another game you quite like instead.

Incase you were wondering, that was the favour bit of the presentation. So you can stop worrying! I wasn’t going to ask if I could borrow your car, or if you could feed my fish for a few days or anything like that.

A new walkthrough is now available. The split-path madness of the Marshwood now has a handy guide. It’ll even work for the toughest difficulty.

You’ll find it here.

Edit: I accidentally posted the walkthrough here, instead of it’s own page as intended. So apologies to anyone other than myself who I’ve managed to confuse.

I’d like to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has tried or bought Towers. Despite the fact that we’re quite well hidden amongst hundreds of other games, the conversion rate for Towers sales vs. trials has been really impressive.

In between checking on the sales figures, I’ve been working on a couple of other projects. One of which, I’m going to reveal now. Wait for it…..

::drumroll::

Yes, you’ve guessed it, we’re making a sequel! We’ve got more than 20 towers, all new levels, a bigger story and a fair bit more besides. We’re not sure if you can handle that much tower defence, but we’re willing to find out!

Due to popular demand. In our walkthrough section, you can now find a guide to everyone’s favourite (hehe), Northcut River!

We’re happy to help.

Hurray! We’ve got another review! This time it’s from Kelly at XBLIG.

For those that like the tower defence type of gameplay, I highly recommend this one to you all. At only 80 ms points for the game, this one’s a real steal. 4 thumbs up from me.

As John has pointed out to me, that requires at least two people to put 4 thumbs up. Either that or that’s double thumbs up, twice. Either way, if you’ve not picked up Towers yet, why not? Go get it here.

GAMINGtruth has rated Towers 4 stars. Personally, we’d have given it 5, but we here at the LedgeWizard Fortress are clearly biased.

For tower defense fans, the Xbox 360 has been a pretty slim provider. Sure they have South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! and Defense Grid (Defense Grid reviews) to whet their appetites, but the list isn’t exactly inspiring. Luckily, up-and-coming English developer, LedgeWizard has heard your cries. Their title, aptly named Towers, is a simple tower defense game but don’t be fooled; it’s more impressive than what the name reveals.

Go take a look here.

Thank you to everybody who has sent in suggestions so far. We’re picking through our favourites and will get back to you soon with what we think is going to go into the next update.

One thing that will definately happen is more modifications to the difficulty. I can’t give exact details yet, but what we will be doing is looking into certain levels that are generally regarded as being a little (or a lot) tougher than those around them. There’s also been a general concensus that the easier difficulty levels should provide a chunk more starting mana.

Previously, Everwinter Trail was quite a stumbling block for some. Adjustments were made and I’ve not heard too much on it since. Do you think it’s better?

Other levels that have been mentioned as being a bit tough include Spellsong Forest, Northcut River, Heath’s Field and The Narrows. Do you agree, and also, do you have favourite levels?