My Review

[jmbis25]

Hey peeps, this is my review of BugWave.

First off, it looks very good, better then just blocks and circle bullets. This game was better then others, it had a good selection of towers, there was TWO for each element (That made 9, not including the ones that are in 2.0).

It felt like Desktop Tower Defence, in how the board was set up.

The sound effects were pretty good. But if you had too many water towers, you'll have to turn the volume down, it just sounds annoying.

Overall, this game was fun, but not very a competitor with the best games.

Rating: 2/5

[BaneStar]

I agree , further more, I'd down the game to a 1/5 for balance flaws..

Easy seems .. easy enough, but gets progressively harder, almost impossible unless (see below)

Normal, is quite hard, I could barely survive a few levels with a decent defence maze, until I understood this was more of a central blaster and not a maze runner.

Hard.. just impossible actually..

Then I decided to get serious.. I got my excel spreadsheet, designed the best possible map for this, set out which towers would be built best and where,

Still no luck.. not enough cash on normal to build enough of the maze to get any benefit...

Only then did I discover the pause button and such.. (You know you can hit the score board, in the top 50, just by sending ALL troops at yourself as quick as possible? How dumb is that..

THEN I re-read the write up..

* Try to "juggle" with the bugs: close and open your labyrinth at specific spots to keep the insects trapped in your construction. You are allowed to switch openings in your construction by removing or adding towers and redirect the bugs on their way towards the exit.

WTF????

I'm sorry guys, but, thats just cheating.. I've seen some of those big desk top TD games and always ALWAYS felt that if you cannot design it properly to survive, your going against the spirit of the game. a.k.a. cheating..

And these guys expect players to 'cheat' just to play?!? No thanks.. I wont be buying 2.0 thats a guarantee.

[ftg314]

I think the game is pretty nice.

People having difficulty with the game didn't get that upgrades are key. True at the beginning you have to adjust to the parameters, but after a couple of tries it gets quite easy. Go see my image in the "beating it" section.

The good part :
- Good number of towers to choose from.
- Towers are also very different. In some games, you have a lot of towers, but their effects/weapons aren't very creative. They are in this game (ie: Hurricane).
- Graphics!

Things to improve :
- Many towers, because of their price and features, are not worth buying. I would blur the line more between towers to make buying decisions harder. The Great Wall is way ahead of everything else as far as price-value goes, including upgrades.
- Maybe, just maybe make immunities stronger to force tower diversification. In that case, adding a "weakness" and making it real deadly would have to be there to balance things.

Bug? :
Sometimes wave 60 (final boss) doesn't come in the playing field and the game ends. I saw the wave getting closer on the ticker at the bottom with the Element info, but the bugs never show up. I think it happened a couple of times when I was playing. I had all or most of my lives, so it isn't because I died.

I'd give this game a good 4/5.

Looking forward to version 2.0!!! Tsunami? Ring of fire? When would that be?

BY THE WAY: There is no way The Horde, Tree TD or Snafu TD are better than this game. I don't get the "Scores" they got in the Online Tower Defense Games page.

[BaneStar]

After Reading the forums, I decided to give it a few more goes, many people seem to like it... maybe I was missing the bigger picture...

But I Just cant Get past the many smaller in built flaws.. The overt cost to make the better towers,.. that Cost per Damage, most don't seem to be worth it..

The Stone Towers have a 1.16 Average Gold per Damage cost, with a Max of 450 damage per hit..

While The next cheapest, the Water Bazooka, has a 3,73 average, Volcano a 6.06 and Lightning at 8.49.

So, Since this IS a maze style TD, getting 3 stone towers might be a tad more important than 1 water bazooka, or a volcano.. (though, I think a volcano does group damage)

But the Fire Rate is not listed in the stats, and I'd have to play it a bit to get those and check the DPS rating..

[halex]

WOW!

Hey folks,

Thanks a lot for your constructive critics. It's very welcome!!!

We try to consider all the critics and make a really better version 2.0. But as always, features that are loved are also hated by others. It's simply a matter of taste! Even with my team-partners we had some really funny fights and discussions about the do's and don'ts ;-). But it's true some things need to be more polished! Pretty sure we will take care about better distinguishable bugs and towers. Balancing is priority 1!

About the juggling thing: Me personally, I don't do juggling, it's a personal thing, a thing of honour ;-) But we have some guys here in our company who never played tower defense games before and they started doing it naturally even don't knowing that juggling exists. So I wouldn't say it is against the spirit of the game, anyway juggling is currently quite limited as selling towers costs time (fast disappearing because explosive TNT tower is currently not available, and maybe will be even replaced by other very nasty things). Actually you don't need to juggle to make it through hard mode, but optimizing strategies is quite helpful to make it in the highscores. Currently everyone in our company is capable of surviving hard mode, although for some of my team mates it took a while to make it ;-)))

The highscore thing: that's sad! We're still having a hard time with manipulated highscores and DOS attacks, I'm very very sorry for this inconvenience! We try to investigate every illegal entry and will delete these. By now it's a lot of manual work that costs a lot overhours.

Currently, we are really working hard on version 2. We have some very unique fresh ideas and I really hope they will make into the game. Also we will have a multiplayer mode (duell).

Please stay tuned!

Regards,
Alex

-Lead Designer-
eWave Interactive GmbH

[xpanterx]

Hey, this game looks great and would probably be great fun if it wasn't IMPOSSIBLY HARD even on easy...

I'm no TD expert so it would be nice if easy was.. well easy!

Hope that can be fixed, cheers!

[ctholm]

You just need to use alot of the cheapest tower to find it easy to play. Only if you start out with the expensive towers is it hard to get through. The cheapest one costs only 5 credits, and you can make a complete maze on easy before letting anyone in.

[The Noid]

And, as I said in another thread, it seems to be very sensitive to cpu speed. Try setting the quality to low, and you might have a much easier time...

[halex]

Originally Posted by xpanterx

Hey, this game looks great and would probably be great fun if it wasn't IMPOSSIBLY HARD even on easy...

I'm no TD expert so it would be nice if easy was.. well easy!

Hope that can be fixed, cheers!

Hi xpanterx,

actually Easy is really very very easy. Trust me! If you have still problems getting into the game, you're very welcomed to check the instructions on our page. One of the addictive aspects is building the perfect strategy: choosing the right towers in the right moment; spending the right amount of coins in the right moment; this is ZEN, YinYang ... in other words: it's about finding the right Balance and there is always a way to improve.

[The Noid]

Originally Posted by halex

actually Easy is really very very easy. Trust me!

If a user just told you that easy is not easy while you, as a designer, think it should be, that usually means one of 2 things:
1. You play to many games (and especially your own) and only think it is easy because you know all the ins-and-outs of your game.
2. There is a bug this user is experiencing. And in this case I'm guessing he's got a slow computer. For some reason BugWave is impossibly hard on slow computers.