Researching tower defense before designing one

There is nothing new under the sun. It may seem discouraging to new creators. After all, how do you create something original if everything's been done before? But after a while you look at it differently. To me, this now means that some things have already been figured out and you can learn from that and iterate on it, adding your unique twist and perspective to it which contributes something original.

Since I had only played a few tower defense games before starting Druid's Haven, it seemed useful to get to know the genre by playing a few games and sharing the most important takeaways with the team. You can check the document by clicking here.

It was definitely useful to get a breadth of ideas and get out of our preconceived ideas of what tower defense was. We started off with The Last Spire's stationary tower and ended up with an ecosystem growing outward from a starting point.

While researching tower defense games for Druid's Haven, I was also reading IGDA's Environmental Game Design Playbook to learn more about communicating pro-environmental messages through games. The first part is about psychology, so I was familiar with most of the theories, but it was very useful to see them presented in a games context. Especially the game examples listed for every tactic.

The book, for me personally, became a cornerstone for the design, i.e. how we could teach something about our environment while also empowering the player to act on it.

Specifically, basing it on the real world (creating environmental knowledge) and giving the player real world analogues to deal with it (creating environmental self-efficacy). For example, an apartment building is generating heat that hurts the plants around it, so giving the player the ability to put green walls on them which reduce heat in and around the building.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time before implementing that idea, but doing a lot of research helped me form a strong vision for the game and stay passionate throughout development.