Nice game and quite challenging too...

Yay, I got first victory from level Arena! I am not sure if spearman is worth of 150 gp since I think archer is much more effective due longer range. Spearman could be between footman and archer around 75 gp.

Great game, I got through all three levels. Do you have plans to make this game as a standalone with no need to use a browser? I really liked that bats had different kind of path and other creatures since that added a bit more challenge to the game.

Sorry, I do know how to make standalone Javascript. One idea could be combine creeps into same wave. For example spiders and bats.

Forest map caused me to change a tactic a bit. I think creeps could be even more difficult on later levels. Especially now that there is this upgrade and sell feature.

Pretty tough.

I like how the enemies find their way around stuff.

Some notes:

• I find the Footman is only useful for blocking paths/redirecting enemies.
• Archer is the best unit. It is by far the most cost effective.
• 25 waves is too much IMO. The toughness of the enemies ramps up to fast. I'm more a fan of shorter games/play-sessions where I can do some stuff, finish it and can leave the game feeling good about myself, instead of giving up out of frustration or boredom of contantly losing. A difficulty setting might be useful.
• The bats are so annoying. I think the way they move directly towards the other side is a bad idea. It invalidates the whole part of the game about making routes for enemies to follow and maximising damage output.
• It isn't clear what upgrading units does. I don't do it as it is very expensive relative to the initital purchase cost, when I could just buy a new unit and use it to make the path for the enemies longer. Is upgrading 1 unit really going to be better than buying an extra unit instead?
• The score seems a bit pointless too. It is just a little number counting away in the corner, but doesn't add anything to the playing experience, especially as there are no highscores to beat.
• No sound!

Pretty good though. Kept me playing for about 20 mins, which is more than a lot of other games can claim to have done.

I feel that game is now much more strict amount of gold is gained. I did not have any gold spare to upgrade units. I feel that I am forced to buy just archers and footman since there isn't enough gold to try out different units.

Wave 24 bats are very durable I had almost whole center full of archers and they just flew over them...

Pretty nice.

I found the following strategy to be quite succesful: build up a gauntlet of upgraded archers near the entry point, and use footmen to block off the paths you don't want. I had a few longbowmen in there as well.

Pikemen are useful at choke-points due to their high damage, but they are hampered by their slow attack speed (I think this gets better if you upgrade them, but my impression is that they don't quite improve enough). You can offset this a bit with a mage, but I haven't really been able to make that work.

In general, I find that upgrading units is well worth it (you can hold out until wave 23 or so with just five units, but after that you simply can't do enough damage in the time you have and it's hard to add more units at that stage because non-upgraded units don't do enough for you), but what it does could be a bit clearer. It would be nice if you could move a unit that is not optimally placed (for a price).

One complaint I have about unit AI is that they always try to target the most advanced enemy unit. This isn't always optimal and it would be interesting if this could be tweaked.

Finally, a gameplay suggestion: give the player the option of skipping to the next stage if it's clear that the last remaining units cannot be killed. Right now you have to wait for them to walk off the edge of the map, which is a bit annoying.

EDT: forgot to say: animate some of those animals in the village! It looks a bit dull that they're basically background tiles. Nothing fancy, an idle animation will do (if they move around they could mess up the path, which could be interesting, but it probably just ends up being annoying).

Wow great improvement! Sound effects and UI changes with all the information makes a huge different on previous ones.

Great improvement.

Some more notes:

• Way better unit balance. There is no longer one unit that is far superior to all others. I did tests where I played the Arena map on easy and only used a one unit type each game. All unit types apart from Ice Mage were able to stop all enemies from reaching the other side.
• The bats are much more managable now.
• Clear, simple, useful UI. Everything is just the right size, not too small that I can't see what it is/what text says, not so big that it is intrusive.
• Nice addition of the '+10' thing that pops up when an enemy is killed to show how much money they are worth.
• The unit range circles are somewhat useful, but I'm not sure if they are accurate. Is the unit range based on pixel distance to enemies, or grid spaces?
• I'm still not convinced that upgrading units is worthwhile, unless there is a unit that is in a particularly effective location. This is more of a core design problem IMO. Footman, Archer and Spearman are all about the same mechanic, deal direct damage to the enemy, but this means that one is bound to be statistically better than the rest, and that is something that you can't really solve by adjusting values to try and balance them. I think each unit type would more purpose if they had something that differentiates them from the others, like the Ice Mage has the unique ability to slow enemies, or the Long Bowman does more damage to bats, things like that that set each unit type apart and give them their own roles on the field, otherwise you have multiple untis tyring to be the best at the same thing. My recommendation would be instead of upgrades just increasing base stats for a unit, allow them to unlock another ability, like a poison arrow upgrade for Archers that damages enemies over time, or a 'frenzy' ability for Footman to temporarily increase their attack speed.

Bugs:

• The game crashes when loading again after each victory/defeat. (Would be better if the game didn't have to reload after each round.) Chrome console:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'obj' of undefined
d.extend.load @ game.bundle.js:4
(anonymous function) @ game.bundle.js:1
d.extend.enterScene @ game.bundle.js:4
d.extend.scene @ game.bundle.js:4
(anonymous function) @ game.bundle.js:1
p.fn.p.trigger @ game.bundle.js:3
d.extend.mouseDispatch @ game.bundle.js:3
d.extend.addEvent.e @ game.bundle.js:3

• The sound effects keep playing when the game ends, like the noise of when an enemy gets past the right side and damages you, or when a unit attacks. It seems like the defeat screen is just layed over the game that is still running behind it?

I haven't played the new version much (I tried it once, what difficulty setting corresponds to the old difficulty?), but in the previous version I found upgrading units (archers in particular) more useful that building new units, at least until wave 20 or so. The reason is that one upgraded archer did more damage (per second) than two non-upgraded ones, and upgrading it again was likewise better than building an extra unit.

The trade-off is that at larger wave numbers, you don't get enough damage/second unless you also have a long path. I think the furthest I've been able to get was wave 35 or so.

I did an experiment there once and with mostly upgraded footmen (I think I had one or two archers) I was able to survive until wave 28 or so, so it does seem that all units are worthwhile - the only unit I haven't been able to use effectively is the mage.

All of this on the "vilage" map, by the way. I haven't tried any of the others...

The problem is that the amount of gold you get is rather limited, and mages and longbowmen are just too expensive to upgrade them, which limits their usefulness. I wanted to try for a combination of mages+pikemen, with the slow-down compensating for the slow attack speed, but I was never able to make it work...

Things I would experiment with:

• More gold if you defeat enemies quickly? Some way to optimise gold income anyway; as it is, the loss of income if enemies escape make it inevitable that you will lose the game (it hurts more than the health reduction, at least early on).
• Increase damage of the pikeman, at last when fully upgraded. It would be nice if it had the highest damage output, since as it is you'd rather have a longbow-guy because he's superior in every way (except price). There needs to be more of a trade-off.
• Reduce cost of the wizard... right now they're just too expensive even to really experiment with. Alternatively: make them a bit stronger.

Fun!

Two quick thoughts:

Be cool to have the enemies leave corpses around when they die.  

Maybe grey out the units that your can't afford.  Can be annoying to click one, place it and then realize that you don't have the cash for it.

I caught a bug during the UI update that the Spearsmen wasn't getting his last damage update.

Ah, yes - now that you mention it, I had actually noticed this, but I forgot about it.

Just gave it another try, this is what I ended up with. Not too bad, all things considered, but the mage was a waste of money and I would have lasted longer if I'd gotten a longbowman instead...

Are you sure "hard" is the same as the original? It seems a little easier, but perhaps that's the upgrade to the spearmen working properly now.

This is also where the unit AI becomes annoying. Instead of focus-firing on the stragglers they can still kill, they keep targeting the lead guy and losing their chance at killing some of the other ones.

EDIT: I guess my preferred AI behaviour would be: "If I can kill a unit, target it. If not, target the least damaged enemy (and leave the most damaged one for another unit to pick off)." I guess having an AI switch to stick with a target as long as possible or switch targets frequently would make me happy. :)

EDIT2: Added a second screenshot, which is about as far as I usually manage to get.

@Evert:

> I guess having an AI switch to stick with a target as long as possible or

> switch targets frequently would make me happy. :)

I see how that would be 'smarter' AI but at the same time 'Just attack the closest enemy' has a certain simplicity to it that helps make things more predictable.  Well, that's just my 2 cents. 

Possibly, but I think it's more interesting to try to get past wave 16 on "Impossible." ;)

Just attack the closest enemy' has a certain simplicity to it that helps make things more predictable. 

I'm not sure the other way to do it is really less predictable in practice, but anyway: I'm not saying it isn't a viable or reasonable behaviour, just that I'd personally prefer another one.