Idle Army TD

• 

  Your army build out on the left, with a charging clickable summon, the battle in the middle and ui and power ups on the right.

• 

  The upgrade screen every time you level up. Choose from 3 random upgrades.

• 

  What the game used to look like.

Inspiration

I was immediately drawn to the Tower Defense & Strategy category. I started testing an idea almost right away, liked the prototype, and began putting serious work into it. Eventually, though, I realized the idea wasn't coming together and abandoned it.

That started a process of experimenting with several different prototypes before eventually arriving at Idle Army TD.

What it does

Idle Army TD is a one-lane strategy game about building an army strong enough to overwhelm the enemy.

Defeating enemies gives you XP and gold. Every time you level up, you choose one of three random upgrades that can change or strengthen your army.

Gold gives you another layer of decision-making through four battlefield purchases: a defensive tower, a wall, an AOE attack, or emergency unit reinforcements.

You also have a powerful hero summon that can turn the tide of a fight if used at the right moment.

The goal is to gradually create a stronger army through smart upgrade choices, spend your gold when it will have the most impact, and use your hero at the right time to break through the enemy forces.

How I built it

I built the game entirely in Codex.

The development process was much less straightforward than I expected. I put a lot of work into my first idea before realizing that its core design wasn't working. I then went through several more prototypes, each exploring different mechanics and combinations of systems.

Eventually, those failures pointed me toward a much simpler approach: find a core interaction that was fun first, then only add systems that strengthened it.

That prototype became Idle Army TD.

Challenges I ran into

My biggest challenge was overcomplicating my earlier prototypes.

I kept combining mechanics that sounded interesting individually but didn't actually reinforce each other once they were put together. The result was games with more systems, but not necessarily more interesting decisions.

It took several prototypes before I recognized that this was the recurring problem.

For Idle Army TD, I changed my approach. Instead of designing several systems at once, I established the basic army-versus-army battle first and then added upgrades, gold purchases, and the hero summon around that core.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm most proud of recognizing that my earlier designs weren't working, figuring out why, and being willing to throw away a significant amount of work rather than continuing to build on a weak foundation.

The final game came out of what I learned from those failed prototypes.

What I learned

A mechanic doesn't automatically make a game better just because it's interesting on its own.

Systems need to reinforce the same core experience. Adding more mechanics can actually make a game weaker when those mechanics compete with each other or distract from the decisions that make the game fun.

For me, the biggest lesson was to find the core loop first and build outward from it.

What's next for Idle Army TD

There are a lot of directions the idea could grow, but I want future additions to preserve the simplicity of the core loop.

I'd like to experiment with more units, upgrades, enemy types, abilities, and gold purchases that create new strategic decisions without making the game unnecessarily complicated.

Different stages could also introduce specific challenges that encourage different army builds. Further down the line, an equipment or item system could give individual units another form of specialization, as long as it strengthens rather than overwhelms the existing game.

Built With

• codex