I was very happy to find a new version of BTTD (2.0, v1.2.1), one of my favorite games ever. The new towers, upgrades, modes, store items and of course the MTs/MMTs offer so much potential! Definitely a game I would like to spend some money on. Makes me think of the good old DTD days, but now even nicer!
However, I am rather disappointed by the numerous bugs that remain after the latest fixes and a few very disturbing game balancing flaws:
MAYOR BUGS:
1. The first enemy of a wave is never affected by slow/weaken bursts.
2. Slow/weaken bursts do NOT work on ghost enemies at all (while they did in 1.5).
3. When certain towers are used in a mega tower (like slow/weaken/stun), the fire rate is displayed as 89999, although the tower seems to fire normally.
4. The displayed ranges for MTs and MMTs get messed up after rebuilding a tower. Both the stats (too large) and the displayed circle (too small) become incorrect.
5. If you have one completed mega tower like this (the 4 M's):
12MM
34MM
and you upgrade a tower on square 1 to level 4, the game incorrectly offers the option the upgrade to a mega mega tower. Doing so results in the deletion of both the tower on square 1 plus your mega tower (and your money)!
6. Sometimes enemies become immune to any of your towers and just walk to the exit without taking any damage. Not sure when exactly this happens, but always seems to be the first enemy of a wave.
7. Splits from splitter bosses sometimes act like ghosts and fly off the map at random spots (not the exit). You can continue playing and you don't lose a life, but finishing the map becomes impossible after that. The game just stalls after beating the last enemy.
8. The decoy destroyer item hardly ever works (it just does nothing after clicking when the cursor changes to 'USE'). Sometimes it does work, but even then often one decoy remains.
9. Unlocked achievements become locked again after re-achieving it. This goes for miscellaneous achievements like 'Power Shortage' and 'Bubble Hoarder' and also for map modes beaten before like 'Open Split Easy Mode'. It's like the code contains something like bAchievement != bAchievement instead of bAchievement = TRUE. More than 10 of my achievements have become relocked again and now they stay locked, whatever I do.
10. Using the 'Next Map' feature won't give you an achievement for the next map(s) played. Going back to the menu and manually selecting you map/difficulty does. Too bad, because that's many more clicks.
11. Merging tower costs (for MTs and MMTs) do not get reduced after buying the upgrade (at least the old costs are being displayed).
12. The damage/fire rate/range boosters were already available in the game, so unlocking them was a waste of 30 XP.
13. When both 'reduced ghost towers costs' and 'reduced sell back penalty' have been applied, you get back more bubbles than you paid for a ghost tower! This way you can generate a lot more bubbles to start a map with.
GAME BALANCING FLAWS:
These are not bugs, but design issues that are probably worse than any of the bugs mentioned above.
A. Since 2.0 you get rewarded in bubbles when calling waves early, but the reward is much too high (see B).
B. The overpowered area burst towers (that even get more range with an upgrade?!!) in combination with the bubble reward makes ever map an easy game, even on insane mode. You just call all waves, quickly build 2 burst towers (one for land and one for air) with a few boosters and you can sit back without doing anything.
I have not allowed myself to call any wave early to keep the game interesting, but this also means I can't compete for a highscore. I would reduce the AoE of the burst towers and reduce the bubble reward (by a lot!) to make the game as nice as 1.0 and 1.5 were. I can recommend anyone to play version 1.5, which includes all 1.0 maps as well.
C. While the waves of enemies seemed to be balanced from map to map in version 1.5 (just like in DTD), in 2.0 they seem to be the same for many maps. This could use some fine tuning, because now it's becomes a very repetitive exercise. You want to make your players think a about every move they make!
It's a shame to see a game with so much potential become totally unplayable because of a rather premature release. Why would anyone buy the premium version of this game? That's what you would like, right? I would certainly have done so, but 5 months after the initial release the game still has many flaws and in my opinion that's not worth paying for.
I understood Hero Interactive has gone through some hard times recently, so I understand it's pretty hard to keep up. I would however first focus on fixing existing games instead of rushing new ones, because quality always beats quantity. Make sure you keep up your good name and offer your (paying) customers value for their money. A leaving customer hardly ever comes back after being disappointed....
That said I wish you the best and hope you will be able to offer the quality we're used to from Hero Interactive. I know you've got the skills! :-)
Kind regards,
UpperKEES
To all: maybe nice to know the game comes with 55 missions, millions of Chronom maps and thousands of great custom maps, so you can play for years for just $10 (or $15 when you buy Creeper World 2 as well). :-) Some of them are puzzles and some of them are very hard and will take you more than an hour of continuous fighting and decision making.
Hmmm, looks like the kind of games I played on my Commodore64 back in the 80s. I'd expect something more advanced and innovated nowadays on Kongregate.
 "Bubble Tanks Tower Defense 2"){kind=icon}
 "Creeper World: Evermore"){kind=icon}
 "Creeper World: User Space"){kind=icon}
 "Diamond Hollow II"){kind=icon}
 "Creeper World Training Sim"){kind=icon}