Hi.

It's been well over a year at this point, nothing's happened with this game. Development hasn't gone anywhere, so I haven't had any devlogs to give. I've been keeping silent in hopes that, somehow, I'd be able to get back into the flow of development for this game.

Simply put, it hasn't happened.

I still get plenty of ideas for what to do with this game in the future, but whenever I try to work on the game itself, I end up not getting much done at all.

Part of this likely comes from trying to recode a bunch of the game to make some very important internal changes for some new mechanics that I had planned for either the current or future updates. With this in mind, I'm going to try something and see if it gets me back in the flow I had during v0.1 and v0.2's development.

The sad catch with this, however, is that if it doesn't work - I'm likely going to put the game on an indefinite hiatus, or just flat out cancel it. I'm hoping this won't happen but it seems like it's the most likely outcome at this point.

So here's my new plan with v0.3 onwards: I'm going to try splitting everything into smaller updates. This will not only get things into all of your hands faster, but it should hopefully give me the feeling that I'm actually delivering on updates.

Pretty much all of the updates you see in the Alpha Roadmap in-game as of right now will be split into smaller updates, I personally think it will be better than a massively packed update every half of year or longer.

As of right now, I'm thinking the v0.3 update will be split into these 3 parts:

Part 1 (Aimed for within the next month or two)

• 2 returning towers: Aura Booster and Aquatic Gem

  • Aura Booster has a devlog already, in case you missed it, you can find it here.

  • Aquatic Gem will get a devlog soon, as I recently finished its tower sprites. All that's left for Aquatic Gem is coding and spriting projectiles, effects, and upgrade/ability icons.

• 1 returning map: Airborne

  • This map is chosen mainly so Tomb Raiser can get moved to Expert. None of the maps have been worked on yet, so this will likely be one of the last things I work on. Similar to the 4 maps already in the game, this won't get any special dev logs exclusive for it.

• 1 returning gamemode: Master Mode

  • Moving Master Mode down from Version 0.4 to give something important to the game's overall sense of balance. It's important that I give at least something past all of this wait, so I think adding the main point of difficulty now is good. The only thing that could be of concern could be Tomb Raiser Master Mode, but I'll see as I wrap up this part of the update.

• 1 returning tower skin: Bow

  • As of right now, it's literally the only one with its sprites finished. All I need to do is just make sure skins work in game, and it'll basically be done.

  • As mentioned back in the original Content Plans For Version 0.3 devlog, all towers will be able to reach Tower Rank 5 this update, despite not having anything they give at that time.

• 1 returning enemy: Magic Crusher

  • This one seems a bit random, but I implemented it at some point during development of v0.3 back in early 2024, so it'll be added as part of this update.

  • Just a note: It won't show up in the 100 rounds of the main game, but it will be available in Sandbox after you beat Round 100.

• New enemy modifiers

  • Similar to Magic Crushers, these have all of the sprite work done and will be thrown in with the v0.3 content.

  • I'll get more into these in a future devlog, but I am planning on making a new round set for the game in the future, and some or all of these modifiers will show up and spice up the gameplay a little bit.

  • As for a little bit of a spoiler as to what these modifiers could be: Shielded has been renamed to Reinforced.

This list above will be the main content in the next update to the game, if all things work out. It's largely just throwing what I have done or close to done out immediately.

Part 2 (Aimed for either the end of the year or early next year)

• 3 returning towers: Cannon, Machine Gun, and Electro-Shock

  • While Cannon is fully functional, it needs all of its spritework and especially a lot of polishing. It'll likely be the first tower with a devlog in this part, as it's the closest to complete of the three. We'll have to see at that point.

  • Machine Gun and Electro-Shock will require a bit more time once this part starts development, so I don't have much to say about them as of right now.

• 1 returning map: Long Walk

  • It's Long Walk, gives another option for a starting map. That's really about it. 3 Beginner Maps and 1 of 3 other categories does make things feel a bit weird, but that's how it'll have to be for the time being.

• 3 returning skins: Water Guns, Magic Wall, and Cauldron

  • I'll say this now during this part, but the other 4 skins originally planned for v0.3 have been delayed past it.

• Customizable Hotkeys

  • Might be moved earlier to Part 1, but I'm not sure as of right now.

Part 2 is just catching up with a lot of the actual content that was originally planned for v0.3. All of the visual stuff will come in the next part.

Part 3 (Aimed for next year)

• Important Note: This will come with a ton of internal changes. Very high likelihood things may not work the same between Part 2 and Part 3, just as a heads up. Importantly: Any saved games you have (not save files; saved games are on each map) will not be carried over.

• 1 new intermediate map

  • This is a new map that'll be taking the place of Loop for the update. I'm going to keep it a bit of a secret for the time being, however. Apologies for that.

• Map Display Settings

  • As the Content Plans For Version 0.3 devlog states: This just reorders how the maps are displayed in the map select menu.

• Animated Menus

  • Unlike the original plans, the "certain projectiles" won't be animated.

• More Visual Settings

  • While a lot of this is just visual bloat, I still think it's best to give this option. Especially fitting when paired with the internal overhaul, which makes doing this significantly easier.

  • The only plan as of right now for these settings mainly just comes down to the corner the in-game UI is anchored to. I might add an option to swap what the two bars show, but that's low priority at the moment.

• A Ton Of UI Overhauls

  • Likely doesn't need explanation, but with internal changes also comes a bunch of UI changes that I think fit better than the current UI. I might go into it more when the time comes.

• A New Experimental Feature

  • I'm not going to go into detail here, but just know: I'm really excited for this.

Part 3 is coming with a code cleanup and a ton of internal changes that should hopefully make things run faster in the process.

The Alpha Roadmap will be updated significantly to reflect update "parts," as I'm planning on making these three parts Versions 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5s. It will still only show 4 updates ahead, so the Roadmap will show the next two parts of this update, and two parts of the formerly v0.4 update.

While I originally had a plan of 9 updates that led into v1.0, I'm thinking this smaller burst of updates should follow the usual number convention. Meaning that, after v0.9, it'll just go to v0.10, and then v0.11, etc as opposed to leading straight into v1.0.

Something I should mention is that, during the past nearly 2 years I've come to understand what I really want out of this game compared to the original. While it'll still be content-heavy, sort of like the original, I want customization to be a more central point of the game.

Simply put, I want "TDTest" to mean something more than just "Tower Defense Test," and I'm hoping I can get some things later down the line that really start getting this idea across.

For now, however, I have nothing else to comment on at the moment. Just know that I want to get back into things, maybe a bit slowly, but I still want to see this game to completion, even if my motivation to work on the game has crashed significantly.

If you want something to play during this downtime, check out one of my other games, like the recently-released Colorful Factory, which released just under 2 months ago, or check out the original TDTest if you want an outdated, but fuller experience.

I'll see you all in the next devlog, which will hopefully be soon.