What is Secure This (Tower Defence) about?

Hi there!

I'll do this in a kind of question answer format. I think that will be easier. Maybe I'm wrong? Let's find out.

It's just Tower Defence right?

Yes and no. I think if you think of tower defence games you will be thinking of masses of enemies being brutally slaughtered by an array of turrets you install in pre-defined positions. Your choice of strategy usually boils down to either having a load of the fast firing but not very powerful turrets, or a smaller number of the heavy hitting turrets with maybe some splash damage or something. 

My game, Secure This, is fundamentally different I reckon. 

Because there's only one enemy per level, and because you are tasked with delaying him until the police arrive instead of destroying him, the potential strategies vary quite a bit. Add into the mix the fact that you lose the level if you run out of money, and the enemy steals from you as he enters the house you are meant to be protecting, and you have even more potential ways to complete each level.

So that's the only difference?

Nah. There are also a load more levels than you'd find in your typical tower defence game. There are currently 24 but an update is due to come out shortly with another 4.

Also, there are hats.

I see there is in app purchasing. That's not cool.

That's not a question but I'll answer anyway. 

The game is free with no ads, so I thought it would be reasonable to think I might possibly make a quid or two from IAP. That said, I couldn't bring myself to make it "gated" in any way. So you don't have to spend a penny to complete the game. In fact, I've had 1000 downloads at this point and not one of my users has spent a penny. Which means I should probably make it harder or something to force the buying of in app currency... but I won't because I'd hate to be that guy! I've thought about adding ads though. I would like to make something from the game, having spent over 200 hours creating it and about £100 on google ads (and £30 to release on Google Play Store).

I like a story. Y'got one?

Yeah. I have. My passion lies somewhere in the world of creativity. It doesn't matter if it's making music, drawing the artwork, coding, or writing dialogue. It's all creative and I love all of it. So I stuck a bit of a storyline in, yeah. I realised reading dialogue isn't everyone's cup of tea, so I squashed the button to activate the story parts into the corner of the screen. Each level has another (hopefully fun/interesting) little titbit which progresses the overall story a smidge. I tried to stick a bit of humour in there. My fiancé laughs so that's the main thing.

So there are characters?

Of course! That's where the dialogue comes from! There's an owl, a pig, a toad, a wolf, a parrot and an alien. So far...

That's a lotta animals. This game for kids?

You're never too old to not be a kid. Or something more profound. I wanted to make the game kid-friendly while keeping it fun for all ages. I think I succeeded, at least to some extent. The only thing I really had to do was keep the swearing out of the dialogue (which I naturally wanted to put in). I quickly came to realise the swearing was not needed and by keeping it out, it forced me to think about the jokes a bit more.

Why animals though? 

So the characters are animals because I drew the wolf first. That raises more questions really doesn't it? Well I chose a wolf because my dog is a Schipperke (he basically looks like a small black wolf) and he can have his naughty moments. These naughty moments have led to me frequently referring to him as a monster (my accent is quite northern, so this comes out something like "y'monsta"). Thus, my bad guy was created and because he was an animal, I had the police be a pig. My fiancé was jealous of a Hooters cap I've got and it turns out you can't get them in the UK without paying ridiculous shipping costs... stick with me here... so I drew a cartoony version of the Hooters owl, printed it off and taped it onto a blank grey cap for her birthday. I'm a treat. I then changed the owl a bit, made the wings flap, and stuck it in my game - Patricia was born.

Why not standard tower defence?

Honestly, I didn't realise I was making a tower defence game until a couple of weeks in. My game idea came from a place of "do what you know". Being an intruder alarm engineer, what I know is security systems. Originally my plan was to have a house which you stick sensors in to catch a burglar. Over a few days I came to realise there was no reason the game couldn't be actually fun, rather than the realism I seemed to be aiming for. It was a revelation, for example, when I realised I could have weird turrets instead of boring motion detectors or whatever.

Hats?

Yes.

Well I think that format went alright! I also think that's enough about my game.

If you fancy playing it (certainly not if you don't fancy it), here's the link to the Play Store:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Wilabod.SecureThis&gl=GB

An absolute dude wrote an article on the game. You can read that here:

https://www.pocketgamer.com/articles/084524/secure-this/

And here's picture of my Schipperke for reference. His name is Sherlock:

Laters

Wilabod