Cosmoids TD Prototype finished! Try it out!

We did it! Prototype out now!

I'm very excited to present to you the Cosmoids TD prototype, Marie (our artist) and I have been hard at work to bring this prototype to you.

Prototype Normal Level

I do want to say that the purpose of this prototype is to give you a taste of what the gameplay and graphics will be like in this game. The levels are really short and in the final games levels will last a bit longer. Also missing from the prototype are item drops, experience gains and leveling up, also recruiting (the equivalent of capturing pokemon in ptd) is also missing from the prototype. Those are things that I will be adding going forward.

So with that out of the way I hope you enjoy this look below and please please please tell me what you think. The next steps will be taking this prototype to kickstarter and try to fund the game as well as funding adding even more cosmoids (right now we are set for 15 unique cosmoids but we would like to add many more!)

You can play it below or go to this link to play it in full screen https://simmer.io/@samSndGames/cosmoids-td-prototype

Instructions: 

• Drag your cosmoids to any position across the 3 lanes (those facing right)
• Press on Special abilities to use them (on the lower right side)
• Some require you to select an enemy or ally after pressing
• Press on unselected basic ability to change it
• For example Buffaflow has a healing spell ability you can switch to.

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Meet the Cosmoids: Vol 4 Fire Koala Blitzupial

Welcome to the 4th installment of Meet the Cosmoids!

Sorry about the delay, I've been working very hard on the game as well as handling my life responsibilities. Sometimes I choose to work on the game rather than work on the blog as I think this will be more beneficial in the long run. Do you agree? let me know! Anyways on to the show! I'm very excited about this next Cosmoids, he is the great fire Koala Blitzupial!

Blitzupial is angry.. you won't like him when he is angry!

"Content with just spending his days eating and sleeping without a care in the world. However due to the recent drought and fires the majority his food supply has been lost. Filled with anger over his lost, Blitzupial now takes his stand against those responsible."

Blitzupial is a Fire Cosmoid, his main role is Damage and his secondary role is Tank. Marie and I had a lot of fun animating this character, he is very serious about his cause but since he has been mostly inactive and eating a lot his body doesn't react like he is used to as you can see in the animation below he slightly loses his balance when doing his basic attacks.

 One of his Special abilities is a spinning kick that will damage and stun nearby enemy units, this ability will be useful when tanking to stop enemies from attacking and moving for a few precious seconds.

He will also be one of the starters you can pick at the beginning of the game. The other two starters will be Chameleaf and Buffaflow! It is a good balance, if you want a tank character you can get Blitzupial, if you want more utility and range spell damage you can get Chameleaf, and if you want healing and sturdy physical damage you can choose Buffaflow. Who will you choose?

 Speaking of the game.. I know you have been waiting to check it out, my plan is to release a tiny alpha prototype with a easy and a hard level. It will give you a taste of what the game will be like. This will be out before the end of the year.

As always let me know what you think and which starter will you choose!
-Sam

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Meet the Cosmoids: Vol 3 Fire Hyena

Welcome to another installment of Meet the Cosmoids!

I'm sorry about the delay on this one, my goal would be to do one of these at least once a month or even every 2 weeks.

Quick Game Dev Update

Just a quick update on the progress of the game. We have all 15 Cosmoid Character concept designs done. I have the inital ability design done for all the Cosmoids (2 active, 2 basic and 2 passive abilities per Cosmoid). Now we are working on the actual game assets. About 6 Cosmoids have their animations completed (minus some special animations for active abilities). We have stopped the character animations to focus on attack graphic effects to give abilities visuals feedback that will make them flashier and intuitive to understand what is going on. On the programming side I have completed all abilities for the Wishmaker and Chameleaf. Currently I'm working on the Fire Hyena's abilities. Speaking of the Fire Hyena...

Vol 3 Fire Hyena

This week we want to spotlight the Fire Hyena! (Yes, he needs a name and you can help with that!)

Fire Hyena concept art

The Hyena is a Fire Type Cosmoids that specializes in melee physical combat. He is a savage warrior that will put himself at a defensive disadvantage to gain an offensive advantage. He is a mercenary and only has loyalty to those who will offer him the highest prize. 

With the great drought happening he joins the ranks of the Disruptor (our antagonist) in order to get food to feed his pack. He feels this is the only way for him and his pack to survive.

Level Paths

For Cosmoids TD I've really been thinking about what are the essentials of this game. What is it that will make it interesting and focusing on that. Originally I planned to have intricate maps that maybe forced you to have to scroll the map to be able to see all the action, but as time went on I realized I really wanted everything to fit on one screen regardless if you were playing on a PC or a mobile device. So I decided to have my paths be more like Plants vs Zombies. Even then since you can move your Cosmoids around as much as you want I have only added 3 paths. I tried having more paths but it can make things overly complicated since you would have to be constantly moving your Cosmoids. I'm pretty happy with the 3 path set up. The enemies will be coming from the right side and you have to prevent them from reaching the left side. You will have a set number of lives, if too many enemies pass then you lose the level. Here is a glimpse at a work in progress background for the game. 

Work in progress level map with our 3 paths

Give Fire Hyena a name!

As you have noticed I don't have a name for the fire Hyena, I think this would be a great opportunity to involve you in the process. After reading his description in the top, what do you think would be a good name to fit this character? If I pick your name I will send you 50 SndCoins as a prize!

As always let me know what you think and see you next time!

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Meet the Cosmoids: Vol 2 Buffaflow

Hi friend! Welcome to another installment of Meet the Cosmoids!

If you don't know, Cosmoids is the next game I'm working on. It is a spiritual successor to the Pokemon Tower Defense series and it feature 15 new characters called Cosmoids. They are similar to Pokemon but they are more human like, they wear clothes, use tools and weapons, can use magic and have a shared language this is common to many races in the known universe. 

Vol 2. Buffaflow

This series of blogs will spotlight all the Cosmoids, this week we will showcase Buffaflow, the gentle giant!

Buffaflow, the water type Cosmoid

Buffaflow is single minded and generally peaceful Cosmoids, that is until an ally suffers unjustly. It feels incredible guilt over not being able to stop the great fire, he now dedicates his life to atone for what he feels is his greatest mistake.

I asked our artist, Marie, how she would describe Buffalow and she wrote me this:

The water bull is a gentle and peaceful race, as they have water as the center of their culture. Like water, they flow, heal, and protect life around them. But when fighting time comes they are as the storm, strong as big waves and destructive to things that get in their way. They have a very deep connection with plants and nature, and try to protect it at all costs.

If you played a lot of PTD2 you might recognize the name Buffaflow, in fact as you might have guessed this Cosmoids was very influenced by that original design.

Original water buffalo cosmoids family

  Basic,  Passive and Active Abilities

As Cosmoids level up they will learn different abilities. All Cosmoids will learn 2 Basic,  2Passive, and 2 Active Abilities.

Buffaflow is a Water type which is strong against: Fire, Light and Stone and weak against: Plant, Electric, and Shadow.

Water types main role is Healing so Buffaflow is primary type healer and secondary type damage. Physical damage.

Buffaflow abilities are the following:

Basic Abiltities:

Basic abilities will be like the attacks that pokemon learn. You will set the basic ability you want your Cosmoid to do and they will perform that ability against their targets.

• Charge - A water physical damage move that can also Douse it's target.
• Healing Orb - A healing spell that heals it's target, it can also Douse it's target.

Charge animation

Healing Orb animation

Marie did an amazing job on these animations, right?!

Active Abilities:

Active Abilities are abilities will long cooldowns that need to be used manually by you the player. Some you will have to target a cosmoids or target a location in the level, some you just activate. Let's see what are Buffaflow's active abilities.

• Rain Shower - target a location, rain will fall on that location, healing allies and dousing any unit hit by the rain. 
• Hydro Beam - Shoot a beam of water in your lane, healing allies and damaging enemies, will douse any units hit by it.

Passive Abilities:

Are like "Abilities" in pokemon. They just exist in the background, and just like pokemon you can only have one passive assigned to your Cosmoid at a time, pick the one that will lead you to victory.

• Rage - Chance when an ally takes damage to increase Buffaflow's strength.
• Rain Dance - Chance when an ally takes damage to summon a Rain Shower.

So there you have it! Hope you liked this blog, these moves are also subject to change, would love to hear what you think! Until next time, remember "We are better together!"

-Sam

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Meet the Cosmoids: Vol 1. Chameleaf

Hi friend! It's been quite a while since the last post but I have been working in the background on the game, coming up with Cosmoids designs and working with Marie on the concept art. The initial version of Cosmoids TD will include 15 unique Cosmoids. (The plan is to add more and we will be doing a Kickstarter at some point to get funding for more.)

This series will introduce the 15 Cosmoids and give some details about their roles and types. We will also cover other parts of the game.

Vol 1. Chameleaf

The first Cosmoids I will cover is a familiar one. Our friend Chameleaf!

Plant Cosmoids Chameleaf

Chameleaf used to live in a tree hut in a lush magical forest. Due to the long drought a fire broke out on the forest and Chameleaf was separated from her family. She was forced to live the life of a nomad. Being able to adapt to any environment Chameleaf roams the land looking for her lost family.

Types and Roles

Cosmoids have types, similar to Pokemon. We have Plant, Water, Fire, Electric, Stone, Light and Shadow types. Also like Pokemon types have advantages and disadvantages to each other.

Chameleaf is a Plant type Cosmoids. Plant types are strong against: Water, Light, Electric and weak against: Fire, Shadow, Stone.

Chameleaf in-game

Cosmoids have certain  roles that they specialize in and we have 4 roles: Damage, Healer, Tank and Utility. Each Cosmoids has a primary role and a secondary role. Their primary roles are tied with their type and their secondary can be any of the other roles.

Plant type's primary role is Utility. Utility role units will be able to weaken enemies and enhance allies.

In Chameleaf's case her secondary role is Damage. Magical damage in the form of powerful spells and poison debuffs.

Chameleaf  dealing damage

She is able to poison her enemies, dealing damage over time. Also most of her attacks will deal more damage if the enemy is already poisoned.

She might be small but she can quickly poison her enemies and start blasting them out of existence!

I hope you likes this edition of Meet the Cosmoids, please let me know what you think, do you want to see more of these and what information would you like to know about the comoids?

Thanks and see you next time!
-Sam

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Animations and working with freelancers

Hi everyone! It's been a little bit since my last blog post but I don't plan on taking 6 month between post like before... Having a kid takes up a lot of your time but he is 6 months old and it gets easier and I'm able to work on the blog and on the game.

The good news is that I've been working with some freelance artist and mainly that is just communicating back and forth so I'm able to do it quickly and on the go.

Working with an artist, one of the most important things to do is make sure you are on the same page and communication is key for this.

So what I want to do is show you some of the process that I went through with my artist to create Hyena's death animation. Here is the final result.

Final Animation

It all started with my artist suggesting that the Hyena's hair should turn brown when he dies to symbolize that his fire has gone out. I totally loved this idea, it reminded me of when a super saiyan is defeated, they go from blonde hair to black.

After this I brought up that I think he should have the pose of a dog playing dead as I thought it would be kinda cute and would fit the game's sort of humor and I sent her this reference picture.

Reference image for animation

So with these ideas in mind, the artist came back with the basic keyframes of the animation for me to review and see if we are on the right track.

Keyframe test

Overall I liked the direction but I wanted to see the Hyena more in the last frame. I asked the artist to send me a couple of different version of the last frame that would show the Hyena more, especially his face and paws.

Once I picked the one I liked she send me a revised keyframe test and we moved to the final animation with the inbetween frames and we were almost done!

Final Animation lines.. almost final

So this was really close but there was one final detail that I wanted to add... I wanted him to have a frame that he looks surprised like "wow you got me!", I was a little picky at this point haha.

Final animation, with surprised look!

With the animation done, the artist went ahead and did the color.

V1 with color

I really liked it but after I showed my wife, she made a suggestion that his hair should maybe look more burnt like charcoal with ash on top. The artist thought it was a good idea and went for it. And so we got our final animation fully colored!

Final Animation!

I hope you like this behind the scenes look at the art process for Cosmoids TD, if you want more like this let me know in the comments or on Twitter! I also could do a blog about how I found my artist and my experience working with different freelance artist.

Thanks and see you soon!

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Cosmoids TD - A reintroduction

Hi all!

Happy 2019! The last 5 months have been a blur! Having a baby is serious business and takes a lot of time. But we love our baby Caleb and wouldn't change anything for the world.

It's been so long that I wanted to start fresh. I wanted to reintroduce myself. So..

Hi, my name is Samuel Otero and I'm a game developer by night, by day I'm a Software Developer, Husband, Father, Friend, Brother, Son.. everything.. and once upon a time I made a game called Pokemon Tower Defense, which you might have heard of.. (okay it's the real reason why you are here, who are we kidding!) and a lot of things happened and now we are here and I'm making a game called Cosmoids TD.

Very similarly to Pokemon Tower Defense (PTD), Cosmoids TD is a Tower Defense Game with Creature Collecting elements mixed in, let's just called it a Creature Collecting Tower Defense. In this game you play as the Wishmaker.

The Wishmaker!

The Wishmaker is the prince of the Makers, an immortal race that create and oversee galaxies across the universe. He is the creator of the Cosmoids, which are a group of creatures that live in the planet Eden. Unlike Pokemon, Cosmoids can all speak the common language and some wear clothes and use tools and weapons.

Chamleaf, a Nature Type Cosmoids

 Planet Eden is in danger and the Wishmaker is weakened, so he must recruit the Cosmoids to help save the planet.

On a mission

Some trouble nearby?!

Like in PTD you will be able to recruit enemy Cosmoids into your party. You can level up your party and they learn new moves and even evolve!

But I really cannot do this without all of you, I want to make a game that we can all enjoy and have fun playing just like PTD. This time it's harder because everything is being made from scratch, while we can be inspired by Pokemon we cannot copy Pokemon. And so I want to make this game openly in front of all of you, so we can go on this journey together. I would love to hear your feedback about what you would like this game to have. I will post really early and buggy version of the game so you can play while it's still being made. In fact here is a screenshot of the current work in progress.

Work In Progress Level, with Fire Hyena and Stick figures guys..

So what do you say, are you in?

As always, let me know what you think!

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A new story direction!

Greetings!

Let's get right to it! But first...

Baby Update

A little bit less than a month is left before Caleb is born, we are very excited we have all the things ready for him and can't wait!

A new story direction!

When playing games I have found that personally for me having a story makes me more likely to finish a game. Even if the game wasn't that good, if I got invested in the story (even if wasn't that good) I felt more compelled to finish it. 

This was the reason I choose to add a story element to PTD. I notice no tower defense games had a big story and I thought it would be a great addition.

So naturally for Cosmoids TD I also wanted to have a story. Originally I envisioned Cosmoids as something very similar to Pokemon. Over the years I've thought about the origin story of Cosmoids and it has changed here and there but some of the same elements have remained the same.

The story started with a powerful alien being known as the Wishmaker that encounters a young boy and grants his wish to bring these Cosmoids to Earth. I was pretty committed to this story line until a freelance artist that I hired made a concept art for the Wishmaker. I thought it looked so cool that I decided to make the Wishmaker the main character.

The Wishmaker

Along with changing the main character it was more interesting to also have the game take place in the Cosmoids original planet. This will allow for some creative environments that you wouldn't find on earth.

The next major change that I wanted to make is that in pokemon, while the pokemon are smarter than your average animal they mostly co-existed with humans the way pets do. For Cosmoids now that we are exploring their planet. I thought it would be very interesting if the Cosmoids were more humanoid like. They could speak a language, they used tools, clothing, communities. So instead of capturing them as beloved pets. You will recruit them for your cause. Below is a small preview of how a cosmoids like Chameleaf will look like. Keep in mind this is an early work in progress.

Chameleaf - Creature like (left) to Humanoid (right)

I've been mostly focused these past few weeks to working with my artist, trying to nail down the new direction so I haven't work a lot of the prototype but next week I will talk about how to focus on features and task that are needed versus wanted.

As always let me know what you think about the new story direction in the comments below, or twitter or by email at sam@sndgames.com

Have a great week and thanks for your continued support!

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The power of feedback and more changes! plus PTD3 Mystery Gift!

Hail!

The power of feedback

So last week I released the first prototype for you to play with and take a look at how my initial ideas for Cosmoids TD have been taking shape. While I didn't get a huge amount of feedback, I did get some key ones that will actually impact and change the game.

The change I'm going to make is that instead of having your Avatar have to go to spots to place the cosmoids. The cosmoids will instead go from the Avatar to their spots. So the speed at which your units will move to and from spots will always be based on your cosmoids speed. This always allows you to quickly place your units on the map, instead of having to wait for your avatar.

However, even though your avatar will no longer be moving to place cosmoids I still plan to have your avatar move for things like healing or buffing your cosmoids.

More changes

Lately I've been focusing on how Cosmoids TD will be different from the PTD series. It's a mix of seeing what worked and what didn't work for PTD in my eyes and trying to change things up to make them more interested or require a little more planning. One of the first changes I thought about was about how your Cosmoids will level up.

Leveling Up

First a small history lesson, in PTD1 your towers would gain experience by battling, very similar to the original Pokemon games. Your tower had to be a part of the battle for it to gain experience. Once they gathered enough experience you could use your PokeDollars to level them up. This was pretty interesting to me because it made you have to make a choice in which tower you wanted to level up first. However as you played the game, the amount of dollars you got was so high that leveling up was no longer a problem and so there was no longer a choice.

So much so that in PTD2 and 3 I no longer had leveling up cost anything. Looking back I think Tower Defense games are very much about choosing what you do with your resources so this is something that I want to bring back for Cosmoids, with a twist.

My current idea is that when you defeat an enemy cosmoid you will earn what I'm calling "Meteor Dust", this dust is essentially your resource to do many things in the game including leveling up.

The change is that your Cosmoids doesn't have to see battle to level up, you can simple "give" it some Meteor Dust to make them level up. So you will still be battling to get dust and then once you have enough to level up your Cosmoids the game will let you know and then you can make your choice whether you want to use it to level up or to purchase an item etc. You can also choose which of your Cosmoids will get the dust. The challenge will be to keep the dust as a somewhat more limited resource compared to PTD1 where money was plentiful after a certain point in the game removing any choice.

Single and Active Attacks

As I'm designing Cosmoids I'm going through all the areas of PTD and seeing what I want to change and what I want to keep the same. So lately I've been looking at Attacks. In PTD your towers have 4 attacks to mirror what exist on the pokemon games. For Cosmoids I may be rethinking this, some of the ideas I have are towards lowering the amount of attack switching that can currently exist in the PTD series and focus more on interactive active attacks similar to Champions! The Last Defense, where you would have a more active role in attacking your waves.

As with everything, the design can change and evolve over time when creating a game so these can be subject to change.

PTD3 Mystery Gift!

For PTD3 while I'm no longer developing new content for it, like new levels etc. I will still be doing mystery gifts as I can do those relatively quickly.

This week's Mystery Gift is... Qwilfish!

I still have plenty of task for the Prototype v2, I've added the change in Tower placement as part of my list. You can play v1 of the Prototype by clicking here.

Prototype v2 Task:

• Design - How will leveling up and experience work? (100% Completed)
• Programming - Scrolling the map (30% Active)
• Programming - Avatar no longer has to place Cosmoids in their spots (0% No Started)
• Design - Incoming Wave Alert System (0% Not Started)
• Design - How much enemy unit information will you have in level? Before the level? (0% Not Started)
• Art - Incoming Wave Alert Icon Placeholder Graphic (0% Not Started)
• Art - Unit UI Graphics Used for buttons or menus (0% Not Started)
• Programming - Incoming Wave Alert Location Tracking (0% Not Started)
• Programming - Incoming Wave Alert UI Popup and Confirmation (0% Not Started)
• Design - How to view friendly unit information? leveling up? targeting options?

As always let me know what you think in the comments below or email me at sam@sndgames.com or on my twitter!

Thanks for your support, and see you next week!

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Basic Prototype Completed! What's next?

Greeting trainers!

I'm glad to announced that I have completed the first prototype! Huzzah! I've embedded the prototype below and as you will soon find out, there isn't much to do at all beside placing your cosmoids into different spots and moving them around.

You can do that by click on the orange spots and selecting pressing one of the 6 buttons. Once the Cosmoids are weak with the red bar you can click on them to "Capture" them. Also if you hover your mouse towards the bottom of the prototype you can full screen the game to get a better view of the characters.



So we have the most basic idea of our game here, it may not look like much but a lot of thought went into everything you see there. It's pretty mind blogging to see the big AAA games out there when you think about every little decisions they have to make. Everything you see in a game or a movie was something somebody thought about and wanted to be there. Nothing is be chance.

An example of this is when I was doing the new tower positioning system. Normally you place a cosmoids in a spot, the avatar walks there and places it. If you select the same cosmoid for another spot then that cosmoid will walk to that spot. Seems pretty simple right?

Well then you run into odd scenarios, what if we are trying to place a Cosmoid in a spot where another Cosmoid is already there, what if we assign two cosmoids to the same empty spot? All these combinations must be thought about and handled in the programming. As you play the prototype, try these different scenarios and see what kind of solutions I came up with.

This is something you can also do in any game you play, as you play try different things and keep in mind that a designer had to think about and make decisions as to what should happen in that scenario.

So now that the prototype is done, we clearly see that there are many thing that are still missing. So we will now start the Prototype version 2, for version 2 I will be focusing more on the User Interface, the menus for capturing Cosmoids, for leveling up, for seeing when the next wave of enemies will come. Over the years I have always proclaimed that I hated working on the UI but it is so vital for games because it shows the correct information to the player. It is a fine balance between showing the right information and not having too much on the screen.

You will also notice that I have started to add design task as well as art task to the list. When you develop you need to assign time into design. I imagine in bigger companies you would have a person assigned for design and a different one for programming, in our case I'm handling both. Next week I will talk about the changes I have for level up and experience and how they will be different from the PTD series.

Prototype v2 Task:

• Design - How will leveling up and experience work? (100% Completed)
• Programming - Scrolling the map (0% Active)
• Design - Incoming Wave Alert System (0% Not Started)
• Design - How much enemy unit information will you have in level? Before the level? (0% Not Started)
• Art - Incoming Wave Alert Icon Placeholder Graphic (0% Not Started)
• Art - Unit UI Graphics Used for buttons or menus (0% Not Started)
• Programming - Incoming Wave Alert Location Tracking (0% Not Started)
• Programming - Incoming Wave Alert UI Popup and Confirmation (0% Not Started)
• Design - How to view friendly unit information? leveling up? targeting options?

As I work on these task I will update the blog, as always play the prototype, play with the positioning system and tell me what you like about it, and what you don't like about it, also how would you improve it!

Thanks for reading and see you next week!

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Path to Cosmoids TD Prototype

Hello again,

With Cosmoids TD I want to return to writing weekly blog post to give you a glimpse of the development process. So here we go.

The first step of making a game is to choose a genre or multiple genres that you want your game to be. For Cosmoids TD that genre is obviously Tower Defense with a mix of "Pokemon" which is a Role Playing Game.

This provides a sort of guideline for building your game. After you have figured this out you can have a good idea of what are the different components that your game will need. These components will be a part of your first prototype.

Your first prototype should give you an early glimpse of how your game will play. At this point you shouldn't care too much about graphics since you are still figuring out the controls and feel that you want.

Prototype Work In Progress

So here are the first items I have for the Cosmoid TD Prototype and my progress on them:

• Create new project in Unity (100% Completed)
• Create Player Avatar Graphic (100% Completed)
• Put Player Avatar on Level (100% Completed)
• Player Avatar must be able to move to different spots on the map (100% Completed)
• Create Cosmoid Starter Graphic (100% Completed)
• Put Cosmoid Unit on Level (0% Not Started)
• Enemy Units must be able to travel down a path (0% Not Started)
• Create UI for showing the player's Cosmoids (0% Not Started)
• Be able to place your Cosmoids into a spot in the map (0% Not Started)
• Add a basic Attack (0% Not Started)
• Enemy units can take damage and have a life bar (0% Not Started)
• Be able to change a units spot on the map (0% Not Started)
• Be able to capture a weak enemy unit (0% Not Started)

As I work on the game I will update this page, on my next blog post I will post about some ideas I have that will make Cosmoids TD different from Pokemon Tower Defense.

Thanks for reading and playing my games! See you next time! As always, let me know what you think!

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The path to a new Journey!

Hi everyone,

It's been over a year since my last blog post and I have to admit it feels a little weird, and nerve wracking, but at the same time exciting. So much has happened between then and now that changed and in some way liberated me. So I wanted to share some of that with all of you as well as talk about this new journey that I want to take. So let's get started!

I'm not one to tell a long story so I will cut this pretty short. In the middle of last year I had some medical complications that restricted me from sitting down for long periods of time, and that really impacted the amount of time I could work on games. It was a frustrating period as my full time job is also programming and so that required a lot of sitting. (A standing desk was not an option at the time for my office but has since become an option.)

After trying many solutions that didn't end up working, I ended up getting an out patient surgery that solved my problem. I was relieved and was ready to keep working on games again, but suddenly I got a big news announcement from my wife. We were expecting a baby!

This is Caleb! Our baby boy!

 Now it wasn't a complete surprise as we were trying to have a baby but we just didn't expect it so quickly! A lot of time has passed since then, 6 months to be more exact, and we know that we will have a boy and name him Caleb. Many of you might be a long way from having a child or might not be wanting to have kids (and that's perfectly fine) but for me having a child has actually been a dream of mine, and I'm looking forward to it.

The thing about having a child is that it really makes you think about your future and what kind of legacy you want to leave behind. This brings me to my decision and new path which I want for us to go in.

For a long time I've wanted to do an original game using Cosmoids. Cosmoids are pokemon like creatures that a group of artist and I came up with a while ago. The whole point was to make an original game using these creatures but for some reason or another it never happened. I always felt a responsibility to PTD, and it honestly felt like an obligation. Having a child has reminded me that this is not an obligation but something I do out of passion. Something that I should enjoy doing. I know that it may make some people disappointed or mad but I just can't work on PTD3 any more. The main issue with PTD is that I can't really share it with the world. It has to exist in sort of a shadow and that's not something that I want. I want to make a game and share it with everybody, have it be on different platforms (Flash has been slowly dying for years now, which is sad).

And so I've decided that I want to make a Tower Defense game like PTD but with Cosmoids. I believe that Tower Defense games can still be fresh and fun.

So in closing I want to say "Thank You". Whether you just started playing PTD or you've been around for a while. Thanks! If you are interested in being a part of this new journey I would love to have you, your feedback is invaluable to me and I would love to hear it.

So as always.. let me know what you think!

Sincerely,
Sam

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