2 Game Genres You Wouldn't Expect to Work Together

Tower defence + typing game, a game genre combination that on paper doesn't sound like they would work together, yet somehow they do.
WELCOME TO MY NEW DEVLOG, a week of programming with Rust and Bevy, and this is the result.
Hope you like it :)
My discord group:
/ discord
Want to support me?
⁍ Patreon: / tantandev
⁍ Monero: 43Ktj1Bd4Nkaj4fdx6nPvBZkJewcPjxPB9nafnepM7SdGtcU6rhpxyLiV9w3k92rE1UqHTr4BNqe2ScsK1eEENvZDC3W1ur
Resources: (The tech I'm using for my larger voxel game project)
bevy game engine: bevyengine.org/
game_stat: github.com/TanTanDev/game_stat
physics (3D and 2D): github.com/dimforge/rapier
inspector ui (runtime tweaking): github.com/jakobhellermann/be...
hot reloading using dlls/so files: docs.rs/dlopen/latest/dlopen/
benchmarking: github.com/bheisler/criterion.rs
world generation: my own custom implementation is not open source at the moment.
other rust libraries, that I recommend:
game engine: github.com/not-fl3/macroquad
Graphics rendering api: wgpu.rs/
multithreading: github.com/zesterer/lagoon
profiling: crates.io/crates/profiling, using Optick feature
#gamedev #rustlang

[@BenjaminBlodgettDev]

It might be cool if you added a programmer mode with snake case or camel case words to type out

[@SaHaRaSquad]

And with words like "AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer" in hard mode

[@daddy7860]

DVORAK mode, VIM mode too, yes

[@Spookyhoobster]

@@daddy7860 Vim's different "modes" could potentially be a nice thing to take inspiration from. Like with how there's a "Visual/Insert" mode in Vim, there could be a "Build/Upgrade" mode in the game.

[@danielyrovas]

@@Spookyhoobster was about to make a comment exactly of this, actually super tempted to build this game myself now :P

[@DanKaschel]

@@daddy7860 DVORAK mode would be the same as any other mode

[@codetothemoon]

This is actually a brilliant idea, would definitely play. Seems perfect for learning a new keyboard (ortholinear) or layout (Colemak etc)

[@Tantandev]

I've always wanted to learn a non QWERTY layout. Such a time investment to switch, maybe this will make the experience more fun

[@chonkusdonkus]

@@Tantandev I'm 3 days into Colemake-DH (matrix), and My wpm has gone from 120-170 to ~40, but I'm only actually using the colemak for about 10-20 minutes each day

[@lievenpetersen]

If you could shoot the first monster by typing, that could help with balancing the phases where a lot of monsters spawn. And make the phases where it's going well more rewarding because the player feels they don't need to manually shoot monsters anymore.

[@DreadKyller]

Trying to combine two seemingly incompatible or unrelated ideas together is a great way to come up with very unique and relatively unexplored areas. Not just for game design, but in general. It's by no means a trivial task trying to get the two ideas interacting with each other in a way that is complimentary or adds something interesting, but when you can, it's almost always a rare experience. There was a game jam at one point (forget which one) where the theme was to combine two different genres or ideas together, and it resulted in some of the most original and unique game jam games I've seen. It's also a good exercise to improve your game development and especially game design skills. I highly recommend anyone into game design/development to try randomizing two genres or core ideas and attempt to get them working together, no matter how odd. It often won't work well, but just in the attempt you can learn valuable insight. And in the event it works good together after some work, you likely have the start of something unlike almost any other game should you wish to move forward with it.

[@AIAdev]

This is a pretty cool idea. Interested to see more tan tan :)

[@jessie_the_fish]

So one thing that comes to mind for me was what Typing of the Dead did. It had really quick small things like letters or two or three letter words for things you needed to react quickly to like hitting an axe in mid air. Then more standard words for things like a zombie shuffling towards you and then full sentences for boss fights. For what you are doing I would do something like having the tower spawning pick two possible locations but only let you build one make that a quick reaction with a short word or letter and the other option fade when you start the first. That should help combat having to rely too much on luck for tower placement. Then bigger words for things like upgrades and maybe a full sentence for the things like meteors or bigger effects. Really neat idea and I hope you keep going forward with it.

[@rancoroustomberry3398]

Hey Tantan! Probably one of the best thing you can do to make your game fun, is to playtest it as much as possible. Make small playable experiences of your game that someone could play without any guidance from your part, and watch their reactions and behaviour if you can - it helps so much, as you can never truely guess what players are actually going to do, and you learn so much from it. Anyways, loved your video, the project seems nice!

[@rykerchute]

I like the concept, and my first thought is make this a vim based game for learning and practicing.

[@mysticrustacean4065]

Love your videos!

[@skydrag4227]

That's a funny idea for sure ! However, I'm not sure too much randomness would be really that fun. What I would do instead would go along the line of a reroll option, so you would have to type something like "reroll" or "reroll upgrades" to change the available upgrades. During the time you're typing this the enemies would advance even further, but you might get better towers. And the amount of rerolls could be limitee, or not. Anyway, have fun with your experiences, there's nothing like starting a new project every now and then. Feels awesome each time, and motivation for those is always high.

[@windwalkerrangerdm]

Sweet. Incoming brainstorm, filterless... Maybe there's a witch out there, who intentionally MISSPELLS words or changes the order of two letters, and if you by memorization type the CORRECT thing, you simply fail. Maybe some enemies carry pseudo-randomized letters (1 each), and when you kill them they drop these letters, which are kept in a board / UI bottom mid. And you can type words using these letters for greater effects or increased score, or to increase a global damage multiplier that slowly decays. Maybe there are also calculations involved, simple math questions to type the answer for, special cases of course, optional content mostly? Maybe there are cases of obscured letters, like BL?ND which can be BLIND or BLAND or BLEND, and you type one of those and wish you get lucky? Maybe words with two question marks like this? Three? Requires a thorough dictionary search, though...

[@sudhansubalasahoo]

I can already imagine how hectic this game will be while playing Maybe add some keyboard shortcut for quick placing towers which I think will make the game more fun. Or instead of typing to upgrade a tower, you have to press tab or some other key to open a shop menu and there you will type to get tower types, upgrades and special items with the coins from the enemies The possibilities are endless, really like the game idea Would love to play test the game, where can I go?

[@yoctometric]

This seems pretty interesting! Two ideas: 1. Make the font size/ word length small enough to fit within one tile. This prevents words overlapping each other 2. If a player types in a tower name, let them press a button to confirm placement or a different one to remove the tower in an explosion that damages enemies. This lets players avoid placing towers they don’t want, and hopefully reduces the negative feeling of getting screwed by bad tower positioning

[@logicprojects]

I love this concept, being forced to quickly choose which word to type and having better options being longer words sounds really interesting, instead of money you're evaluating if you can spend the time to make a tower. I wouldn't be afraid to let the game overwhelm the player in the late game (look at any late game bloons game where the screen is impossible to view)

[@owowow7509]

Turn-based racing game exists, called "Moonshine Runners", released in 2001-2002.

[@DanDeebster]

I was playing one in the 90s (top-down, Win95 maybe), and there's also the excellent boardgame Formula D which is from the 90s too.

[@icesentry]

I love typing games and tower defense, that's a really cool game idea!

[@acreatorqads]

Good game concept, keep going with it! Always good to do a small project to chill from the big one, always come back with insights.

[@L4Vo5]

I think if a tower placement is inconvenient, the player should have the option to simply not use it and it'd eventually be replaced by another. Alternatively, maybe the tower placements move around DVD-logo style until the player starts typing the word? Still, you could make it into a mechanic where if a player is patient and doesn't rush to make the towers appear, more towers will show up to reward them. So players will have to balance between getting few towers early or many towers later. Something similar could be done with upgrades, some sort of global "update counter" that defines when the next upgrade will be offered, which ticks down faster if there's unused upgrades on the screen for long enough. And in a similar vein to the moving tower positions, maybe the 2 upgrade options reroll if left untouched for a set amount of seconds. Then you could play around with word substrings. Maybe there's curses that negatively affect the player, but they're small words like "cat", so the player will eventually be forced to activate them if they want to type "catastrophe" or "sophisticated" for a tower/upgrade

[@Torcher999]

Touch Type Tale has an interesting implementation where they use modifiers and letters/shorter words for quick actions in unit/economy management.

[@zolaire]

I'm impressed you made my long name fit in the song. (Alexander)

[@dinophage]

Immediate ideas that jump out at me are having the length of the word and maybe "complexity" as a function of unique characters/length scale with power of the tower it's applied to as well as maybe having a fun RNG part where if you happen to get a word and a subset of that word at the same time it can complete both simultaneously to incentivize decision making like "firetruck" would also complete "fire". Really cool stuff!

[@soupnoodles]

with some polish this game would turn out great tbh. i do like the idea of words, but i think there should be a category of commands instead like !spawn - while you type it the text animations play in the respective areas, but a centralized text input area is also being animated, so your eyes dont have to shift around while typing !create [pos] - create new towers at a position, doesn't have to be pixel coordinates, can be something like "right" or "middle" i think that adds more of a familiarity factor to it, since with random words it's really just about spontaneous typing speed, whereas with specific commands you can become progressively better at the game with muscle memory

[@Remianr]

Sooo cool, Tantararantan :D Kinda reminds me of The Typing of The Dead, one of the best approach to porting a game from arcade to PC in my opinion c:

[@thisisnotok2100]

Im thinking when u start with 0 towers, each enemy needs a word to be defeated. Each enemy has this attribute. When you type a word to defeat an enemy, you get points to spend on towers. Importantly, you have to manually type a word to earn points. Couple this with the ideas of powerups and special towers, sounds like a p fun game.

[@Grimm-hb7ek]

Wow this is really cool👍I'm down to see more devlogs of this

[@BruceOnder]

Combo bonuses for chains of flawless typing!

[@bartosztobiasz]

Wow, incredible game idea, love it!

[@centdemeern1]

So far it looks like that if you keep adding features the amount of typing needed is going to increase- how about a tower or powerup that types some letters for you? With some leniency so you can type a letter at the same time as the tower and don’t mess up because of it

[@flaschenzuglp9994]

The idea is kind of amazing! Go on with it. I don't know if this can be build for android but it sounds interesting for learning typing on the screen keyboard (for children etcetera.)

[@Skeffles]

Super neat mash up!

[@Mistereee]

this seems to be a fun game

[@benjattkk]

This looks really fun!

[@zenshade2000]

The absurdity of this quite naturally launched me into absurd game design mode. What if instead of just typing given words, you actually have to build up macros for automating your defense, a kind of techno-magic spell system. Which is, after all, what programming actually is. But the language isn't given. You just have some base objects and actions and the ability to invoke some combination of them.

[@terry-]

Great to see game design!

[@benjamin_y97]

Brilliant game idea !

[@Chadderbox]

This is an interesting idea, MonkeyType x Bloons.

[@knut-olaihelgesen3608]

I will forever be "shruprlrlrl" years

[@Neph0]

I love your videos Tantan!

[@czowiekpotencja7245]

Go on with it. It looks intresting and another idea but it's may sounds dummy... Maybe mode for some kind of preset of word to train on with diffrent languages? Also it would be nice to have leveling with words but progression would be better if it would have time limit on writing certain words and their lenght will depand on level of upgrade. And maybe spawning a "spot" should be directable. So in order to spawn to occur you write the spawn event and then couple of places could shine with those word to write specific word you will choose specific spawn or maybe after successful spawn you will have a quick time event to move with this spawn place.... jeeze a lot of words but at the same time i admire the idea :)

[@Tantandev]

Good idea on having different word languages / dictionaries. I already have that set up somewhat, I have different dicitonaries for spawning towers/upgrading/picking class

[@DylanMatthewTurner]

Maybe you should be able to place towers with keyboard commands like Ctrl+C+1 places a tower in Row C, Column 1, that way you don't have to take your hands off to place with mouse, but you have control of placement. It might create a learning curve, but getting used to it would be something I think people who get really into it would latch onto and love about it

[@SaHaRaSquad]

As normal english words never start with a digit you don't even need a key combination for it. Just interpret any number followed by a letter as position.

[@yewo.m]

"Dating simulator shooting game" Sounds like an idea for a serial killer to me

[@swfsql]

Sweet! Actually I once saw a typng TD game on itch, and I think it was made with bevy too (but not so sure). I remember you had to keep typing at all times to passively get gold. The game was really hard.

[@Tantandev]

I think I might have tried the same game! It didn't have that much content though so not that replayable :P

[@EpicVideoGamer7771]

I love this idea, and I would also love to play a demo too

[@longbranchgooberdapple2238]

I actually played tower defense typing game a while back and it was pretty fun. Although a bit overwhelming at times. Gl! P.S. Turn based racing sounds like a lot of fun

[@24wherath36]

Make it VIM based so you go into navigation mode and then build mode and more.

[@purplemosasaurus5987]

It's a very interesting idea...

[@_creare_2742]

Very cool 👍

[@haidermirza192]

He's using the helix editor: 2:08 (look at the popup on the right)

[@Tantandev]

Yeah I was using vim before but after trying the Helix text editor over a week. I got hooked and didn't go back :)

[@ThePoinball]

You could make tha game a Twitch Live Game Since Viewers (players) can only Type.

[@Tantandev]

that should totally be a thing! fun idea.

[@NetherFX]

Need more bevy songs 😎

[@larsmaas07]

ye

[@dachr2]

To fix the problem with bad tower placement maybe let towers expire after a certain amount of inactivity and then spawn a new one somewhere else. That way you also get some control if you decide that you no longer need a certain tower and want to switch it out.

[@costelinha1867]

Ok hear me out.... what if instead of typing the name of the buildings... you could chose them from a menu.... USING VIM MOTION SHORTCUTS! You know? navigating with JK HL and other vim motions so you have to master them to build towers super fast?

[@centdemeern1]

nO!

[@felgenh399]

this seems oddly cool

[@UberDragon]

Wait. Can you make it so that the game is more likely to have two words on screen at the same time where the ending of one word matches the start of another and if you do them in the right order you not only save time, but also get the towers to do some kind of combo attack? That would be quite sweet.

[@Tantandev]

hmm sounds hard to pull off game design wise, but it would be awesome to have some sort of combo reward thing, it could just be a visual juice reward

[@jackawaka]

Turn based racing is something I actually want to do tbh

[@Tantandev]

There was actually a turn based racing game I played as a child. But its was on pen and paper, not that complex but when you have nothing to do it was pretty fun.

[@MdPapel-oc9st]

Nice

[@futuretrees]

I would definitely play -- make it teach VIM motions!

[@SabeDoesThingsChannel]

what theme are you using because it looks like one dark pro and one monokai put together. Also good work on the game.

[@4rcant]

NICE VIDEO DURATION

[@Tantandev]

almost :P

[@icemojo]

Just a quick idea suggestion (while trying not to be "that idea guy" in the comments); Change the enemies' movement to turn-based-steps instead of real time, and the enemies will take one step *only* when you type a character. Now the speed of the entire game map is at the tip of your fingers. Do what you want with that. Experiment with it if you'd like. Sell it as your own when your game goes viral. You owe me nothing. Cheers!

[@Tantandev]

interesting idea! reminds me of super hot.

[@jedrzejjozwiak2073]

You can ad abcdef nad Numbers like in chess tower A1 upgrade ….

[@AEw5JdbLyvEF]

You could try implementing penalties for typimg mistakes

[@benceblazsovics9123]

first, make sure you can cast a lot of magic. if you are already building by "chanting" things, why not use magic. second, the speed that yopu typed a thing at, definietly should have a positive effect, like a stronger tower

[@SaHaRaSquad]

And typos could speed up the enemies for a second.

[@Tantandev]

@@SaHaRaSquad ooh, that could be interesting, having negative ramifications for typos. Idk if punishment mechanics might anger the player though haha. Worth to maybe try out

[@principleshipcoleoid8095]

Maybe Kingdom Rush-like instas could be nice.

[@4per8]

what if you could click on a tower a certian ammount of times to speed up waiting for more text to type

[@Tantandev]

My ultimate goal is to be able to play the game without a mouse, I also hope to make enough mechanics that you don't have to wait for upgrades, there should always be something to do.

[@Slink1]

Turn based racing game has really got me laughing hard 😂

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

Pursue it, and then turn it into a Rust/Bevy tutorial so we can follow suit?

[@Tantandev]

I might do a breakdown video where I showcase the juicy parts of the code. There is a lot of cool stuff Bevy can do :)

[@virtualmecha]

Tantan mentally strong

[@maxpetts8225]

Isn’t a racing game turn based already? Right?

[@Tantandev]

it's not like you wait for other car drivers to make their move, then you move :P

[@larsmaas07]

:)

[@ariseyhun2085]

If you sing the patreons each video, you're going to have to out do yourself time and time again. Which is something I'd like to see :)

[@ZooHair]

writower

[@pointthink]

A dating sim fps is already a thing. It's called Wars & Roses and it's not very good.

[@mysticrustacean4065]

First one!

[@frittex]

Can I legally steal this idea from you?

[@Tantandev]

Of course, competition is good ;)