The gameplay is super polished, the UI is basic text -- like a bad mobile game. Fortunately that's the easiest part to fix if they get the right people
I don't think I would call the gameplay super polished. It's good, but is very much the same game for each run which isn't really a plus for a game touted as a roguelite
@@jameslovdokken the map doesn't really change how the game is played, and the way you place towers and play in between runs doesn't really change. Early game is focus on damage, mid game you get an Armor Buster, late game you put focus on Shield compare this to bloons, who has so many different towers and map designs with water, unplaceable tower positions, and choke points that incentivize piercing shots, immune enemies, etc there isn't really any intuitive gameplay that focuses on a particular strategy, it's just "know how much damage you need" I genuinely think this game would benefit from giving you not just one, but three towers at the beginning, and really increasing early game difficulty, while including multiple types of land, such as desert, water, jungle, etc with their own different quirks, and letting the "roguelike" part of the game progression have more interesting upgrade choices like having lightning chains, or shots that can pierce.
To be fair, it's not that difficult to wrap your head around, just slightly cumbersome to use zoomed-out in-game. Not great by any comparison, but I mean... not a huge deal.
@@minhuang8848 Yeah - but the tiny text is only annoying; the real issue is you are required to read it in the first place. If they develop a color, shape & iconography system for the upgrades you quickly learn have a general idea what upgrades do and you don't need to read the fine print for a casual run - and you can study the exact metrics of the upgrades at your own leasure when you're developing new strats. Also, the skill tree is ridiculous - they could just made curated list of things you are allowed to unlock until your PB gets to a certain level so you're not immediately crippled by choice paralysis. Sure, this is more a point of debate because some people really like games that throw you into the deep end from the beginning - but it's just something that could be handled better imo. Dead Cells and Hades are also a highly complex game, but it unleashes its the full potential much later using clever progression systems it creates a better journey. Sure this takes a lot time to develop, but they don't have to "that" good - they could tried something to turn the game more into a journey and not into a spreadsheet. This just feels outdated - which is still fine, but considering the retail price I would expect a bit more effort or at least an early access plan so we know that the game is not finished.
Great videos! keep up the good work! Something i noticed: Whenever a tower attacks an enemy, it receives an upgrade "discount" for that attack type (Health, Armor, Shields).. Originally all the upgrades are the same, but after a while it fills the bar(i assume that is the max discount) That means, you need to upgrade each upgrade section, prioritizing the most important towers(mortars in your case), around each lever, whenever each of these is maxed, as opposed to occasionally spamming upgrades at full cost. Also, the mana generation is a min/max strategy, only place more, when you are having a mana deficit, rather producing 4x the need(having less gold for the rest of the upgrades/house balistas)
Hey I just found your content, and really dig it. Thanks for the entertainment man! I like the discussions, the gameplay, and the general positivity. :)
...it's interesting how expanding the length of the various branching paths basically lets you control when waves will arrive at a particular chokepoint. i wonder if that plays into the high-level strategies for this game? monitoring the lengths of your paths so that a whole bunch of enemies all arrive at a chokepoint at the same time, maximizing the damage from slow-reloading AOE like the mortars, or intentionally spreading waves out to maximize damage from single-target towers like ballistas seems like a neat game, should check this out at some point
That UI is what happens when they don’t have people play test their game, if they had maybe let even 5 people outside their development team test the game they would immediately have been told that it’s crazy and needs some streamlining.
I was watching the vid on a 37 inch tv close up and didn't understand the small text issue at first. put it onto a normal monitor, holy shit it's awful
I bought it to try and I just couldn't lmao had to refund it and the lack of a inc speed makes it feel so shit waiting for mobs from the otherside of the freaking map
That's not even an excuse, how did this slip through their own testing XD There is no way they thought this looked good when they tested their own builds
I've had Rogue Tower for a few days now, and as much as the game is fun and the soundtrack is an absolute bop, I gotta say, I really really wish the UI wasn't hot trash. The skill tree especially is just too much. Maybe if it branched out slowly as you got upgrades it would be easier to take in, but boy howdy as it stands it's just a mess.
I mean, you spend like two minutes just picking skills you don't have, it's not great but it really doesn't have to be great tbh. The only thing really impacting gameplay is the UI scaling with zoom level, which is just utter nonsense to be sure.
As someone who has played Tower Defence games since Warcraft 3 Custom maps and desktop TD on browser, I can say his placement is terrible haha but its hilarious to watch. He'll get better eventually
Agreed....and I don't play them much at all. He seems to think along the line of "closer to the problem sections = better' instead of using the radius to determine the placement. He barely touched the middle section just NE of the lake. He would have been hitting mobs on their way out of spawn, and on their way to the tower.
WHEN I SAW THIS THE POG STARTED FALLING FROM THE SKY, I HELD MY HANDS TO CATCH AS MUCH OF THE POG RAIN AS POSSIBLE, AND THANK THE LORD ABOVE FOR THIS KIND GESTURE
Had a look on steam at this after last vid expecting it to be around the £5 mark thinking it may be fun for a few rounds, was genuinely surprised to see it at £11-£12, wallet stayed in my pocket..
if you enjoy tower defence its worth it imo, expecting every game to be at extremly competitive prices is kinda cringe. its a 10 buck payment 1 time, no P2w nor Micro transactions. if it was a tripple A title then yeah they should push the price down, but its an indie dev. 10 bucks is not really that much, its like 30-40min of work. let me tell you you get more than 30-40mins out of this game.
The UI on the Skill Cactus definitely needs work but it's interesting how you can just choose to continue upgrading whatever tower you want rather than spreading yourself thin
From my experience, it's best to just dump all of your damage in a small area. Fill it with slowing ballista, telsa coils, with a bunch of mortars in range. Mana bolt is a trap, never take it.
Mana bolt is not a trap, you just need a few upgrades or siphons for a huge damage increase across the board. Sustaining level 2 of the card in contrast is much more difficult to maintain.
Finally, someone says it. The lack of specialization is killing me. It's leading to an abundance of undifferentiated towers that all do an equally shitty job.
Heavy disagree, the UI is kinda bad, but the gameplay is solid, there's 0 bugs, game plays how it is supposed to. I'm glad the game isn't in early access hell. Once they fix the UI the game will be *chefs kiss*
I'd consider trying this game, but I'm waiting for the patch to enlarge the UI and Text. I don't even have significant vision issues, but I can tell if I spend more than ten minutes reading that size 4 font I might develop some issues.
I think they really need to rework that skill tree UI lol. Maybe if they did it similar to how last spell did it, that would be cool where more stuff slowly opens and you are not bombarded with all of this information at once lol
"This is the most insane UI element I've seen in a video game" Tell me you haven't played path of exile without saying you haven't played path of exile
This game is lacking a huge amount of UX. I think it's one of the most overlooked parts of game development, partly because it's something you don't notice when it's done well.
The thing is that you can sell towers for the price of the most recent one you purchased. Place em down for the cash, then you can sell them at no loss beyond upgrades.
I've never seen NL get sent so much by a single menu, this is top-tier.
I do like this game, the sole Dev is working on a patch, I believe. I think the UI wasn't properly scaling on bigger screens/higher resolutions.
That first thirty seconds could easily apply to me looking at the Path of Exile level up tree for the first time.
And second time and three hundredth time, haha.
@@ImmortalTimothyM Precisely.
The gameplay is super polished, the UI is basic text -- like a bad mobile game. Fortunately that's the easiest part to fix if they get the right people
It's one guy making it
If the one guy get the right people
I don't think I would call the gameplay super polished. It's good, but is very much the same game for each run which isn't really a plus for a game touted as a roguelite
@@lifetake3103 how so, there are a ton of different towers, upgrades, and the map is randomly generated?
@@jameslovdokken the map doesn't really change how the game is played, and the way you place towers and play in between runs doesn't really change. Early game is focus on damage, mid game you get an Armor Buster, late game you put focus on Shield
compare this to bloons, who has so many different towers and map designs with water, unplaceable tower positions, and choke points that incentivize piercing shots, immune enemies, etc
there isn't really any intuitive gameplay that focuses on a particular strategy, it's just "know how much damage you need"
I genuinely think this game would benefit from giving you not just one, but three towers at the beginning, and really increasing early game difficulty, while including multiple types of land, such as desert, water, jungle, etc with their own different quirks, and letting the "roguelike" part of the game progression have more interesting upgrade choices like having lightning chains, or shots that can pierce.
I hope that whoever made this is charging €12 so he could hire a UX designer so people who aren't lawyers can also play it.
Noice
When you put all your points into programming but forget to level up design
Damn,thats way too much for this here in India its just Rs.450 which is like $6
To be fair, it's not that difficult to wrap your head around, just slightly cumbersome to use zoomed-out in-game. Not great by any comparison, but I mean... not a huge deal.
@@minhuang8848 Yeah - but the tiny text is only annoying; the real issue is you are required to read it in the first place. If they develop a color, shape & iconography system for the upgrades you quickly learn have a general idea what upgrades do and you don't need to read the fine print for a casual run - and you can study the exact metrics of the upgrades at your own leasure when you're developing new strats.
Also, the skill tree is ridiculous - they could just made curated list of things you are allowed to unlock until your PB gets to a certain level so you're not immediately crippled by choice paralysis. Sure, this is more a point of debate because some people really like games that throw you into the deep end from the beginning - but it's just something that could be handled better imo.
Dead Cells and Hades are also a highly complex game, but it unleashes its the full potential much later using clever progression systems it creates a better journey. Sure this takes a lot time to develop, but they don't have to "that" good - they could tried something to turn the game more into a journey and not into a spreadsheet. This just feels outdated - which is still fine, but considering the retail price I would expect a bit more effort or at least an early access plan so we know that the game is not finished.
This has to be one of the funniest first 2 minutes of a video. Just the power of shock and awe upon seeing this screen
enlightened strategy is only buying level 1 towers while knowing that upgrades are more efficient, and panic upgrading as you're about to lose
Pretty much summed up my entire design philosophy at 2:45 XD Great run and amazing content as always :)
Haven't heard a harpsichord go that hard since The Real Slim Shady.
Classical music and death metal go so well together. Check out Fleshgod Apocalypse.
@@OfLastingThunder The only reason I know fleshgod apocalypse is because of osu!
@@NoShotTwoKill nice! I'm an osu nerd too.
Sweet a new rogue tower video! *pulls out magnifying glass*
I am loving the rouge tower content even though I can barley read it!
> rouge tower
GTFO
Great videos! keep up the good work!
Something i noticed: Whenever a tower attacks an enemy, it receives an upgrade "discount" for that attack type (Health, Armor, Shields).. Originally all the upgrades are the same, but after a while it fills the bar(i assume that is the max discount)
That means, you need to upgrade each upgrade section, prioritizing the most important towers(mortars in your case), around each lever, whenever each of these is maxed, as opposed to occasionally spamming upgrades at full cost.
Also, the mana generation is a min/max strategy, only place more, when you are having a mana deficit, rather producing 4x the need(having less gold for the rest of the upgrades/house balistas)
Filling the bar levels up the tower, essentially free upgrade.
Hey I just found your content, and really dig it. Thanks for the entertainment man! I like the discussions, the gameplay, and the general positivity. :)
Positivity hahahahahaha "welcome to the stream"
Dude the music is just something else. I seriously feel like Santa is going hard to drop off those gifts whenever a new level goes.
+2
...it's interesting how expanding the length of the various branching paths basically lets you control when waves will arrive at a particular chokepoint. i wonder if that plays into the high-level strategies for this game? monitoring the lengths of your paths so that a whole bunch of enemies all arrive at a chokepoint at the same time, maximizing the damage from slow-reloading AOE like the mortars, or intentionally spreading waves out to maximize damage from single-target towers like ballistas
seems like a neat game, should check this out at some point
“Does the frost tower use mana?” sent me to the stratosphere
Peak NL content
Feels like I'm in the minority of people who love to see large expansive skill trees and am regularly disappointed with what we get in most games.
I love huge skill trees, PoE style, where your brain physically melts just from looking at it
I love it, doesn't mean it can't be spruced up a bit, could be a bit cleaner, but huge skill tress are so much fun to me.
There is a beauty in complexity. But not in this case...lol. Good design is a necessity in this era.
That UI is what happens when they don’t have people play test their game, if they had maybe let even 5 people outside their development team test the game they would immediately have been told that it’s crazy and needs some streamlining.
Insane that they charge 12.5 eur for this game in this state. What the heck.
I was watching the vid on a 37 inch tv close up and didn't understand the small text issue at first. put it onto a normal monitor, holy shit it's awful
I bought it to try and I just couldn't lmao had to refund it and the lack of a inc speed makes it feel so shit waiting for mobs from the otherside of the freaking map
It's a single dev team man's doing his best
That's not even an excuse, how did this slip through their own testing XD There is no way they thought this looked good when they tested their own builds
That Gabriel Logan - Syphon Filter reference took me back. Also, I bought Rogue Tower after watching your other video. I love TD games.
I've had Rogue Tower for a few days now, and as much as the game is fun and the soundtrack is an absolute bop, I gotta say, I really really wish the UI wasn't hot trash. The skill tree especially is just too much. Maybe if it branched out slowly as you got upgrades it would be easier to take in, but boy howdy as it stands it's just a mess.
I mean, you spend like two minutes just picking skills you don't have, it's not great but it really doesn't have to be great tbh. The only thing really impacting gameplay is the UI scaling with zoom level, which is just utter nonsense to be sure.
As someone who has played Tower Defence games since Warcraft 3 Custom maps and desktop TD on browser, I can say his placement is terrible haha but its hilarious to watch. He'll get better eventually
Agreed....and I don't play them much at all.
He seems to think along the line of "closer to the problem sections = better' instead of using the radius to determine the placement.
He barely touched the middle section just NE of the lake. He would have been hitting mobs on their way out of spawn, and on their way to the tower.
Those were the days
@@punk105 nice nickname
Eggs pretty good at putting ice towers at the places with the absolute least damage dealers to capitalize
iTs a cHoKePoInT
The call back to the meteorology bit from the SAP episode was so good
WHEN I SAW THIS THE POG STARTED FALLING FROM THE SKY, I HELD MY HANDS TO CATCH AS MUCH OF THE POG RAIN AS POSSIBLE, AND THANK THE LORD ABOVE FOR THIS KIND GESTURE
Why does it sound like this soundtrack is by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra? It’s an indie tower defense game and it goes so hard
Yo the bit about tutorial upgrades was incredible
The nooblet bit caught me off-guard. I laughed so loud in the morning xddd
3:35-3:55 Dude the adaptive soundtrack goes SO HARD
This is going to be my favorite series I think. man I cant wait till next episode keep up the amazing content Lion! ❤❤❤❤
I love this game and expect more of it from Ryab
The liar audit was comedy gold 😂😂😂
Northernlion sounds just like Belethor's voice actor from Skyrim at 25:30
Had a look on steam at this after last vid expecting it to be around the £5 mark thinking it may be fun for a few rounds, was genuinely surprised to see it at £11-£12, wallet stayed in my pocket..
Just pirate it lol
bruh you spend more on one trip to mcdonalds
@@Ivy-rx1oj its not about the amount its about the worth of what you get for it. For a start, no speed up? No thanks.. XD
if you enjoy tower defence its worth it imo, expecting every game to be at extremly competitive prices is kinda cringe. its a 10 buck payment 1 time, no P2w nor Micro transactions. if it was a tripple A title then yeah they should push the price down, but its an indie dev. 10 bucks is not really that much, its like 30-40min of work. let me tell you you get more than 30-40mins out of this game.
@@djdisorder639 No speed up is the killer for me
love this game NL please make a mini series!!!
The UI on the Skill Cactus definitely needs work but it's interesting how you can just choose to continue upgrading whatever tower you want rather than spreading yourself thin
Skill Cactus is actually the perfect term for this monstrosity
From my experience, it's best to just dump all of your damage in a small area. Fill it with slowing ballista, telsa coils, with a bunch of mortars in range. Mana bolt is a trap, never take it.
Mana bolt is not a trap, you just need a few upgrades or siphons for a huge damage increase across the board. Sustaining level 2 of the card in contrast is much more difficult to maintain.
I think you should make certain towers focus on certain enemys like divide them for shield, armor and health
Finally, someone says it. The lack of specialization is killing me. It's leading to an abundance of undifferentiated towers that all do an equally shitty job.
Absolutely pumped to see this come back
Many ants are enjoying this game
Absofruitly pogged
This UI is absolutely in need of some attention, but I think the sheer amount of upgrades is really nice
The music in this game is such a jam
once the text size increases this could be a perfect game
Siphon, they've stolen the mana transport.
"The game is too easy right now." And the very next expansion, he loses. 😂
I never expected to see an audit happen, let alone enjoy it, but here we are😂
First time I've ever beaten northernlion to a new game. Big fan of the game. It can get ridiculously hard.
it's wild that this game ISN'T early access. this is the most early access game i've seen that isn't Survival Open World Crafting
Heavy disagree, the UI is kinda bad, but the gameplay is solid, there's 0 bugs, game plays how it is supposed to. I'm glad the game isn't in early access hell. Once they fix the UI the game will be *chefs kiss*
Dang, the music in this game goes insaneo style!
I thought I was watching an NL best clips of the month video when this started 🤣 that UI is so incredibly cursed
Thanks for the content! Much love!
Ah yes. The slash marker circle is complete
I just wanna hear NL say Urayoogie one time before I die
URAYULI
Mechanics top tier
UI design oh god
Can't wait until he gets the Shredders going.
The towers at the back should always prioritize health because if shields or armor are getting that far you're fucked anyway
There is a UI scale slider in the pause>options menu it doesn’t help a ton though
look at the tower health when he pauses game and scrolls in and out
I'd consider trying this game, but I'm waiting for the patch to enlarge the UI and Text. I don't even have significant vision issues, but I can tell if I spend more than ten minutes reading that size 4 font I might develop some issues.
why northernlion look like an IRL rust character
This is the skilltree poe wishes it had
Imagine NL trying to figure out the Path of Exile Upgrades Pog
Lost my shit at “this is a trello board” holy cow
I think they really need to rework that skill tree UI lol.
Maybe if they did it similar to how last spell did it, that would be cool where more stuff slowly opens and you are not bombarded with all of this information at once lol
Watching him play this game is pog
I read the descriptions NL, don't fret.
some day the developer will hit their 25 birthday and realize the too can in no way read the 2 point font. WHY I'M NOT THAT OLD I SWARE
Love these videos
I don't always comment, but I genuinely need more of this content. Please egg give us more
I really hope mon bazou isn't dead
"This is the most insane UI element I've seen in a video game"
Tell me you haven't played path of exile without saying you haven't played path of exile
PoE passive tree sends its regards
so fun so fun (in "so true" voice)
that nuts skill tree xD
OOGIE!
That upgrade screen gave me an instant headache and I’m not even playing
This game is lacking a huge amount of UX. I think it's one of the most overlooked parts of game development, partly because it's something you don't notice when it's done well.
I love this game and this content, i just wish it wasnt that expensive for a game that's clearly in development
Bro it’s like 10$
@@4purs oh my man, I'm so glad you are this privileged.
I'm brazilian, this costs 6 times more and our minimum wage is half of yours (or lower)
@@KarateDuckFull sound like a you problem
@@Juggling_necromancer oh, yeah, 100%
Don't disagree
@@KarateDuckFull Thats weird, shouldn't it be cheaper looking at min wage and stuff?
This is something that TotalBiscuit would have covered. And now I'm sad...
Dang it, i heard him say "I'm gonna shut up and let you listen to the music for a second" in my head right now.
Im digging this game
Excellent content. Hope they fix the UI!
NL , I neeeeeeeed more rogue tower...
Can you please make a playlist for this game?
Boogie w(oogie)
U need to get on the shredder haunted house grind
Im hardstuck lvl 29 rn
If I had to guess the UI doesn't scale with resolution and is stuck at like 4K
Indeed
Unrelated , but I bought Vampire Survivors and made it to 32:34 on my first Mad Forest Clear :)
I think he's hella over evalutating the gain from the houses compared to how much he's spending placing them there
The thing is that you can sell towers for the price of the most recent one you purchased. Place em down for the cash, then you can sell them at no loss beyond upgrades.
Ready for this
I have never been this early before! POOOOOGGS!
Did Vinesauce Joel worked on the soundtrack? He loves putting double kick bass drums onto random songs.
I love Ooogie
Cool game. Good content
Keep em comin northern. 🍁
Its legit as if they never even heard of ui design
love this game enjoy sap but its a fun mix up hope you play more
Love you NL
What is with the civ tech tree.
great game