Kiss your free time goodbye.
February 8, 2008 10:50 AM   Subscribe

Protector. ~Flash Friday~ Protector takes the mechanics of tower defense games, and adds an RPG element to it. Specialize, level up, and say goodbye to your free time. previously
posted by MythMaker (17 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
this post has been up for over a half hour without one post, which means only one thing: the game must be addicting. at least enough that nobody decided to come back and post thoughts...
posted by strangememes at 11:28 AM on February 8, 2008


It's kinda slow - Needs a speed up button. Also should skeletons bleed when they are destroyed? I think not.
posted by Big_B at 11:34 AM on February 8, 2008


Been playing for a few days. Given my gaming tastes, this should be like Homer discovering beer-flavoured nuts (or was it nut-flavoured beer?), but the flaws are just so readily apparent. Really, great idea, but:

-It's hellishly slow.
-Can't send next wave before previous one finishes.
-Must click two (2!) buttons before starting new wave. Say goodbye to those Easy Wave Bathroom Breaks ©, this is attend-at-all-times. Can't use the keyboard for this, either.
-No on-screen info on special attack powers, etc. Protectopedia offers help but - shockingly - without explanatory pictures.
-It is not directly explained how to unlock the advanced units.
-Lvl accretion is very incremental. So much, that whereas in other games one must be careful not to overbuild, in Protector it is tempting to just throw the entire board full of mages. Waiting 20 waves for a 10 to 28 power increase? Meh, not so impressive.
-Difference in difficulty between "Easy" maps and "Medium" / "Hard" is so vast that it puts off the casual player.
-Lastly - and for me most damningly - the RPG aspect is ruined by the fact that while you spend a lot of game time developing units, there is *zero* portability between maps. "Congratulations, you won! Now start over again with Lvl 1 mages!"

Sorry for the Comic Book Guy snark fit - I know it's free and all, but it's a bummer to see something potentially so exciting be so dissapointing.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:50 AM on February 8, 2008 [1 favorite]


Game: pretty fun.

Chat stream next to game: jesus fucking christ, no.
posted by COBRA! at 11:50 AM on February 8, 2008 [4 favorites]


I played this for a while yesterday. It's fun, but gets frustrating when you are 35 stages into a 40-stage level and suddenly a huge horde of bats takes you out and you need to go back to stage 1. Also, like Big_B said, it needs a speedup button. I like the RPG / upgrade flavor of it, but the fun factor could be beefed up a little bit. But it beats working.
posted by whir at 11:52 AM on February 8, 2008


It's definitely a challenge. One of the things that helped me realize how to get through the harder levels was understanding the "skills" tab. Once you've accumulated skill points, sometimes the right way to get through the more challenging levels is to simply re-assign all your skill points to something else. Each board really has it's own logic, and for many of the harder levels, you just don't want to use all of your different kinds of men. There are some that I've solved by only using two kinds of men, but putting all the skill points in them.

The skill menu is also how you unlock the advanced units. Until you master the use of skills, and changing them up on different levels, it's very hard to get through the tougher levels.

The other thing that I figured out is that it's best to start with your men towards the exit, so that they are getting experience and leveling up, before you place a lot of men towards the entrance. Otherwise, when you get to the higher levels on any particular board, when the enemy will go across the whole board, they will be able to escape, because your men towards the exit are too weak.

There are definitely strategies like these which make this game different from the more usual tower defense games which allow you to arbitrarily level up your pieces. By basing it on experience points, you have to strategize your placement a little more during the game.
posted by MythMaker at 12:11 PM on February 8, 2008


goodnews nails it -- I spent longer than I should have on these games, but even as I did these issues were gnawing at me, and COBRA! hits the one nail that was left.

At least it's not like Desktop Elements, or whatever it was called, where I thought I was playing a realtime strategy game, but once I looked for the walkthrough I learned it had actually been a game about the power of compound interest -- don't buy those towers now and have a quick walk in the park on the next level, save your money so that you can buy a zillion towers 20 levels from now when the game suddenly turns from pud to hellish.
posted by jepler at 12:14 PM on February 8, 2008


And, by the way, just hit the "scores" tab and make the inane chat stream disappear.
posted by MythMaker at 12:30 PM on February 8, 2008


I spent too much time playing this over the past couple days. After experimenting more complex strategies, I ended up just determining the safest color on each map (never absorbed, least strength) and filling the entire map with it as quickly as possible. And then I realized it was no longer fun and quit playing.
posted by scottreynen at 12:53 PM on February 8, 2008


Wait, there's a chat stream ??
This is why I never get anything done
posted by IronLizard at 12:57 PM on February 8, 2008


The game itself is a bit subpar compared to your vector td, desktop td, flash element td etc., but I have to admit the unlocking of bonuses with each map cleared is kind of addictive.
posted by juv3nal at 8:41 PM on February 8, 2008


I second and third everyone's thoughts. I was so excited to see a TD RPG, but the end product is a sort of hamstringed tower defense. I found that the rpg leveling aspects actually harmed the game, rather than make it more interesting. And the author seemed passionate about not being able to sell back towers in the interest of more strategy. I'm not sure what that is about. I kept waiting for it to be fun; not the hallmark of a good flash game.
posted by JimmyJames at 2:42 AM on February 9, 2008


In defense of protector (hee) it's a nice game to setup to run on an alternate desktop, then come back to every few minutes for the next round. Less productivity sucking, as it were.
posted by redbeard at 1:30 PM on February 9, 2008


The site tried to send a message to facebook using my facebook information.

I don't like that.
posted by winna at 9:20 PM on February 9, 2008


Neat idea, but nowhere near as good as other TD games.
posted by wastelands at 6:08 PM on February 10, 2008


I liked the 'time wasted' meter on the stats page... 16h to complete all maps. Imagine what useful stuff I could have been doing then!
posted by nielm at 5:10 AM on February 14, 2008


I've been too much of a flash game whore recently to post another one to the front page, but Vector TD 2 is out.
posted by juv3nal at 1:46 AM on February 16, 2008


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