Week 1: A Look at Bloons Tower Defense
Perhaps one of the games most of us played at earlier ages is Bloons Tower Defense. This game basically involves preventing balloons from escaping away through a path by building so called “towers”. The screen is essentially divided into two parts.
The left side shows the field where the game is played with a grey convoluted path for the balloons and green sidetracks for the towers to be built. The right side shows statistics such as game round, money (650 given at the start) and lives (which descends as the number of escaping balloons increases. Starts from 40). Below that is the list of the 5 towers in small icons: Dart Tower, Tack Tower, Ice Tower, Bomb Tower and Super Monkey. Below that we see an empty gap, a ‘Start Round’ button and finally a ‘More Games’ and ‘Restart’ buttons. I was confused by the gap when I first saw it. However, when you hover over the icons, you will see that the gap serves as a space for the pop-up window displaying some important information about the “towers” including the “money” you need to buy them with. To start the game, you select one of the icons and place it on the field on the left side. When you try to place the “tower”, there is a huge circle surrounding it that changes color between red (for impossible to place it where your mouse pointer is on the field) and transparent white (for approval). Once you place it the game starts.
When the game starts, red balloons start coming out from the left part of the field and travel towards the top right side to exit. In between these end points, the “tower” is supposed to prevent them from escaping by “shooting” at them. Once the “tower” is chosen, you will also see upgrades on the right side where the pop-up window used to be displayed, which I found pretty cool. As you shoot at the balloons, your money increases. As rounds progress, it gets harder and harder because the number of balloons and their types starts changing. Initially, the game introduces more balloons forcing you to build more “towers”. Then, as far as I went (which is round 23, hurray!), there appear to be blue, green and yellow balloons. Each of these balloons is like a layer that covers another balloon of color that comes before it. The order of the balloons is red, blue, green and yellow whereby the latter balloons are faster and have the former balloons inside them. For example, blue is faster than red and has a red balloon inside it. So, it needs to be shot twice for the balloon to be stopped. In this way, the game becomes more intense and captures the player’s attention.
One of the things that was interesting about this game is that it was easy to learn. As a strategic game which involves placing the “towers” at better positions, it is really good to develop thought processes. I can imagine how this could enhance a child’s thinking ability through practice. Also, the graphics is actually good. Among the many, the “towers”, the shading of the balloons (color transition from bright red to dark red depending on which side the light source is), the speed difference among balloons were very nice. The color contrast for the texts and the field were also okay.
However, I still have questions that I found hard to answer. If this game is aimed for kids, and knowing that kids are enthusiastic towards balloons, it is confusing that the game involved shooting balloons. I am not quite sure if that is right considering user experience. Besides, the game is short in delivering help to the player. Occasionally and when a round ends, there is a notification bar that displays a message for approximately 10 seconds which is quite short to finish reading it and there is no way of accessing it again whatsoever. Some of these messages include hints. Also, the game fails to captivate attention during a round because once you situate the “towers”, all you can do is just watch if all the balloons are shot and sometimes add more “towers” if you have enough “money”. These aspects pose as a failure to the game development.
