I’ve been playing a lot of Tower Storm over the past week with many different fans to measure where the gameplay still needs improving and one thing I consistently noticed was players weren’t even dealing any damage till very late game. So the game would go on for 10 – 15 minutes with no health being taken then in the next minute or two one team would be dead and the other struggling for life.

I feel this made the early game more boring than it should be and so to counteract this I’ve added in castles. These function similar to towers in DOTA or League of Legends where you have to destroy them to progress and when you do destroy them you get a little bonus.

Both of these castles have 50 points of life and when your minions collide with them they die and deal damage to the player + castle. After the castle is destroyed minions can progress further into the map. With every castle destruction your teams minions gain +10% speed and +10% health.

So far it appears to make the early game much more fun than before. It also makes the tougher minions much more powerful early game as before you’d just rush to build up your income for the end game but now with the shorter travel distance it often works out better to deal damage early, get that first castle down and then push the advantage you get from destroying the castle to eventually win the game.