Разработчик: Batholith Entertainment
Описание
What is it?
Hydraulic Empire is a Tower Defense game with RPG elements focusing on strategy, interactions between mobs, and persistent upgrades. What we are doing with Hydraulic Empire is taking the best of what we have experience over the years, and then we are adding elements that are unique.
How much Content is there?
We have over 20 levels (21 at launch and we will continue to add more as time goes on), 10 mobs, 10 towers, a builder that levels as you play, and tons of mob interactions. All in all at launch there is about 15 hours of gameplay.
Whats Different about our TD?
Tower Defenses are not new, and they are not evolving much anymore. We aim to change that by adding in a variety of unique mob interactions. We are also adding in tons of RPG elements and we have a hero/builder that will allow you to take part in more of the battle.
Mob interactions are our major innovation. Where as they are not 100% new to the tower defense genre, they are typically simple or not very interesting. We have taken this to the next level, and centered our game squarely around them. Mob interactions will take place all over a level, and will change where and how you choose to build in a level. The interactions vary greatly based on which mob die in which order. This aspect of the game has given the game almost endless replay ability. Most of our mobs will interact with at least 2 or 3 other mobs. Some interactions open up new interactions, and others will lock out some interactions.
A Taste of the Story
"Peace had been a dream, and the light of its hope has been overshadowed by a new enemy. My own people have turned on me. For what reason, I do not yet know. But there is no option but to fight, if for nothing else but the undying dream of peace at least. I am the First Lieutenant General of the Great Mech Army, but you may call me the Keeper, for I protect the dreams of many. And I call to you for aid. The mobs close in, thirsty for the land we won through fearsome attrition. And I am the only one who now stands in their way."
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- OS *: Windows XP
- Processor: Atom Z3740D
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel Integrated HD4000
- DirectX: Version 10
- Storage: 450 MB available space
- Sound Card: Integrated Card
- OS *: Windows 8.1 or above
- Processor: Intel i5 2600k
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD 6850 or above
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 450 MB available space
- Sound Card: Integrated Card
Отзывы пользователей
This is a decent tower defense game. It's a bit unpolished and the UI isn't great, but there is a good variety of towers and enemies, your character gains levels and can attack, and you can boost yourself or your towers through a city upgrade system. If you like TD games, I'd say it's worth checking out, especially if it's on sale.
This could have been a cool tower defense game, but as others have already mentioned, the balancing is way off. Some maps are literally impossible to solve unless you select the exact tower placement (and thus force the enemies on the specific path) that is required. No matter if you have ultra-upgraded towers or not, you simply will not win unless you get the path correct. While some may find this challenging, I found it tedious in the extreme - playing a level over and over. Note also that this is based on the "medium" difficulty setting. There are two settings higher than this. I doubt I will explore them.
The other issue with this game is the glitches. After playing 3 or 4 rounds, the sound begins to skip and distort. This gets worse the longer you play, until after about 45 minutes the sound is painful to listen to. At this point your only choice is to close the game and then reload it. The same thing happens with the video - especially if you have lots of enemies on the screen at once. The frame rate will suddenly pause, and then when it resumes everything runs really fast to "catch up". Frustrating doesn't begin to describe the experience. (Note that this is with a 4-gig GTX 960 graphics card, which should be more than enough for a sprite-based tower defense game!)
A final nit-pick I'd like to share is with the system used to upgrade the tower abilities, your starting money, etc: It is PAINFULLY slow. You get between 40 and 60 "coins" from each completed level, and those can be used to build little machines that will provide upgrades. But these upgrades are almost non-existent. 1.2% increased damage... 0.8% reduced purchase cost... That sort of thing. And the upgrades get expensive - fast! A level 2 upgrade is 60 coins. Level 3 is 80 coins. And so on... Each time you're getting a tiny, almost imperceptible improvement. To say that it's a grind to upgrade the towers has got to be the understatment of the year. Plus you have a limited number of squares available to build these upgrade machines, so you have no hope of upgrading everything.
TL;DR: Unbalanced game play, glitchy sound and graphics, and a frustrating grind to obtain needed upgrades all add up to a lousy experience. I'd rather play Defence Grid: The Awakening, or DG2: Defence Grid 2, or even Tower Wars. Anything but this game. Don't waste your money.
PS: I wrote this review quite a while ago and then waited to post it to be sure I wasn't just having a bad day. I've checked back several times and each time I looked over the text I agreed that yes, this is accurate. So today I decided to finally post my review.
Has some good ideas but the game is very unpolished and surprisingly quite hard in the later levels. It is not something I can recommend. A mostly standard tower defenese game but played on a hex grid that tends to be more open then typical. The biggest differences are the skill trees and city building (probably not the right term) where you can upgrade your towers. A nice idea but poorly executed.
There are two ways to upgrade your towers, bonuses that benefit all your towers or bonuses that upgrade only the tower type it is adjacent to it. Unfortunately other that a block say +3% (or whatever) there is no other indication of how things are upgraded. They really need to add a chart / display that shows exactly how much each tower is being benefited by. The skill tree is just for your avatar and it is very simple. This does show a summary at least but I had no idea how one skill worked (skill to pick up scrap). Another problem here is that all the bonuses feel very small (tower and avatar). The towers felt the same after the upgrades. I'm sure they are there but the small amount and poor feedback made it very hard to tell.
Other good things are nice tower variety and nice monster variety... but the poor UI / feedback means not really knowing what all the creatures are doing exactly, not too bad here though. Some other examples of the poor polish. Game often doesn't shutdown properly, game forgets your scores and tells you you haven't beaten a level even though you had (but you can still advance past it if you complete it). Difficulty is not explained at all and no feedback given on rewards. Also seems like you are expected to grind to raise your levels near the end which isn't fun (but I may just suck).
Unless you are really hard up for a new tower defense game, just go play one of the multitude of other ones available. With work this one might be pretty good but it is laking in many basic ways, honestly feels like someones first attempt at making a game.
(Personal disclosure: I had this game before the whole thing and so was rather shocked about it all because I liked this game and was waiting for it to become more complete than when I first played it.)
This is a TD game with a few customizable options, generally you know what you're getting fare with TD.
But that isn't why I am recommending this title -
I am recommending it because the developer has impressed me.
(Others, too, that a developer can turn themselves around!)
Sure, the usual thing of a developer doubling-down with dishonesty happened, and in this case it was rather bad. Not as in banning everyone or deleting tons of threads bad (though some were deleted before it was noted that Valve and Steam Community Moderators can see EVERYTHING deleted) and the developer did play it fair in that regard afterwards.
What happened was actually worse, pushing towards felony material.
First it had started with review fraud by an account from the game's Greenlight submission page along with a known artist for the game.
The artist immediately apologized and took down their reviews, conforming to both Valve's rules and consumer law regarding proper disclosure in review. They were thanked for their honesty along with having the problems review fraud could have given them explained. This was as much for their benefit as any other developers looking in on the situation.
The lead developer was a different story. Insisting that they were the sole developer, nobody else despite credits and other developers being mentioned in the creation of Hydraulic Empire, the developer tried to distance themselves from the account from the Greenlight submission page (royalmage7). Now in turn the royalmage7 account was offering the idea that they weren't even connected to the developer. "So first off I do not work for the dev, I just wanted to help him out. I made post like that in order to make him look better (bigger studio)." They had changed their reviews to preserve them, claiming that they were a moderator once upon a time and no longer had ties to the developer.
The problem was that royalmage7 was actually the developer trying to take the heat off of themselves.
They may not have understood fully what they were doing, but they tried to cover up review fraud (which usually faces many thousands USD in fines depending upon state and even federal laws) by claiming misrepresentation fraud to make people think the company was larger to entice buyers (which is a felony in most states and even on a federal level IIRC).
The developer had to be saved from themselves and shown why this was bad before it got even worse.
A Google Cache result exposing their alt account was shown, upon which the developer removed all fraudulent reviews and issued an apology.
Yeah, it had to get to that point, I did get a bit snarly at the continued lies (which was far better than the alternatives), but now that the developer dropped the whole thing and has apologized and has gone one unasked-for step beyond in trying to resolve anyone hurt by this, I'll be one of if not the first to be right there behind the developer if they continue doing things right.
The fraud, both counts of it, have been remedied by the actions of the developer.
Since the apology the developer has gone back to fix bugs, so the title has not been dropped.
It is just waiting for more input - input that I think this developer deserves now that they are doing things right.
Thank you for doing the right thing.
It wasn't pretty, but you now stand as an example of how someone can clean up their act to preserve their indie development career. :)
Some info links about this:
FTC Guidelines - as Valve is a US company they must conform to US law (along with the State of Washington's state laws), which requires proper disclosure in review, though Valve usually squishes most developers reviewing their own games - NOTE: THIS MAY BE DIFFERENT IN YOUR JURISDICTION AND COMPLETELY ILLEGAL EVEN WITH DISCLOSURE, DO NOT RISK IT:
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking
Dev Apology:
http://steamcommunity.com/games/381220/announcements/detail/2641773114861818516
A post explaining why the developer dove from frying pan into fire by defending one kind of fraud with another:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/381220/discussions/0/2119355556477136107/#c2119355556479032398
SidAlpha's report in review:
https://youtu.be/n9nFXr76W9Q
A bad little Tower Defense game. The graphics are detailed and colourfull, but with annoying lacking of deeping and shadows; can not choose resolutions under 1072 px. While it runs, sounds and music degenerate in awkful noises, by a own software error. The mechanics is good, with a hero, 10 kinds of towers, upgrades and customizations. But are been awkfully implemented and gameplay ruins the fun: can not fit in full screen with 4:3 aspect ratio, sometimes crushes by abuse of graphic card even in medium quality, has few zoom option and a too slowly side displacement, hero is slow altought is needed to built every tower, is difficult to distinguish from the background and have problems to aiming, towers dont changes when upgrading, foes are too speedy, the rewards for kill them are poor. To complete it require patience and willpower; get 95% of achievements takes less of 20 hours in hard mode. Seems a failed attempt to emulate Tower Wars.
This is not a bad game, there are some substance and challenge, but it is a bit rough around the edges for a commercial game, and I think there are a number of better and more polished games in the crowded Tower Defense genre.
The game production is quite ambitious and certainly above many mobile TD ports. but unfortunately it lacks polish in several areas. In particular when there are many enemies on screen the action become confuse and it is sometimes hard to place a tower where you want because there are always an enemy on the tile were you want to built hence the game display an enemy info box instead of the build pop-up just because you can't access the empty tile with your mouse pointer. Here a simple keyboard shorcut for building would have helped.
Then there are occasional fram rate drops or even a few of CTDs (though not during action proper but rather when navigating through menu).
Also annoying is the fact that the game doesn't properly save your highscore and on occasion I also had my progress reset to zero.
The campaign map is not very convenient, either to navigate or to inform you on the exact map #ID and your progress so far, here many TDs do a much better job.
Also the game lack a proper manual and a Towers and Ennemies cyclopedia.
Besides these annoying issues, there is some challenges so it might be worthwhile on sale. Though I would recommend other TDs over this one
Competent but Underpolished
Hydraulic Empire is a good tower defense game, and it's also a big mess.
It's hard to get beyond the first bad impression. The presentation is terrible. Lack of Menus, Lack of tutorials, Royalty free Elevator Music, Poor Graphics, everything has "Mobile port" written all over.
And that said, if you manage to get beyond your initial reaction and start playing, you will notice it's actually a very competent hex tile based tower defense game.
The gameplay is spot on. There is no major innovation in the system and the stages and enemies are just varied enough, but the mechanics are solid and the challenge level is just about right.
Be warned that there is a serious difficulty spike for the last few missions, but it's not impossible. To be frank I found the balance perfect. You will not succeed if you try the same things over and over again and just sit back and grind, like a lot of other tower defense game out there.
Hydraulic Empire encourages trying different tactics out after you fail.
But you must get past your first impression. Boy this game is shoddy! The controls can get fiddly when the map is cluttered, and so can finding your hero be. There are even some upgrade menus that are never explained, you just find them by clicking around random stuff and wonder what in the hell you've just opened and what it does.
If you can live with these issues, and know your way around TD games, you won't be dissapointed.
Oh, by the way, I cannot quit the game, only way is to shut it via target manager every time...
Game is very unbalanced, Easiest mode is extremely difficult (either that or the mode settings are not working). Been playing TD's for many years and this is the toughest easiest mode i have encountered overall. Works find in full screen..saw one reviewer beatching that it did not. Can't close dialogue boxes untill you do EXACTLY what they want. Annoying music has no seperate volume control. Can;t say about bugs or crashes as i am still only 8 campaigns into it
I would wait to buy it till they give it some more polish
I love Tower Defense games, I own and have played dozens of them on PC/XBLA/iPad etc.
I want to like this game but it is just not very good in its current state.
It lacks a lot of (basic) features
- Custom keybinds
- Full screen windowed
- Sound off by loss of focus
- 16:10 support
Then the HUD is just lackluster, the upgrade menu's provide little information. Yes you can figure it out easily but you shouldn't have too. It just shows how much polish (or lack thereoff) this game has gotten.
And on top of that I've had several times that the mission just restarted out of nowhere after alt tabbing.
Posted feedback on the forums but no reply still so I'm posting this review and I'm asking for a refund. Even with 75% discount I don't think this game deserves to be rewarded with my money.
There really needs to be a 'meh' option for games like this.
Look, this game is good. It's not great, but it's good. It handles everything you want in a tower defense well. I played for about an hour so far and I just came across with a great feeling of 'it's all right' at the end of it. All the classic tower tropes you'd expect are there. Starting chain gun tower (arrow tower) that can hit land or air and fires fast but weak attacks. The next upgrade is your bomb tower which has land only but does splash damage. Then you get the flak cannon, which fires fast, but can only attack air....
Gee I wonder what is coming next, maybe a slow firing single target tower? YEUP, called that one before I saw it.
Ok, so the towers are uninspired, but they work. How about the special abilities your commander can use? Lets see... acid rain in a hex for DoT damage, a bomb for AE damage, a slow, a sniper shot.... *YAWN* Again, they work for the game, but... just... meh.
Well maybe this fancy upgrade system....
Pretty underwhelming, what you'd expect, increase damage, range, or speed of towers. Upgrade your commander abilities. I feel like I've done this before.
Now the graphics... well... they aren't bad, but they just feel... very... dated. They would have been mind blowing ten years ago, and they look fine for 2016, but that's it, just fine.
Now the one thing I did have a problem with was the sound. The sound REALLY begins to grate on your nerves very quickly. The sound of my minigun towers seemed to drill into my very brain and cause my spine to itch. I couldn't turn the sound down quickly enough after only a few minutes of playing. The music is also pretty lack luster.
Look, overall, if you want a tower defense game to play, and this is on sale, go ahead and grab it. It's not BAD.... it's just not really that good either. It's a standard TD, executed well, that unfortunately feels like it's about 7-10 years too late to the party.
This game is a joke. And not funy one at all. Here are some "awesome peerks"
1.Ubgrades. Sounds fun at first but is a 1% of damage even worth mentioning? Sure global ubgrades affect all towers but 1%? Seriously? If you go into details you will see "uber skills" wich gives you below 1% improvement. Great. After such ovepowered ubgrade i feel like ive done some progress. Althou the only one visible progress is to loose the currency for ubgrades.
2. Range. Range is a cool factor in Tower defence games. You can plan according to range to cover proper area. So do you want to know the range of your towe BEFORE you place it? Or the effect of ubgrade? Nah. Who cares. Why bother with showing the covering field of fire before placing it? You need to place it blindly nad hope you did the right thing. Besides, if you mess up you still can restart and place the tower on different place. Same goes for the rest of ubgrades. You see the result only AFTER you bought the ubgrade. Really great. Awesome stuff.
3. Level completions. If you want to play game and see your progress on different difficulties, this game is not for you. Why? Example: i've started the very first map (it was on normal). Ok. My progres wass displayes. I repeated it in easy, just to have it completed. And guess what. After completed on easy game says not completed. Nah. Who cares about progress record right? But wait there is even better. There is a map i did not even started. And i already got some points earned in it.
After fiev minutes of play i must say that this game is garbage. Dont bother at all unless you dont mind such factor as:
*pasive ubgrades that do almost nothing
*no info about ubgrades effect/ tower range BEFORE you actually build it.
*messed up game progress record
*probably much more *unique perks* that are as great as previous ones.
If you want spend 2,5 euro (the promotional price), better toss it from the window. The gain will be the same, but you will save yourself the disapointment.
50/100
EDIT: Refunded!! 1. time I had to do it.. thx Steam^^
Even in Sale - comes like a scam
-Gfx that hurts the eye - even in 1080p (feels like a really bad Mobile Port)
-3D doesn´t improve anything (you can identify layers easily - no immersion at all)
-everything feels quite fixed (Monster path, spots to build your towers, even the strategy for a map..)
-gameplay is worse than some mediocre TD games for browser
-any serious TD fan wouldn´t give a Thumbs up for such an unpolished Alpha build
-Where is the "Refund button" ?
-> Don´t buy!!
EDIT: After playing level 2.. it´s still no fun. No Kingdom Rush or Bloons feeling at all... DELETED^^
The sound effects and music glitch, high scores are not saved.
Feels unfinished like a beta version.
Graphics are fine, music is great.
Looks like it has all it needs to be a great addition to the genre
but the above mentioned breaks it for me.
Classic tower defense, nothing special. There are a few problems with the output of the in-game music and the sound effects, because the conglomerate can be constued as a terrible noise that forces one to turn of the music and/or the sound effects. It crashes sometimes, it's about 80% stable. Therefore, given a discount of 80%, it could be recommended for newcommers. This is mostly because sometimes, one has to think it over to solve a level.
It's not to be recommended for advanced players to the genre and not in general without a discount because of the technical problems involved.
Update: A developer responded to my review and updated the game based on the feedback. I have not had time to play through it again, but I appreciate their effort. If you read the original review below and are on the fence about Hydraulic Empire, you might consider giving it a chance. My intention was not to be the bad review that killed their business; I was genuinely frustrated at the time. I don't know if it's better, but they seem to be honestly trying, which is commendable. Original review follows:
Well, I just uninstalled this one, having decided it was no longer worth the effort. Another good example of a game with an interesting concept but poor execution. Also, a good example of why you should always check the global achievement stats: less than 1.5% of people who own this game even finished it.
I am starting to get the impression that most reviewers just sample games and base their reviews on a fun initial impression, imagining the possibilities - they do not complete the games and they do not have a complete picture of what they are talking about. Would you trust someone who read a book halfway through and just told you their general impressions? Many games just end up becoming repetitive and run out of ideas about halfway through. At that point you get the sense the developers are working to fill time and hard drive space. Guess which type of game Hydraulic Empire is.
That's right! Hydraulic Empire is a tower defense game but it's also a puzzle game in that many of the levels are only completeable if you build out a path the correct way. No amount of upgrading or leveling towers will save you if you have not made the path correctly. So although it may seem like you have a lot of options to play with, there is usually one strategy you must take to beat certain levels. By far the easier levels are those in which you don't have to think too much about your path building. Some may call it poor game design, others may call it having nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon.
You can build upgrades for both your overall game and for individual towers - the difference being that the individual tower upgrades give higher stat bonuses, that is, they give not completely useless stat bonuses. This is all done on two grids (one for overall, one for towers) and so there are a limited number of slots for each upgrade. The overall upgrades are generally so weak that you would need to create 3 - 6 fully upgraded attack (or speed or range or whatever) upgrades to see a noticeable difference.
So for about halfway through the game as you are collecting gems (cogs?) to be able to buy these upgrades you get the impression that the upgrades aren't really doing much, and by the end of the game you simply think about how much worse you would be losing had you not had a fully upgraded grid. This game plays that much with the margins of those power ups and will not let you expand once you fill up your grid that for some there will most likely be no way to complete the game. After playing through what I presumed was the last level on Normal difficulty something like 20 times, I decided I was one of those people because there are other things to do on a Saturday afternoon.
Oh you also have a robot guy with special abilities, who shoots at enemies, and can power up your towers. He too has a max level cap that seems frustratingly low (25) at the end of the game. Why not give the option for a player who is having difficulty completing the game grind his way through so he can feel like all those little doggie hoops he was jumping through were not for naught? No, the developers decided that the last hoop would be a ring of fire and no matter how many times you try to leap through it your fur and skin will become singed and burned off in small bits every time until you have neither hair nor patience left.
I rather liked this game. It's my first Tower Defence type game, beyond strange maps for RTSs.
The slightly steampunk blowing up of swarms of crazy varied robots is fun, but made more so by:
A wide variety of mobs with tricksy interactions.
Ability to buff various mechanics or towers across the campaign
Ability to specialise your player character for various roles, allowing a couple of different styles of play.
Difficulty levels, four so far, and reasonably steep progression.
Some stability problems have been reported, I haven't seen them. Graphics are nice, not too complex. Storyline is simple, but I don't play for that :)
This is a good game for when you only have a 30 min spare, but it's easy to get sucked in and try another level, or a harder difficulty, or go back and try that early one with the new tower you unlocked... so you can easily spend quite a while on it.
A terribly addictive feature is the scoreboards, for each level and difficulty. There's always the temptation to try to get to the top... just one more try... I can do it with less towers and score better than that guy...
This is still a work in progress, but given the care and attention paid by the developers, I think it looks very promising.
I love the concept of a steam punk tower defense, however there are a couple things that really kinda ruined it for me. 1) The board is really small for how fast the enemy moves, and you don't have enough money to block them quick enough. 2) the graphics of the floor make it hard to see your cursor. And the border graphics tend to be too fancy for quickly understanding your status. 3) Although the idea of a "builder hero" is awesome - and I get the concept that you have to trade off your builder fighting with actually building - however you often need him to fight for too long to get something built. 4) You can only upgrade the tower once (or so it appeared), so once you choose "stronger" vs "range" - that's it,
It's a great concept, however in my opinion it needs a little editing on the playability.
Yes, finnally a Steampunk TD Game that I can get into!
So, this game is pretty hard. Like, your balls stuck inside your shorts during a hot summer hard. The learning slope is very steep and you will be playing each level over and over again until you figure it out.
It does have some RPG elements to it that help upgrade a tree mechanicism. You can upgrade the little engineer, towers, or special attacks.
You get a lot of variety in the arsenal and I enjoy the clockwork sprites that come across the screen. Everything flows nicely and to be honest it's well thought out.
All in All. 11/10
Would play with myself constantly.
Early Access Review:
The most important element of this game is the time management of your Hero. Your Hero must move to a hex to build a tower there, and must move near mobs to use abilities against those mobs. Often your Hero "needs" to be in two or more places at once, and so you must choose between building the tower you want where you want it, vs. attacking mobs that have gotten past your towers. The mobs move at a rapid pace, and I find that I am constantly hitting the spacebar to freeze the action in order to assess what is going on and give orders to my Hero.
The graphics are too busy, and it can be difficult to distinguish whether a bunch of colors on a hex represents live mobs or dead bodies. In my opinion they should eliminate the idea of showing dead bodies.
So should you get this game? If you are looking for a pure tower defence game where you select your towers and plot out your maze at a measured pace, then look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you are looking for a faster paced game that includes tower defence elements, then you may enjoy this game.
Early Access Review - Will update as more features are added.
An absolute must buy for TD fans.
Even if you not that in TD this is still worth a look.
I did a first impressions / early access review video.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=479836216
Hydraulic Empire is a fantastic TD game.
It uses some mechanics seen in other TD games. It also add some new mechanics and systems that make this an already really well round, fun and engaging TD.
+ Mob Interactions that I have not seen in previous TD's. It will keep you on your toes.
+ Great Map/Level design which makes you want to replay and try a diff set of towers/maze route.
+ RPG elements which reward replays of earlier missions without feeling like a grind.
+ Hero/Builder character keeps the gameplay engaging. No sit back and watch the towers kill mobs here.
+ Perk Tree for the Hero Builder.
+ A fresh unique take on persistent upgrades for towers.
- A little rough around the edges.
- Still more features to be added. (not neccisdarily a - but needs mentioning for those that want a complete game.
- A little tough to begin with.
Игры похожие на Hydraulic Empire
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Batholith Entertainment |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 22.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 42% положительных (36) |