What is that thing?

[Quizer]

HD Icons 1.png (345.69 KiB) Viewed 6519 times

Some of these wave icons are obvious in what they do. Others... not so much, but if you watch the mobs closely, you can probably tell what it is supposed to be, like the grasshopper icon. Still others... no frickin' clue. What the hell is that green circle thing under the wave? Probably nothing good. It might be useful to have an idea what it does ahead of time so you can prepare, but nobody knows.

HD Icons 2.png (160.17 KiB) Viewed 6519 times

Then there's the health regen icon that doesn't look like anything in particular, and a bunch of symbols with crosses on them that probably have to do with health or healing, but no idea what exactly.

It would be really helpful if you could mouseover these effects and get a tooltip with the name of the effect, and maybe a short explanation. These status effects also deserve their own section in the town hall encyclopedia - please add that!

[[HT]Kevin]

That looks already quite good!

Additionally - the greenish/blue circle is actually something good! It means that this wave gives more Orbs.
The Raindrop with the cross in it means the wave has more Health
The coffin means that they might revive after being killed (kill one of these with an Angry Mob and you'll see that in Action).
And last - the cross within the circle means that these creeps can heal other creeps, not only themselves.

What would you expect the Regeneration icon to look like ?

Also - you should consider making a Guide for that on Steam - i think the people there would love it!

[Quizer]

Thanks for explaining the icons!

Regen actually seems like the most obvious to have a health cross related symbol. The "heals others" symbol could be a variation of that which looks like an aura, spreading health to adjacent units. The icon for units having more hitpoints should probably have a different symbol entirely, avoiding the health cross which would then solely stand for regeneration in your game. Do you have any ideas how to symbolize units being tougher, beefier? I'm currently drawing a blank, I'm afraid. The drop is no good, though, that seems to contain no related associations.

As for the coffin, maybe instead of the christian cross, you could fit an arrow going in a circle on that coffin icon. I think that would symbolize well that these units just keep coming back to (un-)life over and over.

[Carionis]

More health - beefier - so a haunch of beef as a symbol?

I have to agree that tooltips really are sorely needed.

Another thing - This one of the only tower defense games where there is no type of "spawner"-mob. Only bosses seem to work as spawners. Which is interesting, but nothing that detracts from the game. I usually hate spawner-type enemies anyways.

[Quizer]

Don't think the 'beefy' should be taken literally as a suggestion... it would just look like food, and then we are back to square one of "Why is there a drumstick on my wave bar? What the heck does that mean?"

A heart symbol could be used for the extra health units. Heart icons are fairly traditional for symbolizing extra vitality. Maybe it should be modified a little since we are talking about the undead here, though. Make it look more like an anatomical heart and less like a love heart, maybe? Still think it's worth distinguishing between health recovery and maximum health as separate categories, though.

[Carionis]

Hmm. Valid points you have there.

I still like the idea of "beefier/stronger" mobs, so maybe something like a pictogram for strength (big fat bizeps).

Since mobs don't do damage to the heroes in this game, I think it would be self-explanatory.

[Quizer]

I considered some kind of strength symbol like arm with big biceps as well. It's true that the fact that monsters don't do damage to heroes would make it less ambiguous, but I think we can do better for something to symbolize toughness. I just can't seem to think of it off the top of my head. I'd guess that you could probably come up with inspiration easily enough by having a look at how a bunch of other tower defense games did it.