Tower defense and platforming mechanics will be coming together in the upcoming title Toaster Defense from Wooshido. As Evan the Toaster Oven, players will have to protect Tina, his toaster girlfriend. A computer is in love with Tina but realizes he can never have her, so he sends an army of robots to destroy the pair. Players will have to plan for each round as well as being actively engaged in taking out the robots that threaten Tina and Evan's lives. In a recent interview with Game ZXC, developer Nathan Wooten discussed Toaster Defense's Kickstarter.
While the core mechanics of the game are in place, the level to which Wooten can push the content in Toaster Defense relies heavily on the kind of funding he can secure. As with most indie developers, Wooshido has big ambitions for his game and money is the only obstacle in the way. Wooten seeks to include more levels and potentially more characters into his tower defense platformer; all he needs is to secure the funding. If he is able to get his Kickstarter fully funded, he plans to take off some time from work and focus on making Toaster Defense into everything he knows it can be.
Q: What is your experience in game development, have you worked on anything previously?
Growing up I’ve always wanted to make games. I’ve joined various groups, y’know as a kid growing up, on GameMaker and a bunch of old forums back in like the early 2000s. I ended up going to college at a local community college for game art. I learned 3D modeling, 3D animation, a bunch of that fun stuff.
I met a bunch of cool people there, all into game dev cause that’s what we were there for. We joined together and started making an arena fighter. It was pretty fun, we had some fun character designs. But after we graduated, a lot of the different students kind of just dropped off on the project. We were a team of eight or nine people, and one by one everyone just kind of dropped off. That’s when I was like “Okay, got to do this alone solo indie dev thing.”
Q: Why choose to fund through Kickstarter, as opposed to traditional publishers?
I think it became a thing where this is my first game and the whole pitching to publishers seemed a little intimidating. I’m just this guy working on his game from home, so to me, it seemed intimidating. My goal was to just do Kickstarter so I could go ahead and get some funding and lessen my hours at work, if not completely quit my day job to work on the game.
Q: Where did the idea for the gameplay/story behind Toaster Defense come from?
When I started working on game development I started working in Unity. I did what everyone does and just started making a platformer game because that’s pretty much the easiest thing to make. There are so many references and tutorials on how to do platformer games, so that’s the kind of route that I took.
Then I got to the point where I was like, if I try to make a platformer game like a Metroidvania or something that’s way bigger than I can do by myself, I don’t want to be working on the same game for the next five years. I actually had the game mechanics kind of set up with the platforming. I was randomly looking at platformers and I came across the old-school Mario arcade game.
I was like, “Okay, that was kind of fun.” It's not like a big story or anything, just like an arcade kinda feel. So I feel like I could do something like that with the mechanics I already have in the game. What if I had a thing where the character was protecting the tower at the bottom of the level instead of in Mario arcade, when they go to the bottom, go through the tunnels, and they go back up, and it’s kinda endless forever. Well, I was like, what if they just hit the bottom and then attack whatever is at the bottom.
It took off from there. I thought I could make it like a platformer but like a tower defense game, sort of merging the two ideas together. It was kind of a weird way to go about it but eventually, it made it to where it is now.
Q: Is there any modern media that serves as inspiration for the art style?
I don’t think anything specifically, maybe the characters? The reason why it’s a toaster and a toaster oven, it’s super random, but growing up I was a fan of Toy Story, Brave Little Toaster, and stuff like that. So if you look at the turrets I have in the game, a meat tenderizer, a fan, and a lamp. The lamp is heavily inspired by the lamp of Brave Little Toaster.
Q: What will be the most difficult part for players in this new game style?
I would say that even through watching people play the demo, I’ve seen some gameplay footage of people playing. It’s like a lot of the players have the mindset of “This is a platformer,” and then they forget to build the turrets to help. So they’re spending a lot of time jumping on enemies or shooting them with toast. I’m just watching it, thinking “Build the turrets, they’re there to help you!” They’re there to aid the experience.
I guess the challenge would kinda be keeping in mind that yeah, it’s a platformer but it’s also a tower defense game so you gotta dabble in both. When it gets to a certain point, there’s actually an enemy that destroys turrets too. It gets kinda chaotic, I’m not gonna lie. You’re trying to defend the toaster at the bottom of the level, but this enemy that keeps spawning can destroy the turrets, so you’re running back up to protect the turrets, but also protect the toaster. It can get kinda hectic, but I think that’s the fun part of it.
Q: What kind of outside talent are you hoping to hire through your Kickstarter earnings?
I was hoping to get some more artists on board, maybe another 3D modeler to help me create some additional levels. So I can be like “Hey, here’s the design for the level, here’s the art style I’m going for,” y’know, and have them just take it from there. Pretty much the game itself, the core game loop, and everything is in there. Just make different levels and kind of plug and play.
I actually do have a 2D artist that’s already on board. They’ve been helping with a lot of the character art, like for the Kickstarter with all the characters. He actually did all those. So either the Kickstarter is funded and I get to pay him through that or I’ve got to pay him out of pocket at this point, which is fine. I also have a musician on board too, the same thing.
Q: Is there any hope to add more allies or enemies?
Yeah, well I had an idea for another enemy I want to add in. We’ll see if I have the ability to actually work on that or if I have to kind of leave it as is. I’m trying to get the game out by the end of the year, so that gives me a couple of months to work on it. For different turrets, I don’t know yet. When you go to build, you use the D-Pad: left, up, or right to build, and down is to cancel. I could also have the down button be a turret and have B cancel, so there’s a possibility for that too.
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Toaster Defense is in development for PC.
Source: Kickstarter