For what it's worth, game companies with three syllables seem to be my favorites. A-tar-i, Nin-ten-do, T-H-Q, Pan-dem-ic... etc. Two syllable names are a bit iffier... Se-ga, En-ix, Ra-re, So-ny, E-A, etc.

What do they all have in common? Save for THQ and EA, they're all one-word names.

If I were you, I'd keep words ike "Studios", "Works", "Project", "Software", and "Experiment" out of the title. "Softworks" too... you're not Bethesda. Bethesda sued whats-his-puss for naming a game "Scrolls". You don't want that kinda heat. Can't quite say why, but I mean, what was the last TV show that had "Project" in the title that went beyond Season 2? It sounds like YOU dont' know where you're going with it... even if you have a very clear picture.

As an aside for the above: Adding "Games" to the end of anything would be neutral... neither postitive nor negative.

I'd also go against putting "Pixel", "Retro", or "Bit" in your title, as people will expect ONE type of game from you forever and ever... once you change it up, people will feel you've lost your way.

Action words sound good. Emotional words, about 75% as good, unless your games follow a film genre (Dramatic titles, horror titles, comedy titles, etc.) Food's okay if you're making silly games.

Some suggestions:

Splatter

Dynamism

Altered

Ignite (or igNight, a play on id Software)

Crash! (Though you'd better hope your games are stable!)

Collision Box

Debug

Forbidden Source (Instead of open source)

Dragon Drop (Drag and Drop!)

BBB Titles (Admit it! You don't make AAA games!)

and so on.

Lovelocke64, actually by now, with Node-Webkit, C2 is almost as powerful as CC for desktop games, and it has so many benefits like active community, constant updates, more features, etc.

Not trying to start anything here, but "almost" doesn't "equal". For my purposes, Node-Webkit is tricky to get video playback working, and for (enough) other users, they experience glitches ranging from unpredictable performance to audio glitches.

I'm sure the same errors can creep up in Construct Classic, but nothing beats native export like native export.

Besides, for our OP's requirements, iOS/Android development, whew. The Android development side of exporting requires even more troubleshooting to get "right". Another issue of the long-winded talks on "native export" support that pops up weekly on the forums.

Read up on Construct Classic. For all the research I've done, if your intent is creating a -PC GAME- and not a -WEB GAME-, Construct Classic appears to be a bit more geared that way and it's very similar to C2. Direct X9-driven, plus open source and FREE.

Not tryin' to say anything, I'm just sayin'.

Yo, DJ and anyone else who's asked for help: Are you guys actively working on these projects? Any shot at getting some links to images of your WIP? Always curious to check out progress, and I'm sure the community at large would like to check it out too :)

Ah, also have a look through this page: dadgum.com/giantlist

Wonderful, wonderful interviews.

One of my favorite sites for this is:

theverge.com/gaming/2012/5/29/2995043/polygon-features-archive

Some of the best reading material includes their "20 Years Later" interview with the actor/martial artist who played Johnny Cage in the original Mortal Kombat, The Man who Created Double Dragon, and "A History of Epic Games".

Study that color theory! I think it's a good idea to have "color matching" between towers and enemies... But I think for simply looking pretty, and as a nod to Ikaruga, enemies of the same color tower would be resistant to that tower, and enemies opposite of the tower color should be especially vulnerable. You just decide what bad guys should be what color and you're off...

Sounds kind of rigid... More a game of memorization rather than strategy. Closer to guitar hero/rock band/blah blah, these companies aren't making these games anymore for a reason. I wouldn't place "making the songs sound the way you designed them" over "allowing players to play the game" if I were in your shoes. The aforementioned titles had the benefit of licensed, well known tunes that people are familiar with, giving the anticipatory benefit to those trying to memorize the movements of the songs... Unless you're ready to tell me you are Dr Dre, i wouldn't count on people being able to know on a first or fifth play through to guess "what YOU meant for them to interpret here."

Sometimes a player's own musical tastes must be addressed, even if all the want is a rambunctious marathon of piano chords... Challenges open up in that regard as they realize that some enemies are immune to their expensive corridors of guitar towers and the like... The enemy WAVES dictate what towers make the most sense. The auxiliary towers are there "just in case" instrument towers are placed ineffectively.

Just more opinion, you will do as you please. :-)

To my dear DJ Fuzion,

Tower defense... I love the genre very much. Perfect mix of old school arcade gameplay with modern obsessions like upgrades/skill trees. As such I've played a wide range of the type and have noticed things that I distinctly love/hate about the genre.

Let's see what we can do here.

--Theory/Reference Section--

Are you aware of "Symphonic TD"? - kongregate.com/games/Fr0z3nf1r3/symphonic-td

It's the game that most closely resembles what you're going after, and in my opinion, a study on "what not to do". Personally, I find this game to be... eh, ugly. The interface requires you to click more buttons than is probably necessary (what's with all the sub menus here?) and requires you to dash from hard right edge of the screen to the center for object placement to the top to start a wave. Without the forced tutorial at the beginning, this "game" more closely represents "software"...

It uses music NOTES as enemies, and as the enemies appear, they "play" a note for the user to hear. I think music notes as enemies are rather drab... people would probably prefer a more CREATIVE VISUALIZATION of their music as opposed to blasting away unidentifiable (for most people in the world) runes. The towers themselves are (basically) color bricks... again, not much there that's very inspired.

It would appear, at this point, that "music" and "tower defense" don't go so well together.

POINT OF REFERENCE TWO: "REZ" or "REZ HD" (Sega Dreamcast original, found on Xbox Live Arcade and PS3 Network these days.) - youtube.com/watch

Rez is a complete musical visualization of a hacker forcing his way onto various secure networks around the world. You see how he has a reticle that raises in number? Players press and hold the shoot button, and drag the reticle over numerous enemies (up to 9) and then RELEASES the button to unleash a wave of attack. The background music is a basic loop... and all of the player ATTACKS create musical cues. Even if all you do is tap tap tap the button, you hear a slight high hat/cymbal sound.

As each wave advances, the music pumps up in intensity. The number of enemies increase, and the amount of musical contribution by the PLAYER is increased. With the simple looping tunes going on, players can create just about any hodge podge of notes and have it come out sounding pretty trippy.

More on this later in a moment.

Another Rez Example - youtube.com/watch

--TOWER TYPES--

What's most important here is what kind of sounds the (towers, in your game's case) create in relation to the music. I'll tell you what's a nice convention in a few tower defense titles, that you can start with a basic "type" of tower and then upgrade it out for, say, elemental damage. A fairly basic example of this is "Arrow Tower" can, after three normal base upgrades, be designated as a "Fire Arrow" tower or a "Piercing Arrow Tower". Fire Arrow will strike an enemy and deal burning damage for a few seconds thereafter, increasing the basic shot's potency... although you get just base damage from the shot if your enemy happens to have fire resistance. The "Piercing Arrow Tower" will deal no elemental damage, and ignores enemy armor (physical damage resistance) and has a chance at delivering a critical hit which would be 2x base damage. Two different types of effects from the same tower.

Therefore: I propose a similar system for you. As you are creating a musical game, it might be nice to have a smaller set of basic towers with a wider range of effects, player driven. That way a player has the opportunity to be more involved in the "music creation" part of gameplay, and you (overall) have less work to do outside of sampling different instruments.

These towers are listed in order of ascending value (cheapest to most expensive) based on effect.

Guitar Tower

LVL01-03: Acoustic Guitar. Deals basic physical damage.

LVL04: Electric Guitar or Bass Guitar tree selection.

LVL04-06 (ELECTRIC TREE): Faster rate of fire, electrical damage, chance of shocking enemies (Freezing them in place for a second or longer).

LVL04-06 (BASS TREE): Rate of fire proportionate to level (though never reaching the speed of Electric Tree), stronger physical damage (referred to as reverberating damage?), critical hit chance.

Drum Kit Tower

LVL01-03: Snare Drum. Fast rate of fire, though proportionately weaker than the Guitar Tower. Better suited to handling clusters of weak enemies.

LVL04: Cymbals or Tom Tom tree selection.

LVL04-06 (CYMBALS TREE): Ignores physical resistance to deliver fast, consistent damage. Has a chance to chain attacks across multiple enemies (again, probably the equalizer for clustered groups of attackers.)

LVL04-06 (TOM TOM TREE): Somewhat slower rate of fire, deals reverberating damage, chance to cause headaches (which effectively makes this your Ice/Slow Tower).

Piano Tower

LVL01-03: Standard Piano. Rate of fire lays between Drums and Guitar. Because of the number of keys involved, I imagine this one would be best suited as a "spread fire" tower, and thus is able to target multiple enemies/should be more expensive to produce than the other two basic types. Let's say for now it can target three enemies per shot in it's range.

LVL04: Grand Piano or MIDI tree selection.

LVL04-06 (GRAND PIANO TREE): Allows piano to target four, five, and six enemies per shot in its range (based on level). No critical hit chance, the level upgrade comes from the fact that it spreads out it's attack so deep whereas others have a small chance of chaining or otherwise single-target attacking.

LVL04-06 (MIDI TREE): Will only ever attack three enemies at a time, but as level increases so does the chance to inflict "Confusion" with it's futuristic sound. "Confusion" will make enemies reverse their direction momentarily, sending them back distances increasing per level to walk through towers all over again. Since it doesn't get a target multiplier bonus, qualifies for somewhat higher rate of fire than the Grand Piano tree.

Artist Tower

LVL01-03: Clapping hands, mixed male/female humming? Slow rate of fire, because multiple people voices sound like a mess compared to multiple guitar chords, drum hits, etc. View this as a "rocket launcher" type of tower. Small splash damage impact radius.

LVL04: MALE or FEMALE voice selection.

LVL04-06 (MALE VOICE TREE): Random selection of "Yeah!" or "Woo!" "Uh-Huh" or what have you. Slow rate of fire, but upon impact, has a wide damage radius (Splash damage). Has a chance to "Rock" (Critical hit) enemies for 3x damage in the blast radius... signified by a 1980's glam rock wail.

LVL04-06 (FEMALE VOICE TREE): Random female vocals, as above. Somewhat faster rate of fire, somewhat larger splash damage radius, but has a chance to "Harmonize" all other towers in it's range, allowing ALL tower types involved a brief window where ALL attacks dealt do 2x damage. (People will be inclined to build lots of female voice towers in proximity to their guitar, drum, piano towers etc.)

---And now... a look at some "Accessory Towers". They have no branching trees, are the most expensive to build, but have other benefits for players that can't be ignored. They are listed according to what I feel should be the cheapest to buy up to the most expensive, based on their benefits.---

Amplifier Tower

LVL01-03: Damage amplification for all towers within it's radius. 2x, 3x, and 4x boost to damage, based on level. Effects DO carry over to critical hits, but DO NOT carry over to status-based attacks (Slow, Reverse, Shock-Lock, etc.) Does zero damage to enemies.

Mixer Tower

LVL01-03: Rate of fire increase for all towers within it's radius. 33.3%, 66.6%, 100% boost based on level. Provides NO boost to damage for towers, however, as the rate of fire increases so does the overall chance of status effects. Does zero damage to enemies.

Fan Club Tower

LVL01-03: Reduces upgrade costs for towers placed within it's (wide) radius. 15%, 30%, 45% reduction in upgrade prices. Also boosts the resale value of towers by 15%, 30%, 45%, based on level.

Record Executive Tower

LVL01-03: The Record Executive's job is to double, triple, and quadruple the money earned by surrounding towers. With each level up, the radius is increased slightly. Deals zero damage to enemies.

--PROJECTILES! How do I visualize these weapons?!--

Why, with COLORS silly! Don't have freakin' music notes flying out, or crazy, hard-to-animate waveforms, etc. I would imagine THIN lines that appear vibrantly and then fade out gradually is the best way to go, with the lines getting THICKER as the towers level up. This provides a visual feedback for players to tell where their strongest towers are, and where (if any) there are towers needing upgrades. In later waves, with more towers, you'll be creating quite the light show...

Have a look at an example of what colored lines can do for your visualization: youtube.com/watch

Trust me on the "colors in straight lines" thing. CERTAIN GAMES MADE QUITE A KILLING FOLLOWING THIS FORMULA! You may have heard of this ONE little indie game production from a fledgling production studio that nobody remembers... youtube.com/watch

Take some time to read up and study on "Color Harmonies", that is, what colors go together, and what colors stand out AGAINST each other very well. - tigercolor.com/color-lab/color-theory/color-harmonies.htm

Think in terms of:

Guitar Tower should have three colors that are Analogous to each other, but Guitar Tower, Drum Tower, Piano Tower, Artist Tower should be placed Square to each other, each respective tower following the Analogous color scheme.

--Enemies: Keeping your Friends Close--

Why they gotta be enemies? Why can't they just be fans of varying genres? I imagine a ball, painted up to look like a member of the KISS army to be called a "Metal Head"... and they have immunity to the ELECTRIC GUITAR tree, but are susceptible to the PIANO tree (as it's not considered Metal). For reference - 3.bp.blogspot.com/-M6fIsY5XaB0/UQZ9pPTyT5I/AAAAAAABrRw/cG1jVjxq1Ww/s1600/kiss-tour_loch1.jpg

You can introduce "Ravers" that are immune to the MIDI tree, "Headbangers" that are immune to Drums, etc etc. Hell if you design these little "angry birds-esque" balls of fandom just right, you might even accidentally stumble on a line of merchandising for yourself.

...read this over, let me know what you think. We can put more stuff out there for you if there's still questions.

If you're convinced, I'm convinced.

--Random Object Generation/Notes on Level Design--

Okay, I dig that over random LEVEL generation. It makes things "easier" on you but now, you gotta develop some interesting obstacles for players to take on.

Think about one of the first "level creators" to be found on home consoles: Excitebike on the NES. Small ramps, large ramps, boosts that restore your engine temp (to prevent overheating, if you filled up this meter you would be forced to pull over and wait until the engine cooled down), and other obstacles. What was cool about this was it allowed players to dodge left and right on the track (from the sideview perspective, up and down on the screen) to avoid obstacles.

Now, if your endless running game doesn't -require- JUMPING, perhaps allowing players to lock themselves to a foreground/background layer would be a nice twist. Think about the SNK classic title Fatal Fury 2/Special. There was foreground and background planes that your characters could stand on, fight across, jump between and knock the enemy "over" into. This allowed for neat destructible scenery when changing layers like kicking an opponent through a wood/paper wall, breaking statues, torches and the like. See, now not only are you able to PLACE objects at random to be dodged, you can also place objects that are "optional" to destroy... say, you're running down a city street and decide to crash through a glass storefront window. Now you're running through the stores with clothing racks, TV displays, food displays and stuff whipping by "in front of the player" that they could also bounce through and wreck for points... in the course of trying to avoid the ACTUAL level obstacles.

--NO D-----! I SAID THERE WILL BE MULTIPLE CHARACTERS!--

If you're determined to spend the time making ONE character suited per level, and then require players to buy the full version to unlock all of those characters, I hope that your "demo" or "lite version" can be completed with the stock character... and whatever these other guys are doing needs to be d--- interesting to justify the price if in fact "the starter guy can do it all". Personally, I think modifying the properties of one -interesting- character would provide the deeper experience than having several specialized classes. I think this a remnant of the Pokemon (we need 300 dudes in your pocket to make the game interesting) train of thought... which, if you look around, is on the way out. Growing a single character gives players a sense of accomplishment...

I'm interested to hear your concepts of 8 different characters that all "run to the right"... as well as 8 stages that move from right-to-left to accomdate them. I'm not downplaying the idea or your percieved importance on this cast of characters, I'm just wondering if the genre is "too thin" for all of this content, and if you couldn't just "make the exact same game" and save yourself the trouble of allocating/paying for art assets. Art should be the last stage of any Construct-developed title, the focus should be on perfecting the game. Some philosophy there. You could have 10,000 characters with 10,000 unique stats and individually-rendered costume pieces per character, but when -the game- is started and you're playing the meat-and-potatoes of the title, "You WILL be looking at ONE character anyway."

--A Rant on Crafting, and Again, NOT a criticism of you/Your Game--

For my tastes, I hate crafting. Through and through. I felt it's the main reason I didn't get into Minecraft, Terraria, there's piles of crafting materials sold in bulk as trash from my times in various Elder Scrolls games, they were auction house fodder in World of Warcraft... it's the reason why I'm on Disc III Chapter 12 of Final Fantasy XIII and running around with maxed out level 1 weapons (because screw abandoning all of those mats I DID invest out of necessity... why do we have all of those shops when nothing drops gold?)

See all of my examples there? That's me trying it, hating it, trying it again, hating it, repeat.

I just... don't like it. Is it because I don't understand it? Perhaps... but I did mention that on a couple of examples I maxed out various areas in a few titles. I just feel it's artificial depth, akin to "Grinding" which is great if you charge players per month to play but not really a definitive selling point. Can't wait for "crafting" to be replaced by something else in game development... maybe "content"?

I'm sure I'm in the minority on this. I know there's people out there madly in love with Minecraft, but at the same effect, I -did- grow up with Legos and K'nex... so it was old news by the time I got to it. Plus the dozens and dozens of clones... It's the new "collectible pets/cards" system, which I also wasn't a fan of. Pokemon did it "best", but then every Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc etc had to have the same thing.

For me, and for people like me, crafting = more of your wasted talents. It also = end of my game/refusal to pay for the full version if your game is focused around it as a means to advance.

It's a four-page thread I posted recently, but it does provide some valuable insight on exporting to Android (in it's present state) in Construct 2. Be aware of the "problems" it poses before you decide to go all-in on your project. -- scirra.com/forum/bottom-line-construct-2-and-the-ouya_topic62988_page1.html

"Problems" aren't the fault of Construct 2 exactly, just in the way it handles exports to mobile. You may not get 1:1 of what you're looking at while you're building the game on your PC. Me personally, I came to the conclusion that "In order to make a well-functioning .exe that doesn't piggy back any unofficial third party plug-ins that you must troubleshoot/wait for their respective development team to iron out, you're best off going for a straight PC Title using Construct Classic. Added benefit that Construct Classic is free, double bonus (for what I'm doing) is that it doesn't rely on HTML5 but rather Direct X 9."

With all that in mind, I've been playing games since 1988. I do like to help pitch ideas as well as give "historical" insight with my large (useless) knowledge of games and stuff that went into their successful and unsuccessful designs. Nothing here's a criticism of you/what you're doing, I'm just trying to help out!

Here goes.

--A Series of Characters w/ Unlockable Skins--

Something that modern "3d titles" have put into people's brains are that "skins are easier to do than all new models". This is NOT true of 2D... the way they got around this for decades (even into the "3d era") was to palette-swap the main character. Most famous example would be Scorpion/Sub-Zero/Reptile/Smoke/Noob Saibot/etc etc from the Mortal Kombat Series.

There are numerous examples of games created where ONE protagonist gains multiple abilities and simply changes color to reflect the upgrade. Consider "Mega Man", "Metroid", "Super Mario Brothers". It wasn't until much later in each series that their protagonist's actual appearance changed, but nobody questioned that "white and red" mario = Fireball, or Pink/Purple Samus was stronger than Yellow/Orange Samus. The big benefit here (for you) is that you only have to create ONE set of animation, and later if you choose, simply recolor them to reflect advancements. If you wanted to, say, include even just ONE additional "character", you are effectively doubling your work in this department and tacking on the additional time to your overall development cycle.

--Breakable Scenery Objects--

Simple stuff. Create the object (let's say it's a glass window), then set it to, upon colliding with your character, destroy and spawn multiple instances of object "shattered glass". Have THEM get destroyed by either falling off screen and choosing the "Destroy Outside Layout" behavior for each glass shard. That means once they fall off screen, they are removed from memory and life goes on.

The big question here is, "of what genre will your game be?" Obviously there are no big sheets of glass to smash through in a prehistoric/cave man title, and there may be better things than glass to use in a deep future/sci fi setting. It'll help if you decide early on what fixed perspective you will implement... Canabalt, for example, was side-scrolling but had a slight (45 degree?) angle about all of the scenery that didn't change. So did the infamous Battletoads motorbike sequence. So did Prince of Persia (the original, not the new stuff. I will rarely refer to new stuff.)

Mega Man did not. Super Mario Brothers did not... but all they were interested in was the platforms, not the objects that you collided with: There were simply blocks and blocks and blocks... If you're looking head-on with the world detail, you may not fully see the "glass plane".

That said, think on this a bit.

--Simple Equippable Item/Inventory System--

Such as? I mean, it's a non-stop running game right? Part of having items/power ups means integrating their use into your LEVEL design. Assuming that your characters will never "fall into a pit because the gap was intentionally made too wide for your standard jump" is, well, cheap. And a dealbreaker in many cases. This creates artificial difficulty, nobody enjoys that.

What makes powerups "work" in a traditional platformer like say, Super Mario World is that "Yes you can fly if you run long enough, then rock back and forward on the D-Pad to maintain/increase/decrease your height. If you fly in the RIGHT places, you can find platforms, 1UPs, or secret stage exits". Apart from something that, maybe, allows you to recover from falling or (if you're planning on this) shake off damage incurred by enemies or certain destructible objects, I find it hard to imagine how power ups would be a "help" to your game. Have a powerup that makes a character run faster, and you'll have to design -all- of your platforms to be able to "catch and release" the player with enough space to facilitate both the standard run speed and enhanced run speed. Same for gaps. By planning some of your stages to have "quick hop" segments (where timing is everything to land on little platforms", you may end up breaking those sections by turning up the speed too much.

Same with a boost for jump height. You may send players "well over" their intended platform, forcing them to fall into a gap following the landing zone.

I'm not saying there's not powerups that -will- work, it's just... "would they work for an endless running game? Or would they work for a platformer? They're two different genres for a reason."

You would have to meticulously design each level to use a powerup featured on that level in order for such a system to pay off and not become an exercise in frustration as players try to use these "boosts" only to discover "that one keeps killing me." Players would eventually take to disregarding those powerups, which means disregarding your hard work. These difficulties are compounded when you consider that you want...

--Randomly Generated Scenery/Terrain--

This goes hand-in-hand with your powerups as, well, randomly generated terrain more-or-less guarantees a standard set of powerups will be useless... or that those powerups will have to be so vanilla that "they all work for all occasions equally". Something like point multipliers, or distance ran multipliers (which for my liking doesn't sit well if distance ran is a factor in your game). Your scenery generator will most likely end up focused on creating seamless levels, and not "levels that encourage powerup usage, and KNOW what powerups the player has when taking tilesets into consideration".

Random is good, it adds a challenge for sure. Nothing wrong with memorization/rhythm, but if random's what you want then be prepared to put in the extra effort to strike a balance between "ever changing" and "meaningful."

--Thoughts That may Help--

Okay, so maybe I -will- mention a modern title. Have you tried the endless running game "Pitfall", based on the Atari 2600 David Crane classic of the same name? The game is an endless runner that shifts between a "behind Harry" view and a "side scrolling" view. Your standard list of commands are to swipe UP to jump, swipe DOWN to duck/slide, and tap the screen to crack your whip (for fending off enemies on the track). When you're in the "behind Harry" view, the same as above, only now you can tilt your device left and right to shift Harry left and right along the track as he runs forward (away from camera).

Of all the endless runners I've played, "Pitfall" is my favorite. By a large margin. Not just because of the art style, but because of how damn varied the gameplay is. As you make your progress, you are constantly coming across new forms of obstacles... bridges with sections missing, hopping on the back of a motorcycle (You can baseball slide with the bike but not jump... hit ramps instead), jumping into a minecart inside a volcano with lava far beneath you (here again you only really have to duck to avoid most obstacles), hopping on top of a bull that smashes through enemies/objects and basically "auto-runs" the level for you for 200 feet or so.

Maybe "Powerups" aren't the way to go. Maybe vehicles? Animal companions? Robots? Spy Gadgets? This would kind of provide the "Feel" of different characters/skins but saves you the effort of providing a full sheet of separate animations by simply keeping each player add-on/companion set to a specific task. A jetpack, for example, could fly you ahead with no effort a set distance. All enemies/hazardous objects can be avoided through normal means (ducking, jumping) but perhaps can be blasted away with a weapon not included with your default character? But even then, for what exactly? Is there going to be a points/rewards system? Extra lives, or what have you? Maybe including the means to DESTROY an object gives you points where avoiding them gives you nothing. That's incentive right there for a player to not only locate the weapon, but learn how to use them.

I'd be happy to bounce the ball back and forward with ya, feller... I can get more specific with more specifics.