Penguins & Platapi

How to Play

Welcome to the game! Your goal is to defend your territory from waves of elemental platapi (enemies) by strategically placing and managing your team of powerful penguins.

The Basics

• Objective: Prevent platapi from reaching the left side of the screen.
• Resources: Your blue fish farms (resource producer) automatically generate resources over time. Use these resources to place new towers.
• Towers: Use the UI panel on the side to select which type of tower you want to place (Ranged, Melee, Tank). Each tower costs a certain amount of resources.

The Loop and Cycle

The game is played in Loops, and each Loop is made up of six Cycles.

• The Clock: The "Next Cycle" timer at the top of the screen is your guide. When this clock reaches zero, the current Cycle ends and a new one begins.
• At the Start of a New Cycle:
  1. All enemies on the board will advance a set number of tiles.
  2. A new wave of enemies will spawn.
  3. The special rows for placing and swapping towers will rotate.
• Loops: After six Cycles, a full Loop is completed. The difficulty will increase, with more enemies spawning and your fish farms becoming more powerful!

Elemental System

• Elemental Cycles: Each Cycle is tied to one of the four elements: Fire, Water, Earth, or Air. The highlighted row will change color to show you the current element.
• Elemental Placement: You can only place towers that match the element of the current Cycle.
• Elemental Combat: Platapi of the same element will also spawn. Pay attention to their weaknesses!
  • Water is strong against Fire.
  • Fire is strong against Earth.
  • Earth is strong against Air.
  • Air is strong against Water.
  • Air/Earth strengths dont make sense, but I felt GMTK game jam submission pressure :)

Unique Mechanics

• Placeable Row: You can only place towers in the single row highlighted with the current elemental color. This row moves down by one each Cycle, looping back to the top at the start of a new Loop.
• Row Swap: An indicator on the left shows the "swappable" row, which moves up by one each Cycle.
  • Right-click on a swappable row to select it as a swap point.
  • You can select up to two rows.
  • When the next Cycle begins, all towers in your two selected rows will instantly swap places! Use this to reposition your defenses and gain a tactical advantage.

Good luck, and defend your ground!