Final Intercept

I wanted to build a defense game. The kind where things are falling from the sky and you're the only thing stopping them. Click where you want your interceptor to go. It flies up. It explodes. Anything caught in the blast is gone. Simple. Except I couldn't stop there.

There are six cities. I named them. Haven, Atlas, Nexus, Oasis. They talk to you. When one gets rebuilt after you hit a score milestone, it says 'We're back.' When there's only one left, time slows down and everything goes quiet for a second. I didn't plan that. I was testing and it felt wrong when the last city died without warning. So I gave you a breath. I guess you could say the stakes really... escalated.

The chain reactions are what make this game. Your explosion kills a missile. That missile explodes. That explosion kills two more. Those explosions kill three more. The score multiplier doubles with each layer. I've seen six-deep cascades that clear the entire screen. The sound engine plays ascending notes for each chain depth. It sounds like a piano falling up a staircase. I spent way too long on that.

Between waves you pick upgrades. Gravity wells that pull missiles into your explosions. Scatter shots that fire three at once. A cryo field that leaves slow zones on the ground. An auto-turret that shoots for you when you're overwhelmed. Every combination plays differently. I keep telling myself I'm done adding things. I am not done adding things.