Dark Wisps Defence
Open-grid 2D tower defence set in an aberrant sci-fi world
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Preview v0.2The Premise
You wake up in the command center, surrounded by people awaiting your orders. But you don't remember anything. What is this place? What are you supposed to do?
And then they come. The Wisps. Elemental beings set to feast on the Main Base's reactor. Your instincts kick in, and you leave pondering who you are for later — focusing on survival first.
You learn that the Main Base can quantum leap to safety, but interference on the map makes it impossible. You must resolve it first. So you build defensive towers, expand across the map to mine resources, and send expedition drones to investigate the quantum instabilities.
You discover that you can bend the wisps' pathing with careful building placement, and that killing them grants you their elemental essence — essence you can infuse into your towers, evolving them beyond reason.
The Difference
Anomalous Access
Admin Mode
Most games limit your experience to the developer's vision. We go beyond that with ADMIN MODE, which gives you full creative control over how you want to enjoy the game!
Remodel the map mid-run?
Fine.
Give yourself a ton of freebies?
Why not.
Spawn bosses left and right?
Your death.*
ADMIN MODE is a set of editor tools combined with a control panel to modify state and gameplay on the fly. We build these for game development, but instead of throwing them away once the game is ready, we give them to you. Deeply woven into the game. Maybe even too deep? But there's no one to stop us. Yes, ADMIN MODE is Meta.
*Bosses… they may have opinions on your Admin powers.
Core Systems
SYS · 01
The Open Grid
There is no enemy path and no build zone. There is one grid, and you and the wisps are both on it. So every building you place alters their route — whether you planned it or not. Leave them no route at all?*Annoying wisps too much is not recommended. They make one. Straight through whatever you put in the way.
SYS · 02
Essence & Upgrade Shards
Killing a wisp yields its elemental essence. Forge it into upgrade shards, then infuse those into your towers to push them far past their baseline — and far past what was intended.
SYS · 03
Expeditions
Quantum instabilities hold the Main Base in place. You can't shoot them. You can't build over them. But you need them gone, so someone has to go out and look. That's what the drones are for. Send them out and pray to the RNG gods. What they bring back won't always be what you sent them for — we sprinkled a little roguelike in there.
SYS · 04
Energy & Expansion
Wisps are drawn to energy and hunt your producers and relays first. Expanding your operations on the grid means a bigger energy footprint. That means more targets for the wisps. Suddenly you find yourself defending a mini-dungeon of your own creation, against unique wisp paths that are also of your own creation. It's all your fault.
Beyond the Core
- Research, with varying tech trees per scenario
- Essence interactions
- Consumables (tower and map effects)
- Wisps reactive to the environment
- A mind-blowing narrative campaign
- Bosses designed to truly reflect their essence
- Exotic essences
- Unconventional tower types
- Built to handle massive numbers of wisps on the map
The Wisps
Electric
Fire
Water
Light
Many more essences to come!
The Towers
Cannon
- Heavy Ground AoE Damage
- Slow
Blaster
- Single Target
- Fast
Emitter
- Outward Waves
- Debuff
- Slow
Rocket Launcher
- Massive Range
- AoE Damage
- Medium Reload Speed
Field
- AoE Persistent Debuff
- Small Range
Placeholder Art — Waiting for Art Director to appear
Special
Bring Your Own AI Companion
BYOAIC
Spelled BYO‑ICE.Stop. I know the pronunciation doesn't make sense. It's English. It doesn't need to. And it sounds nice.
Have you ever felt tired in a game? Maybe you played Civilization and felt overwhelmed by how much there is to do every turn in the endgame, wondering how nice it would be if someone could do all the micromanagement for you?
We want our game to be AI native in this new era. To give you a companion you can talk to in the game, in text or speech, to give it orders, or just chat. You bring the model, be it a local one or from any cloud provider — you decide if and how you want it.
This is an experiment, so treat it as such. We don't know if it will work well, or at all. But we want to try. We want to give you options.
The AI is for you to use in game as you please. The game itself is being made by a majority‑human team (at least I hope so, reptilians and stuff...)
Call for the team
Would you like to help?
I'm building a team. If you have the skills needed, come and join me! Paid tiers for professionals, and a learning opportunity for people at the beginning of their road.
See who we need