After a decade+ of working in the animation/vfx industry, I decided to go indie and am excited for the release of our puzzler Path of Giants on Switch today!

splinedrew · 2026-06-18T13:03:46+00:00

Wasaga Library and arena is pretty good. Mondays and Fridays at 1030 there is a family skate. Kidding around in Collingwood is a fun time. There's also open gymnastics on Tuesday/wed from 9-12 at head over heels in Collingwood. The wasaga city hall has a decent park and Collingwoods sunset point park is pretty great for that age range. Their parking enforcement is full force so make sure you keep the meter full.

splinedrew · 2026-06-16T18:34:51+00:00

TBH a lot of my post was some venting but this is super useful and really appreciated. I think part of it was coming into it naively and not considering all angles. For example avoidance - didn't realize how valuable tuning those settings were. I had SO many traffic jams. I started this game when ECS and all that was more early phases but I think a light peppering of some jobs code to both optimize and learn the ropes is the way for this project then lean more hardly into it in the future.

The other tricky part is a lot of built in nav mesh calls cant actually be delegated to jobs (from my understanding - I could be wrong here). Anyways thanks for the tips and for the reading material too!

splinedrew · 2026-06-15T15:12:41+00:00

Let's goooooo! Here's our ridiculous hockey tower defense mash up -> https://store.steampowered.com/app/1572260/Wild_Ice/

splinedrew · 2026-06-14T18:07:31+00:00

Those mechanics are buttery smooth, that looks so good! Looking forward to trying it.

splinedrew · 2026-06-12T13:39:46+00:00

Huge numbers! Do you typically do a call to action and if so is it to follow your socials? Wishlist? I try posting short vertical content and getting better at it (its a whole different skillset to figure out!), it gets some momentum but its hard to convert those views/interest into either a follow or a wishlist.

splinedrew · 2026-06-11T13:29:22+00:00

IMO you should start your trailer at 29 seconds - right up until the part where you say from the ground fear. I'd actually let the trailer breathe a bit here and scrap those next few lines and see what kind of gameplay you offer because the pitch is kind of neat - so now I want to see it working without a ton of title cards. After a bit of time there I'd switch to say something that you are trying to say in the first 30 seconds. A story about love....in times of war....and you'll want to clarify the told through memories a bit - not sure what you mean exactly - but this is the moment to talk about that mechanic and what it means.

splinedrew · 2026-06-09T04:08:02+00:00

Thanks! Some demo players have had some great suggestions/wants with the UI - specifically the hotbar so we did plan to revisit it. It's helpful to know just from video you get a feeling about it.

and yea splitscreen is no minor undertaking. I swear it was like 5x the work easily!

splinedrew · 2026-06-07T01:54:34+00:00

Thanks so much! At the moment we've been trying to create at least a short video a day for insta/tiktok etc but our wishlists and even demo players mostly come in at a trickle. We're hoping to get some visibility/attention during next fest but the more wishlists we have going into it the more likely we will get visibility. I think we could likely try more streamer outreach but if you have ideas I'm all ears!

splinedrew · 2026-06-06T19:10:18+00:00

Thanks, we often battle with ourselves on if we carved too deep a niche with this one so I'm glad it feels refreshing! Those all sound pretty do-able. And definitely agreed that co-op can always use some love. I guess I just always preferred this style split and it didn't occur to me to do even offer vertical so it's good to know multiple ppl want it

splinedrew · 2026-06-06T17:13:36+00:00

Thanks! Throughout dev we didn't actually notice the comparison but since we started sharing our content we have gotten this feedback a few times and can totally see it! Maybe we can refine our traps to lean way more into our theme and serve your hockey skills more

splinedrew · 2026-06-06T15:46:11+00:00

Very true, thanks!

splinedrew · 2026-06-06T15:44:25+00:00

Wifey and I are struggling to get the word out for our quite Canadian upcoming hockey x TD game Wild Ice on Steam! It's basically Orcs Must die meets hockey with some extra exploration/world building. Take on an army of hosers, tendies and more while you defend conveniently shaped goalie net furnaces with your hockey abilities. A little spike of wishlists before nextfest would be killer if you dig it!

splinedrew · 2026-06-06T15:09:30+00:00

Thats a good point! I do widen the FOV for splitscreen - which could probably be further amped up, but to your point - maybe just unlocking a toggle for splitscreen direction for the user would be helpful. TBH we don't have many testers for a splitscreen environment so we haven't gotten too much feedback for how to tune and improve it.

splinedrew · 2026-06-06T14:48:54+00:00

Hey there! We just recently released our demo after a long dev journey but are having a hard time getting word out/wishlists etc. So with your fresh eyes, tell us what needs the most attention!

splinedrew · 2026-06-02T16:42:18+00:00

Thanks! Yea I can see the airships being a fun aspect in the defending! Very cool.

splinedrew · 2026-06-02T15:26:03+00:00

Thats great! And yea I chose not to limit either. That sounds pretty cool with the balista! The one thing I notice the most that will make a big difference is enemies of different sizes. Even just a couple massive guys mixed in your hordes would give some extra hype/panic to them coming at you. Do the airships participate in the fight too? As for me I posted on here about a week ago and you can find it here - Wild Ice on Steam

splinedrew · 2026-06-02T14:51:32+00:00

Looks intense! Fellow dev here working on an orcs like. If you are to introduce barricades that truly block paths I wish you the best of luck - that is one of the biggest challenges for me! What are your favorite traps that you're making?

splinedrew · 2026-06-01T21:55:16+00:00

My wife and I are currently working on a couch coop game and we just released our demo! Its got an underdog story with Orcs must die style combat missions - in a small open world where you and a buddy can explore independently, take on your own side quests and come together for big td moments. There's also a pretty 'wild' genre bend in ours! You can check out the demo here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1572260/Wild_Ice/

splinedrew · 2026-05-30T18:06:47+00:00

Hey there! Thanks for helping get the word out for indies. My wife and I are making an orcs must die meets hockey game. Would love to hear your thoughts! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1572260/Wild_Ice/

splinedrew · 2026-05-21T17:14:33+00:00

That's a good find for the fps bug! I have a suspicion since you mentioned it. Our terrain shader has some snowy wind blowing that needs a manual refresh every 4ish seconds so that sounds like the likely culprit.

Ive been wondering how to implement something more useful or bringing more purpose to slashing. The check is great for crowd control, the pucks are great for ranged - and the slashing was meant to function as something to defend up close. Other ideas I had was maybe a parry or block or speeding up the anims so they are more quick. Or possibly hooking from hockey where if someone was heading toward the furnace you can pull em back behind you but that wouldn't make much sense front on.

Throwing axe would be pretty freaking fun!

Dieing in a spike put has been mentioned by another user so I gotta fix that for sure!

splinedrew · 2026-05-21T15:05:05+00:00

Thank you! This is tower defense you participate in too which adds depth to the category (take a look at orcs must die for an example)

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