This game is really difficult to get the hang of at first, and even after I "got it" the challenge remained high. :) I still haven't seen a boss, yet. Too busy frantically trying to stay alive/kill things/create more units/towers... It's kind of a hectic experience, but I couldn't put it down while it was going.

I did fix the dialogue bit, thanks. No time for anything else, I'm afraid. I really appreciate all the help you've been able to provide so far! I'm now submitting my entery...

(I had a full response written, but hit CMD+R by accident instead of CMD+T. So I lost all of that time. grrrr)

Yes! The attributions information would be super-super handy!

• Sorry about that. I forgot to update the chest contents on the island when I added the description field for the dialog. It's fixed in the repo.
• The snakes are ridiculously difficult. They were supposed to be a pushover mob, too! I'll decrease their speed and vision range for sure, but I want another semi-powerful mob to keep the balance. The only idea I have at this point is the bat from the base assets. Mainly because it will be really quick.
• I haven't seen the snakes move slower when Rachel gets out of sight. But I like that idea as well. I can very easily add two speeds to angry NPCs; a normal roaming speed, and a faster hunting speed. When they lose sight, they'll revert to the slower roaming speed for the remaining leg to their destination, which is the last position they saw their target. That should be about the same effect.
• I ssooooo wanted to add this! I was worried the friendly NPCs would go out looking for trouble, though... They'll attack snakes even if the snakes don't see the NPC. And if I give snakes a smaller window of vision, it will really look like the NPCs are more aggressive than the snakes. :P When an NPC becomes angry, it simply turns into an enemy. So the snakes become friendly to an angry NPC. It's silly, but fun!
• Saving state between map changes is something that has been on my TODO list for a long time. It's just going to be difficult to implement properly. And I don't have time for that. I will just have to fake it. :\ It needs to be done.
• There are a lot of little sound effects added recently! Almost all of them were generated by cfxr. I've had really poor luck when it comes to finding decent sound effects. I spent two days looking for an award jingle for when when Rachel collects and item. The one I have if thebest I could find, and I don't think it fits well. :( That's why I turned to auto generated sounds.
• SFX for NPCs taking damage has been done very recenlty. I think RIGHT after last night's blog update. They all "squeek" when attacked and dying. It's not perfect, but it is kind of cute.
• Also something I noticed and did not like, myself. Preventing any action during a transition was a workaround for interrupting the transition and causing it to look ugly.
• Nice! I'll have to do that... I should also remove the front door on the inside, to match what I did with rachels_house.tmx

And yeah, I emailed Radomir a week ago to ask if he could help me with some sprites. He actually created two more that I'm now using! George and Betty (renamed Jessica for the story). He also has a "character creation kit" (a fantastic idea!) for download on his site, but it won't work because the dimensions don't match.

That mallet sound effect is great! I had to break it into two pieces to get it sync'd with the animation, but it fits really well. Weapons support multiple sound effects (chosen randomly at play-time) so if you can come up with one (or two!) more, I would really be into that!

Here's some story details, and background info on Rachel:

Rachel is 15 years old. She grew up hearing stories of a strange island called "Neverwell", told by her grandfather ("Poppa" to Rachel). Rachel was 5 at the time, and the stories were always something adventurous and entertaining. Poppa would tell her about the inhabitants of the island, and how they could perform magic. He would fight monsters while hunting for treasures buried in deep caves. There were so many details in his stories that he had to set some of his adventures on smaller islands around Neverwell.

Poppa died shortly after, and it's been 10 years, so she doesn't remember all of the stories he told. But she remembers important details like the eponymous moor, which was a very dangerous place, but that it held some kind of secret... Perhaps the secret to the inhabitants magic? But that was a long time ago, and they were just stories. Everyone knows there is only one island, and they call it "Earth."

So Rachel sets off on a day like any other, but, feeling a little adventurous, she decides to help a friend. That kind gesture leads to a series of quests which eventually lands Rachel on Neverwell; a place that isn't supposed to exist...

That's it! A little something for your appetite. That's just about as much as I can get done within the remaining time, so ... yeah.

And a piece of trivia: the character Rachel is actually based on a real life friend of mine.

D'OH! I just now noticed that I completely forgot to commit the baddies AI source. :( I blame literal lack of sleep... That explains the error in the snapshot. It's in the repo now, so if you can run the game from source, you can test your maps on it now.

I just finished the weapons integration (Rachel can defend herself! Hooray!) so I'm pretty much ready to do some more mapping, myself. I'll pick up your maps and try to integrate. Don't worry too much about learning to write rules for automapping; it's a pain to get right with complex patterns. But you can use the rules I already have setup! Just open the "earth.tmx" map (you should clone the git repo, so the directory structure is the same. That will solve your problem with Tiled directory handling) and press the "A" key to run automapping. You'll see some of the grass tiles and sand tiles randomly change to verify it's working. Just look at the two layers called "set" and "set_trees"; those layers define how the automapping will generate the other layers.

The tiles on the two set layers are VERY important: For grass, you must use the flat green tile in the "grass" tileset. For sand, it's the sand tile in the same position, but on the "sand" tileset. Ditto for the dirt. The "dirt2" tileset is NOT used yet. For trees, use the first trunk tile in the "trunk" tileset on the set_trees layer. And there are some spacing rules to get trees to work properly: There must be at least two horizonal spaces between each tree, and at least one vertical space. For anything that is not one of these supported tiles, use any tile EXCEPT the "no tile" (eg. don't use the eraser!) I used the blank water tile in the the "watergrass" tileset.

You can imagine why it's so difficult to write the rules... So many limitations.

Anyway, THANKS for your help on the map! Where do you think the roads will lead? :)