Concepting Tower Defence Levels

Continuing from my last post, i'm applying my rudimentary knowledge of tower defence map design, to concept some stages for our game to use (most likely in the future).

(Tip) the blue spots (yellow in the last two) are all possible build spots.

The top left is the revised design that James made following the feedback, with three lanes into the forest for the enemies to come down, and a wide open field to place lots of places to put defences. additionally instead of being placed at the top and bottom of the board respectively, the castle and forest are placed on the corners, putting more space on the screen and providing a more interesting board dynamic.

Second on the left, we discussed the idea of further levels progressing into the forest, with the idea that the humans were pushing into the monsters territory. For this i established the castle as the main goal to protect, with a stark contrast between the human areas and the forest. Additionally inside the forest is a village or encampment, showing the progress into the forest while also doubling as a secondary base that can have lots of buildings set up around it. This could be used as a bonus objective on whether you can fight the monsters of with only the first 'tier' of defences.

Third on the left is something i played around with based on the circular designs in other titles, using the castle again as a centerpiece, but with only one entrance capture the feel of responding to all the routes enemies 'could' enter from, thus resulting in more active play, with the reliance that the players can also see the paths the enemies need to go down.

Bottom left is an expansion on the idea of remote bases, the idea that there is one big base (the castle) and three smaller towns or settlements that all have build spots around them. The idea of secondary objectives can give players more things to think on. Additionally we could experiment with using the towns as the primary defences, with there being a lack of build spots until nearby the castle, giving a sense of anxiety to the player in that space where they cannot hurt the enemy.

Top and Second Left are a small departure in terms of map design, but more a concept for the location for a map as a whole, since we're integrating a 'child's world' as a heavy aspect of world design, i wanted to envision some alternate locations that could be used in later stages, for this i came up with some more verticle motif's - playing on the stairs with makeshift ramps, and the open draws of a deskspace. i feel like these would cover both believable locations for a child of play, but also provide new elements of play with the height differences.

Third on the left is a canyon design, a twisting winding path for the monsters to draw out their presence on the board, whilst also providing easy spaces to place the defences, the would be a more easy map since the the defences have an advantage of placement, but would still make for fun viewing with the monsters moving in and out of view.

Finally my last concept involved using environment elements in conjuncture with game balance. Firstly the castle has three paths coming from it, two of those go into the forest, but the kingdom itself has a barricade of rubble around itself. The rubble would be a degradable element that the monsters would attack to open up the path. This would allow us to throw alot of enemies at the players to scare them, but have them be unable to immediately kill the player, giving the player time to whittle down their defences.
Secondly the path leading downwards could bring the player extra supplies to help them start, but as a twist also have enemies come down mid level to surprise the player. Here i wanted to provide an interactive map that had changing elements throughout the game.

Hopefully some of these concepts were interesting to you.