u/mudasmudas

I didn't enter with the intention of winning the cash prize or placing in the top ranks. The biggest draw of this jam was getting feedback from a supposed publisher.

The jam, organized by eclipse publishing announced the winners (on its Discord server) one hour before the submission deadline. In addition, the "winners" were instructed to claim their prize in that same message.

When the submissions closed (a little less than two hours later) the judging was completed and the official winners were announced. They were the same three users who had been announced earlier, plus one other participant, with a two-way tie for first place.

- No evaluation criteria were provided

- The jam was removed from itch (it's no longer accessible) its back on

- And both my Discord teammate and I were banned

Minutes later, he deleted all the jam's channels from Discord, accused us of personal harassment via private messages (which didn't happen), and shut down the jam.

I just want to leave this message so that, if you ever come across another jam organized by these "publishers" in the future, you'll be careful.

The JAM: https://itch.io/jam/eclipse-publishingjam

Edit 1.

Current announcement:

https://preview.redd.it/7ko84mkijqth1.png?width=997&format=png&auto=webp&s=6605167c6e00d77a416c5226a7563b340d5e66f0

Archive announcement: https://web.archive.org/web/20260821032723/https://itch.io/jam/eclipse-publishingjam

As you can see, they also removed the prize from there.

I suppose a lot of the answers will depend on each person's perspective or taste, but I still wanted to ask a simple question:

What do you think is an essential feature in any tower defense game?

I'm developing one of these games in my spare time (cause I freaking love TD), and although I'm adding features that I think are essential in any game of this genre (such as being able to see the attack range of my towers), I'd like to know what other fans of the genre think.