Why Early Access?

“Sphere TD is a systems-heavy tower defense built around mod routing, buildcraft, and long-term progression. The game is fully playable now — 39 towers, 33 mods (each with tiers, MK upgrades, a B-Side alternate function, and 3 unique perks), 50 core maps, and a world map with around 52,000 procedurally generated nodes. I'm releasing in Early Access because there's a significant amount I still want to build, and I want real players in the loop while I do it.

I'm also building a new class of active mods that give towers active behaviors: melee attacks, self-centered area-of-effect, elemental effects like chain lightning, auras, and support buffs. These unique mods will fundamentally change how tower operates and opens up build combinations that don't exist yet.

Beyond mods, I plan to add tower layout upgrades that let players reshape a tower's layout by moving and removing slots, unlocking more efficient configurations.

The world map is getting expanded with sphere invasion events, boss fights, and online elements including player bases (their custom maps), attacks and defense game mode.

Custom towers and maps — one of the most-requested features — will be implemented. Players can share their creations and let others compete in it.

I'm a solo dev fully committed to my game. I ship updates regularly and I'm always listening. You want it, I'll build it!”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“I expect Sphere TD to remain in Early Access for around 12 months. The exact timeline will depend on development progress, player feedbacks, feature scope and quality. As a solo dev, sometimes it may go slow, but I'm glad you're in it!”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“I plan to add unique mods — mods that change how individual towers fundamentally operate rather than just buffing stats. I also plan to introduce active mods as a new category: effects like melee attacks, area-of-effect centered on the tower, elemental chains, auras, manual targeting, portals... give towers active roles rather than purely passive ones.

On the buildcraft side, I plan to let players modify any tower's mod layout — moving or removing slots to create more efficient and specialized configurations. This opens up a new layer of build strategy and long-term investment for each tower.

For the world map, I plan to add sphere invasion events, and fun online game modes such as player base attack and defense. This will make the world map more dynamic, rather than just static node progressions. I also plan to add custom tower and map editors, so players can experiments with crazy wild builds and share their creations.

Throughout Early Access I'll continue expanding content, refining balance, improving usability, and deepening the progression systems — research, crafting, perk trees, and resource systems — whatever players want really.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The Early Access version is fully playable from start to finish and already contains a large amount of content. It includes 50 handcrafted core maps, each with an endless mode, and a world map with around 52,000 procedurally generated nodes with deterministic layouts, variable paths, and 9 progressive sphere enemy varients.

There are 39 unique towers across multiple fire types — direct-fire cannons, area artillery, continuous lasers — each with different base mod grid layouts and targeting options including first, last, strongest, weakest, nearest, farthest, and ore-priority targeting.

Towers have 12 stats and each projectile has 18, each adjust a parameter such as fire rate, damage, piercing count, slow %... Mods are placed in towers to modify these stats. There's currently 33 functional types in multiple categories: damage, projectile routing and splitting, projectile manipulation, debuffs, area-of-effect, pure stat, elemental modifiers, and resource gathering. Each mod has five tiers from Common to Legendary, a MK level that upgrades its stat lines with tradeoffs, a B-Side that switches it to an alternate function, and 3 unique perks. This is truely 1 tower = 1,000,000 builds.

Enemy spheres scale in complexity through loop-based progression, introducing elites, bosses, armored, shielded, cloaked, flying, and immunity-type spheres across the curve, with exponential stat scaling in endless mode. Your base also has 10 perk series (3 unique perks for each) that boosts tower performance, drone systems, and general mechanics. There's also an 'endgame' advanced crafting system for mods, a trader, and a map performance report, for you to optimize and min-max your builds.

Cloud save and cross-platform progression are also supported.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“I plan to raise the price slightly after Early Access, as there will be lots of new and polished content.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“Discord is where you can chat with me, give feedback, suggest new towers and features, or find the craziest tower builds.”