Day 25: Designing Wave Systems & Game Flow | Godot Tower Defense Devlog

Day 25 of my 60-day learning challenge with the Godot game engine.

Today was a slower, more reflective day — less coding, more thinking. I spent time wrapping my head around wave design and the overall game loop for a tower defense game.

Rather than rushing implementation, I wanted to clearly define how waves should feel to play before locking myself into code.

In this video, I talk through:
• Why I’ve been delaying waves and why it’s finally time
• A 10-wave structure per level
• Initial prep time before Wave 1 (15–30 seconds)
• Break phases between waves for upgrades, selling, and repositioning
• Optional “Start Wave” button vs forced countdown
• Scaling difficulty across waves and across levels
• Boss inclusion in the final wave
• Using resources to define wave data per level
• WaveData + WaveEntry concepts (enemy type + count)
• Shuffling enemy spawns within a wave for variation
• Thinking ahead to a wave state machine (prep → active → break → complete)
• Designing the game loop instead of just mechanics

This is all about building the foundation correctly so waves feel intentional, readable, and fun — not just “enemies spawning faster.”

Next up: actually implementing waves, state transitions, and seeing how this feels in play.

Thanks for hanging out — sometimes the thinking days matter the most.