I want to share my latest mobile game made with Defold:
You Are Zombies – Reverse Tower Defense
About the game
Genre: Reverse Tower Defense / Roguelike / Real-Time Strategy
Platform: Android (Google Play Store)
Status: Released
Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.youarethezombies.reverse.towerdefense
A reverse tower defense game where you play as the zombies and attack human fortifications instead of defending against them.
The core idea is simple: you’re not building towers, you’re overwhelming them with massive zombie hordes.
Why I made this
I’ve played a lot of tower defense games, and at some point I got tired of always being on the same side.I wanted to flip the formula and let players experience the chaos from the attacker’s perspective.
Another big motivation was scale. I really wanted to see how far can I push Defold when it comes to hundreds of zombies, bullets, and effects on screen?
Development background
Engine: Defold
Experience with Defold: ~1 year
Development time: ~2–3 months
After one year with Defold, I felt it was time to challenge myself with a bigger, more ambitious project instead of small prototypes.
Why Defold?
Defold honestly made the whole process very enjoyable.
It let me focus on actual game problems instead of fighting the engine.
Asset ecosystem, especially:
Druid (UI)
Monarch (screen navigation)
AdMob
Google Play Services
defold-event (cross-content event system)
Everything fit together nicely and stayed out of my way.
Technical highlights
One of the main challenges was handling large numbers of game objects efficiently.
I was especially excited to see if Defold could:
- Handle hundreds of enemies simultaneousl
- Keep a stable frame rate on Android
- Avoid nasty performance spikes
Happy to say: it worked really well. Performance was stable throughout, which made balancing and gameplay iteration much easier.
Lessons learned
One thing I’d definitely improve next time is GUI reuse,I already use GUI templates, but I should lean into them even more to:
Avoid code duplication
Speed up iteration
Keep UI logic cleaner
Definitely something I’ll improve in future projects.
Feedback & playtesting
I’d really love:
Feedback on the gameplay and feel
Playtesting
Any thoughts, suggestions, or questions are more than welcome!
Thanks for reading, and huge thanks to the Defold team and community