Below Changelog shows all the changes that were made throughout the development of RetroTD, including the ones that are currently upcoming
Track my development plans right here on this link: [My Kanban]Β
Published to AppStore: 26th of February, 2026
This update focusses on several little annoyences that I had (mini bugs) and adding some cool new features :)
Whatβs new and improved:
Turret Border Color Indicators
The border colors that indicate if updates are possible on the turrets were not always updated properly. Something that has been annoying me for a while. I finally found the culprit and fixed it!
Added bonus, given the refresh only happens when needed (and not in between) it actually reduces a little bit more of the lag :)
In App Purchases changed
In App Purchases now give more diamonds and we added the "Ultimate" pack for the really big spenders.
Rebalanced Gold Mine Research
Oke, this was insanity.. Endless Gold Mine Research gave far to many coins so decided to make these upgrades limited to 100% and somewhat more expensive.
Quick Upgrades!
New feature, when upgrading your turrets, you can now press and hold the upgrade button to perform multiple upgrades quickly in a row. Community request fulfilled :)
Turret Management Menu
It is now possible to double tap a turret to open a management menu with some basic information about the turret and... See the next 2 points what this enables you to do...
Sell your turret
Via the management menu you can sell your turret and get some money back. Handy when you want to place it elsewhere :)
Choose your target, strategize even better
By default, your turret will always choose the enemy closest to your base, but now you can change this behaviour!
Go to your management menu (tap on a turret, twice) and select your targetting priority.
Closest to base (Default), Strongest or Weakest!
Published to AppStore: 26th of February, 2026
This update is 100% focussed on adding a new Game Mode! Endless Mode!
Whatβs new and improved:
New Game Mode > Endless Mode v1.0
From the Main Menu, you can now go into Endless Mode!
Endless hordes of enemies, limited research available...
How far can you go?
Published to AppStore: 24th of February 2026
This update introduces a couple of BUG & UI fixes and the sequel, under de hood, recode effort to make my life easier in the future
Whatβs new and improved:
Bugfixes
- Bottom tiles blocked when UpgradeUI is open
- No haptics when not enough coins to build a turret
- Bottom bar dissapeard when outside of Build/Upgrade UI
- GoldMine showing many upgrade slots while 5 is a hard maximum
- Double selecting turret, blocks the turret from all actions
UI Changes
- Pause Menu icons changed to suit better
- Renamed "Permanent Upgrades" to "Research Center"
- Added links to "Research Center" on specific locations where they make sense
Features
- Permanent Upgrade: GoldMine booster! Increase your yield!
- Permanent Upgrade: Stray bullets will now go for next target instead of die!
- Permanent Upgrade: Get some interest on your coins at the end of each wave!
Others
- Pathing calculations have now been changed, allowing for criss-cross maps (Soon you will see the result)
- More fixes in the background to allow for easier code changes and adding more game modes/features (Finally finished :) )
EXTRA EXTRA!!!
- Added the leaderboard for Endless Mode! Needed to start my testing! (Soon... very soon now...)
Published to AppStore: 22nd of February 2026
This update introduces a couple of UI fixes and a major, under de hood, recode effort to make my life easier in the future
Whatβs new and improved:
Bugfixes
- Affordibility updates not always performed on the right moment
- Blue square when selected is first thicker and then becomes thinner
UI Changes
- Added a button "Review RetroTD" in main menu to get some reviews started :)
- UpgradeUI effect text now shrinks if it becomes to big for the screen
- When "restart" is pressed, you now need to confirm... Just in case
- Pause Menu now has buttons instead of just text... Need to fix the icons still
Others
- Game Speed now has first level free and speeds are changed to 1.0 - 1.5 - 2.0 - 2.5
- Insane LAG fixes done! Finally you can get those turrets build in massive amounts
- A lot of under de hood fixes, not visible, but will help me in adding more game modes more easily :)
Published to AppStore: 15th of February 2026
This update is mainly focussed on getting control over the lag that is introduced when playing the higher levels.
Whatβs new and improved:
Lag Elimination
I introduce to you a completely new targeting system, which works smarter, faster, smoother and most of all... Totally invisible!
Well... It eliminates nearly all of the LAG we have been seeing in the previous versions when building to many turrets, so you will feel it!
Published to AppStore: 11th of February 2026
This update is mainly focussed on getting control over the lag that is introduced when playing the higher levels.
Whatβs new and improved:
CRITICAL BUG FIX
After the new Ads account got approved, it triggered a bug in the code making the App crash on startup. This code was introduced end of January with release 1.3.1 but has been dorment ever since. Found it, fixed it, expedited the approval flow and now you can play your favourite game again :)
BUGFIX! Double boss spawn
In certain situations, boss waves spawned twice, fixed now :)
BUGFIX! Diamonds at end of wave
It was possible to trick the system over and over again and receive the diamonds as many times as you wanted... Fixed this now, no more cheating :)
BUGFIX! To many turrets = Less power
We had an issue that when to many turrets were build, the efficiency would go down and your DPS would actually tank. Fixed now :)
UI: Introduced sprites!
Turrets and enemies are now build from images/sprites, meaning the game doesn't need to render them every frame anymore!
Economy: Changed GoldMines
GoldMines were far to cheap, changing the complete game experience! Per community request, changed the pricing and yield
Code Cleanup
Removed a lot of old and obsolete code, but also added some shared functions to remove double code.
LAG LIMITING!
Whooohooo, I found a way to lower the lag een further by throttling the amount of updates to the healthbars and turret checks.
Published to AppStore: 9th of February 2026
This update is mainly focussed on getting control over the lag that is introduced when playing the higher levels.
Whatβs new and improved:
BUGFIX! Crash on restart
There was a crash when pressing restart after being gameover, found the little bugger and sent it away!
UI Fixes
A couple of small UI fixes, like the background color of the turrets and the + sign behind the diamonds that wasn't aligned nicely
New Map - Crossfire
A new map has been introduced called CrossFire
Rebalancing
As part of the Lag elimination, I slowed down the turrets and enemies, while increasing power for both.
Lag Elimination
Introduced some first tests with throttling bullets. When FPS dips, you will notice that bullets become invisible, but damage still continues.
Published to AppStore: 6th of February, 2026
This update introduces the ability to choose from several different turrets!
Whatβs new and improved:
Choose your turret
Machine gun or Rocket launcher, make your pick! One is fast, the other is strong... Which do you prefer?
GoldMine
Introducing the goldmine, build it to get additional coins at the start of each wave... Get rich or die trying!
Inflation stopped
In the old days, cost of turrets would go up, but we took this part out of the game now.
Uploaded for review: Current Development
Published to AppStore: 4th of February, 2026
This update is mainly focussed on ...
Whatβs new and improved:
Boss HP adjustments
I made the bosses a little easier in the higher levels :) HP Was building up way to fast, making it near impossible.
Select a turret after building it
Whenever you build a turret, it will right away be selected now, ready for upgradesΒ
Main Menu Changes
Some small UI changes in the Main Menu... Pssstt... It also hints towards a soon to come new Game Mode ;)
Map Selection has a new look
All I can say is simply have a look at it! It really became a little piece of art :)
A new map: Switchback!
Another new map added, test your luck with this new beauty :)
More Leaderboards!
Introducing a leaderboard for each map! Become the best on your favourite map and show it off to your friends!
Coding Logic
Oops I did it again...... Yeps... Honey, I shrunk the code... A lot of parts have been moved out of the main game to make it better for reusability. Which I will need very soon!
Published to AppStore: January 29th, 2026
This update is mainly focussed on adding upgrades to increase your speed of progression
Whatβs new and improved:
BUGS!
I don't release often with bugs in the code, but sometimes they slip through! This release, two of the buggers were found
Damage Upgrades are 10% from base damage, but this should have been 10% from current amount.
Weekly Leaderboard wasn't working... Now it is...
Permanent Upgrade added: Increase starting coins
I added the ability to increase your coins at the start of a new game.
Permanent Upgrade added: Double rewards on the Bosses
Normally you would get 5 coins and 1 diamond per boss kill, but you can now double this up to 10 coins and 2 diamonds. Savings go up a lot faster!
UI: Permanent Upgrades Menu has been re-ordered
With the new upgrades and the ones that are still to come, there was a need to shuffle things around a bit.
Logic: Code refactor
As preparation for new Game Modes that will be released in the coming weeks, I am changing a lot of logic within the code so it can reuse certain parts easier. Saves a lot of searching and double coding in the future.
Published to AppStore: January 28th, 2026
This update is mainly focussed on improving the smoothness of the gameplay and making it a little more fair to play!
Whatβs new and improved:
Battery Drain & Game Smoothness
Made some changes to the code to increase the smoothness of the game, especially in the higher waves (See next point).
Cap on enemy count
As part of the smoothness, I implemented some changes on the Spawn logic. First, we cap the amount of enemies at a maximum of 25, but starting wave 25, the increase in HP per enemy goes faster. Also, Bosses now spawn in addition to the standard enemies, not as part of the wave count.
Preparations for Google Admob replacement!
For some reason I got a temporary block from Google Admob (invalid traffic, probably due to testing), so decided to also implement UnityAds as a backup. If one of the two doesn't load, the other will take over. For now only preparation as the account is still pending approval.
UI Updates
Many UI Updates have been done
Upgrade HUD is now optimized to play the game with 1 hand (right handed people). At a later stage an option will be introduced to make it left handed as well :)
Map Select Scene has been updated a little, just to make it look a bit nicer
Leaderboard on the main menu has been updated
Highscores per map
With the new maps, it now shows your highscore per map on the Map Select Scene. Later on I will introduce Leaderboards per map as well.
NEW MAP! SideWinder
The 4th map is now live! SideWinder! Left, right, left... Swirl through the waves!
Practice this one good as soon it will be the base map for a new game mode ;)
Permanent Upgrades
The cost for some of the upgrades were simply not logical, so I made some adjustments here.
Coding Updates
As with any release, some code refactoring has been done again to make it more logic, clean it up and all those kind of things.
Published to AppStore: January 25th, 2026
This update focusses on solving some small minor irritations I have as a player, but also introduces 2 new maps and the preparation for new game modes!
Whatβs new and improved:
Release Overlay!
Whenever your game gets updated, you will now see a nice overlay when you start the app telling you exactly what changed. No worries, it will only show once.
Your GameSpeed is now memorized!
When you restart the app or start a new game, you will right away start with the Game Speed you left off with. No more endlessly tapping that button!
Ads work again!
As always with new apps, Google AdMob put a limitation on the viewing of ads. This has now been resolved and ads are starting to flow!
Main Menu changes in preparation for new game modes
With a new Game Mode coming very soon, I already prepared the Main Menu and made some space!
2 Shiny new maps! A major update!
You can now enjoy 2 shiny new maps and more will be released very soon!
Background coding refactoring/logic
I made some heavy duty changes in the code to cope with multiple maps and different game modes. As a result, I made the map processor a lot smarter and more flexible and now I can release new maps in pretty much every release... Expect many more of them..
Uploaded for review: January 18th, 2026
Published to AppStore: N/A
This update focuses on progression pacing and polish, making early runs feel more rewarding, while keeping the challenge intact. Based on playtesting and community feedback, especially around early-game difficulty.
Whatβs new and improved:
π Double boss spawn (#222)
When paused at a certain moment, bosses would spawn twice. This has now been fixed.
π Leaderboard update after score (#251)
When you get gameover with highscore, the leaderboard didn't update.
π Bullets never hit (#252)
In combination with 2x speed, bullets skip a few pixels, making them hover over the enemy endless.
π¨ Main Menu Renewal and Polishing (#169, #226)
Full Main Menu has been upgraded with fresh new buttons and a Global Leaderboard!
π¨ Permanent Upgrade Renewal and Polishing (#224)
Full Permanent Upgrade Overlay has been upgraded with a nice, category based, tab system. Much more space for many more Upgrades that will arrive soon :)
β¨ Added Permanent Upgrade Type: Game Speeds (#180)
On my personal wishlist, increase the speed of the game! You now have the option to unlock gamespeed 1.25x, 1.50x and 2.00x.
β¨ Added Game Center Leaderboards (#187)
Already added in the background, but now you can actually see your ranking on the Global Leadership boards!
βοΈ Balancing... (#253)
Now that we have some first players that are getting a little further, it also shows that the increase in HP for especially the giants and bosses was maybe a little bit to insane.
Published to AppStore: January 16th, 2026
This update focuses on progression pacing and polish, making early runs feel more rewarding, while keeping the challenge intact. Based on playtesting and community feedback, especially around early-game difficulty.
Whatβs new and improved:
π¨ Diamond Store UI polish (#243)
Minor UI tweaks have been applied to the Diamond Store to improve clarity, feedback, and overall usability.
Small changes, but they make upgrading smoother and more intuitive.
βοΈ Balancing adjustments (#228)
Enemy HP scaling has been smoothed out, reducing steep difficulty spikes in earlier waves.
The game remains challenging, but progression now feels more gradual and fair β with permanent upgrades helping you push further step by step.
βοΈ Diamond progression improvements (#230)
More Boss enemies have been added, allowing players to earn diamonds roughly twice as fast during normal gameplay.
Diamond rewards from Ads and IAPs have also been increased, reducing early-game grind and making progression feel more rewarding.
Published to AppStore: January 9th, 2026
This update expands permanent progression and improves clarity β with deeper upgrades, clearer feedback, and smarter foundations for the future.
Whatβs new and improved:
π Background Pause issue (#191)
Still had a small little bug hiding when the app went into the background. Found this little bugger now as well :)
π Turret status stayed grey after deselect (#192)
All turrets update their status color after one gets deselected again.
β¨ Added Permanent Upgrade Type: Additional turrent upgrade slots (#177)
You can now permanently unlock extra upgrade slots per turret, allowing for deeper and more flexible builds over longer runs.
β¨ Added Permanent Upgrade Type: Upgrade the HP of your Base (#185)
You can now permanently increase the HP of your base, giving you the ability to sustain even more damage!
β¨ Added Permanent Upgrade Type: Restore Base HP after end of wave (#196)
Hate it when your Base gets damaged? You can now but permanent upgrades to make it restore a little bit after each wave.
π¨ High score visibility (#172, #188)
Your personal high score is now visible directly in the main menu, making long-term goals more prominent. On top of this, you will notice your score becoming a pulsing green when you hit your high score In-Game!
π¨ Turret UpgradeUI Clarity (#134)
The upgrade interface has been redesigned for better readability and structure, showing current values, next upgrade impact, available slots, and costs in a clearer layout.
π¨ Turret Styling (#166, #182)
Nothing fancy, but the turret now shows the level of upgrades it has and colors based on availability of upgrades. Clarity is key.
π¨ Permanent Upgrades UI design (#175)
With the new Permanent Upgrades, the Permanent Upgrades UI became very much cluttered. Decided to make it a bit more clean with proper text sizing and spacing. Later we will redo it with nice buttons, but for now it is clean and clear again.
π¨ General UI fixes (#133, #193)
Mostly minor little updates on general UI. Nothing fancy, just some stuff that irritated me as the developer and player of the game. (OCD stuff)
βοΈ Better performance under the hood (#190)
Removed unused and duplicate legacy code to keep the game lean and responsive and split the code in separate files for ease of coding.
βοΈ Foundations for GameCenter integration (#150, #189)
Preparations for the Leaderboards has begun! Your Highscore will now be stored both locally as well as in your GameCenter profile!
βοΈ Disabled iPad support for now (#220)
Given the UI is designed for iPhones, not for iPads, I decided to disable the support for iPad for the time being until I get some more information and time to also design specifically for iPads.
βοΈ More balancing tricks
This one you will see pretty much every release... Balancing the base power, upgrade percentages, costs etc to make the gameplay as fair and challenging as possible. (Not to easy, not to hard...)
Published to AppStore: 08 January 2026
This update focuses on continuity, balance, and reliability β so the game feels fairer, clearer, and more dependable every time you play.
Whatβs new and improved:
π Pause reliability
Waves now fully stop when the game is paused and continue correctly after resuming.
π Pause reliability improvements
Enemy waves now resume correctly after pausing the game, maintaining proper spacing between enemies and preventing overlapping spawns.
π Turret range preview stays accurate
Range previews now update correctly after buying permanent upgrades, preventing outdated visuals during gameplay.
π Bullet behavior after pause fixed
Rare cases of bullets appearing from unexpected directions after resuming the game have been resolved, ensuring consistent and predictable turret fire.
β¨ Pick up where you left off
You can now resume your game exactly where you stopped after closing the app.
β¨ More rewarding upgrades
Turret upgrade costs have been lowered, allowing you to experiment and improve your defenses more freely.
π¨ Permanent upgrades feel more achievable
Upgrade pricing has been rebalanced from Fibonacci-based scaling to a linear model, making long-term progression feel fair and predictable.
π¨ Consistent Diamond Store pricing
Prices now always display in USD for clarity and consistency.
π¨ More reliable ads experience
Ad buttons are automatically disabled when ads arenβt available, preventing failed interactions.
π¨ Safer in-app purchases
Purchase buttons are disabled if in-app purchases arenβt ready, reducing errors and confusion.
βοΈ Better performance under the hood
Removed unused legacy code to keep the game lean and responsive.
βοΈ Smoother difficulty progression
Boss health scaling has been reduced, making late waves challenging without feeling overwhelming.
βοΈ More consistent enemy spacing
Enemy spawn timing is now dynamically adjusted based on enemy speed, keeping fast enemies from spreading too far apart and slow enemies from clumping together.
βοΈ More balanced permanent upgrades
Permanent upgrade bonuses are now tuned per stat, allowing better long-term balance and progression.
βοΈ Clearer progression visibility
The version number shown in the app now always reflects the actual installed version.
Published to AppStore: 02 January 2026
π The beginning of Retro TD π
The initial public release, introducing the core tower defense experience.