Month: August 2022

Game idea

For the July period of the Game Camp, our team decided to try creating a simple top-down tower defense game. We figured that the scope for the game would be reasonable to be completed within a month. All of us had played a tower defense game at some point and the basic gameplay aspects were easy to understand, all we had to do was to implement them properly. We did consider a few different games to be used as our main reference (like “Plants vs. Zombies), but decided to stick with more “traditional” approach.

The gameplay consists of enemies spawning from the bottom of the map and player placing different defensive towers on available spots on the map. The goal is to keep the enemies from reaching the exit on the top left of the map. Unlike many other tower defense games where enemy attacks are implemented in separate waves, in this game the flow of enemies is constant.

Development

We had several changes to the game during July, especially regarding the gameplay. We made small additions and gradual implementations to the weekly builds of the game so that we could monitor and adjust things in an orderly manner. Especially bug fixes became an early focus for the development process, since adding code from different programmers is not always as straight forward as one could expect.

We managed to try different mechanics and additions like mouse camera controls and tower purchase/upgrade menus. Probably the biggest difficulty was finding a proper way to balance the game so that things would not be too easy or hard. This required hours of testing and adjusting, but fortunately we also learned to implement our game elements to be easily adjustable. Also one of the major head aches was the functionality between the enemy pooling system and the tower targeting, these two components did some serious voodoo magic at some point that forced us to figure out how to use these two together without literally breaking the game.

On a general note, this project was pretty fruitful in terms of learning experience. We have not released the build to the public (and probably will not, the game still needs some polishing) but regardless it is a decent game for a Game Camp project.

Team members:

Matti Nurmi – Programmer
Pasi Sundelin – Programmer
Joni Honkanen – Programmer
Ossi Hela – Graphic Designer, Effects
Vilma Törmälä – Graphic Designer

No download yet, game still in development but it’ll be here… eventually

Game idea

You adopt a pet which isn’t like how you expected it to be, though you don’t really mind it. Like any pet yours requires food and affection to thrive. Other than that you’re not sure what else to expect. The most important thing however is that you have given your new pet a loving home.

KitsuCare is a virtual pet game for Android. Currently there’s basic care (feeding, petting and a pet sitter for when you’re busy) in the game. There’s also a minigame you can play to earn in-game currency and one functional item you can buy with it. You also have stats and achievements you can look at in the game. Only some of the endings have been implemented so far.

Development in 2022 (been in development since 2020)

After getting more feedback I realized some of my design choices were still well… bad (or at least too unintuitive), so I changed some of them for the better. Surprisingly many things needed to be tweaked and there were also some bugs I needed to fix. At the start of Game Camp, I thought that I would work on my game’s endings during most or at least half of it. Turns out even minor improvements take surprisingly long to implement, so most of Game Camp was actually spent on those and finishing working on one unfinished feature.

What you think you’ll work on next will be delayed for a while if you discover bugs or improvements that are a clear improvement in your game. I’ve learned not to give a release estimate after the two earlier years of KitsuCare’s development. The important thing is that I’m still developing it and getting closer to eventually releasing it.

My next priority is implementing the endings. After that it could at least technically be called a finished game and I at least imagine it’ll stop feeling like an unfinished game. At this point most of the work for this game is already done, which has made me patient with making tweaks and improvements. I want to release a game I will be proud of having made.

After implementing the endings I can start thinking about what features would be a nice bonus to a game that is otherwise ready. I’ve gotten great suggestions for potential extra content, and I’d definitely like to have them in my game (though I am a one-person-team and will think more about if I will add more content later and what would it be).

Team

Juniper Julkunen – developer

Game idea

Roguelike arena FPS

We started brainstorming with the team from the viewpoint of what the coders would like to work on. Our main programmer is into fast-paced first person shooters, so that was what we based our ideas on.

Since online PvP did not really feel like an option, we ended up going for a roguelike arena, where more AI enemies would spawn in waves. We wanted two different types of enemies, one that would come up to the player (all close and personal) and another to shoot from the distance. A bit of variety, yeah?

The graphic style and art of the game was pretty quickly decided, since many artists of our team really enjoy cyberpunkish sci-fi style, robots and neon colours.

Development

I started development with the movement mechanics since that can be hard to get right in unity. I mostly followed a tutorial i found on youtube. It has some downsides and i had to make some adjustments but overall it felt like a good choice. After i was happy with it i moved on to weapons. For weapons i picked common and easy to code things. I was heavily inspired by games like Doom and Ultrakill.

Samu Lehtineva, lead programmer

Additional shaders and particle effects were added in Unity, but most of the 3D assets were developed and animated using Blender and then imported into the Unity project. Trying to get Unity and Blender to play nicely with one another was at times challenging, and we had to sometimes accept that “turn it off an on again” is as good an answer as we are going to get! We had separate 3D artists for the environment assets and the player character / enemies. The design of the player character is a complete character, even though in-game the only visible bits are the hands and guns.

Team:

Ada, Coral, Ere, Erika, Siiri, Samu, Danielle

Samu Lehtineva – Lead Programmer
Daniella Azouer – Programmer

Siiri Syvänen – Lead Artist, Unity Art, Sound design
Ada Ikonen – Environment & Level Design, 3D Artist
Coral Nguyen – UI Artist
Ere Kreula – 2D Artist, Concept Art, Sound design
Erika Markkinen – Supreme Animator, Character & Gun Artist, Environment Art

Game is still under development. It will be available on itch.io, stay tuned folks!

You can download the game here!

Game idea

Play in a wonderful and soft dreamworld, defending the innocent dreamer against gruesome nightmare incarnations! Plant super cute towers to stop the monsters from getting through and ruining the lovely dream! Try to manage your money to handle bigger and bigger waves of even scarier monsters! Use different towers to counter different nightmare creatures!

Development

The development started with the concept of nightmare vs dreamworld tower defense game. We wanted to have gruesome monsters and cute critters in the same game as it would make all the parties happy. We also had some very specific technical things we wanted to use, like automatically generated tilemaps and a pixel graphic filter on top of 3D-models. We started very early with some concept art of the towers, the monsters, some moodboards and planning of color palettes. 

Though the start’s motivation began to fade after the initial weeks, we still managed to turn out a pretty awesome game. Of course, as with every game, our initial scope was too large and we had to cut out some amazing ideas. They included things like a spreading corruption that visually showed how far the enemies had gotten, a couple more towers and a backstory with a sleeping child whose dreams the towers were protecting.

Team

Programmers:
Kaarlo Kangas
Ville Karilainen

Artists:
Emma Erjanne
Mikko Nystedt
Liisa Pirhonen