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