Time Towers
A tower defence game designed around the theme of "cinema" for the 1st year group project
2015
Unity
PC
Team Project
Task
In the second trimester of first year we began our very first group project (uh oh) For this, we were put into groups of 5 or 6; ideally with 2 designers, 2 programmers and 2 artists. From there, we were given a briefing and task which would determine what we would be working on for the next 12 weeks. For that year, we received the task of creating a tower defence game with the theme of "cinema" and were left to interpret and design it as we pleased.
Our group consisted of 2 designers (1 being myself), 2 artists and 1 programmer. In addition to this, we were able to get a musician externally who was able to produce some awesome music tracks for the game. The general concept for our game was a series of levels that would be part of a film series. To try and make the game and levels seem interesting (and accidentally triple our art workload) we decided to base the game around a time traveller who would travel to different time periods - hence the name "Time Towers" came about. The core tower defence mechanics of the game would remain the same and the difficulty may vary, however, the main change would be the art style.
This came with mixed success.
Since we were still very new to producing a game as a team, the process was very rocky but very insightful. In terms of producing the design concepts and documentation, we felt we were able to produce this comfortably, albeit we felt extremely limited by the genre and theme of the game. As such, we felt and understood the struggle of creating something that was new, exciting and different in a short space of time and that playing it safe is sometimes the best approach to take.
My Roles
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Worked with the team (primarily the other designer) to produce initial design concepts and plan
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Led and managed the production of the project and members (primarily via Trello)
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Designed, produced and implemented the user interface and menu / setting scenes for the game
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Set up the game audio with settings for adjusting the volume by type
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Worked with our programmer to ensure systems were working correctly and consistently within the game
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Produced a game design document and other related accompanying documentation with our other designer
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Constructed the basic framework and layout for the levels in Unity
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Set up and implemented created art assets into Unity
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Incorporated changes based on feedback received from playtesting
As part of our submission, we had to create a presentation detailing the journey and process of our game. The slides are optionally available for viewing as a .pdf here: click here
User Interface
One of my main roles for this project was producing the user interface for the game. Since we were producing a tower defence game, one of my main concerns was the amount of information that we would need to convey to the player whilst ensuring the screen remained clean and readable. Conveniently, we were able to ensure a strong contrast between the game and the UI through the use of white icons and text and the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. I decided this was a good decision to make as we were trying to replicate each level as being a scene in a film being viewed at a cinema. Since most films tend to have a letterbox-esque aspect ratio, the black bars conveniently replicated this.
Nevertheless, I had to be cautious with the positioning of the UI elements, ensuring that there was a good amount of space between group elements and ensuring that players understood the function of each element. The UI in practise was met with mixed success, with some players understanding clearly whilst others had some minor confusions with what towers they were spawning. Like most playtesting feedback, the feedback was valuable, however, due to the short amount of time we had to get the game into a finished state, these changes were unable to be implemented.
The main game UI, main menu, options screen, level select screen and the placeholder tutorial / guide screen are provided below:
Trailer
As part of our submission, we were required to create a short trailer as part of our final presentation. Using a leftover track from an cut level and some footage of the game, I strung together a simple trailer: