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TowAR Defense

Description

Aliens are invading ancient civilizations, and the only way to stop them is with the magical towers. Take control of them using your phone's camera and real life playing cards, and stop the alien invasion in its tracks!

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This game started as an AR prototype that was developed into a full game by a 10-person team. Given our short development time of 15 weeks (6 sprints), we assigned roles, developed our product backlog, and got to work on tasks.

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This game demonstrates my skill at production (I had the role of producer), level design, game design, UI design, and scripting. Compared to my other games, this one better demonstrates my technical knowledge and ability to rapidly transition to new plans and sprints when issues arose.

Description

My Roles

Producer

As Producer, I managed our spreadsheets and tasks, checked in with team leads, led stand-up meetings, and tracked the number of hours each team member worked per week. 

Combat Designer

I balanced the combat systems and scripts that control the towers, charging stations, and enemies to provide a fun but challenging level of gameplay.

Game Designer

As part of the design team, I designed the mechanics, tower types, enemy types, and charging stations. I also worked on adding scripts and fixing the build when it .

Android Build Engineer

I worked on making an android build and keeping it up to date. I also worked with the engineering team to implement and fix scripts, make loading screens, and verify the build worked.

Level Designer

I designed level 1 and worked with the design, art, and engineering teams to bring the level to life with textures and animations.

UI Design

I worked with the art team to design and build the UI, including menus, win and lose screens, and loading screen visuals. I also wrote scripts to provide the required UI functionality.

Narrative Designer

I worked on the story premise and wrote text and dialogue lines. I also worked with the art and audio teams to make the models, music, and textures fit the level narratives.

Design Documents

Game Design Document

The game first started as a prototype a student made for a previous class. We used it as a base for  the game, and set out to  write a GDD for our first sprint.  The whole team got together for several design sessions, and we figured out our game mechanics, theme, art styles, and audio implementation.

Technical Design Document

After writing the GDD and figuring out the Minimum Viable Product of the game, the Engineering team wrote the TDD  for the game.

My Roles
Design Docs

Levels

Our original game idea was going to have 3 levels with distinct art styles, audio tracks, and models. The first level would have a sandy Egyptian theme with a  Jazz soundtrack, the second would have a Mayan jungle theme with a classical soundtrack, and the third level would feature a snow Medieval them with a rock soundtrack.

Level 1 is designed to be an introductory level. It's relatively simple, with one route from the enemy base to the player's base. It's designed to teach the player basic mechanics such as card movement and enemy types.

image (1).png

Level 2 was meant to be more challenging. It has more varied means of reaching the player's base, and would introduce ammo type stations and the ability to upgrade the player's towers.

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Level 3 would be the final level in  the vertical slice. By this time the player would be introduced to all the mechanics, and would have the knowledge to best prepare themselves for the alien onslaught of the final level.

GameStudio2_Level3Map.jpg

After going through our pre-alpha and alpha, the team decided to focus on level 1 and make it a  good, polished  vertical slice. To this end, we focused more on making the animations, VFX, and scripts work just right.

Level Designs

Walkthrough

Currently, the game features a main menu and level 1 that showcases all of our game mechanics:

  • Main menu with:

    • Link to download and print playing cards​

    • Tower loadout scene where the player can select which towers to place onto their cards

  • AR towers that appear when the player places down a special playing card

  • Different tower types (Rifle, Minigun, Sniper, Cannon)

  • Towers can be upgraded to more powerful variants

  • Different enemy  types (Speed, Basic, Tank, Boss)

  • Enemies can have  a particular "color" that requires towers to use an ammo type

Walkthroughs
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