TOWER DEFENSE CLEAN-UP CREW

Created over 2 days during the Global Game Jam 2020

Made by a team of 3 to the theme "Repair", Tower Defense Clean-Up Crew wonders what happens to the unsung heroes of tower defence games, who repair towers in between waves of enemies.

You can download the game here!

DESIGN

The core design philosophy was to invert the usual Tower Defense format. Instead of having endless waves during which one slowly, yet continuously interacts, here there are brief windows of hectic interaction.
I was responsible for creating the first of the two levels. A key challenge was to design the layout of the walls and towers in a way which can create interesting player choices, forcing them to decide what tasks to prioritize over others.

PROGRAMMING

This was the first project in which I was focused on building tools for myself and other designers to use, instead of trying to build entire levels alone based on documents. The most important lesson I learned was to make tools foolproof and simple as Game Jam design sessions can quickly become frantic.

It was also my first time working with enemy behaviour, which became an interesting challenge when coupled with designing the levels.

Key features included:

-Level building tools for placing walls, doors and turrets, as well as enemy spawn locations.

-Enemy behaviour, including navmesh agents, target prioritisation and varying states.

-Different game states changing the camera angles, UI and music.