Concept

Concept 

Cornered and trapped, surrender by other world monsters, a group of survivors huddled together waiting for your help. Send in your army, set up defences, battle and fight increasingly difficult waves of monsters - will you survive?

Genre 

Casual, made for mobile, 2D tower defence game.

Creation 

Coming up with this game, I wanted to originally do a 2d survival game, in the same vein as the 2013 title Don’t Starve by Klei Entertainment or This War of Mine by 11 Bit. However I found the scope of creating something like this that I would be happy with to be too large. So I landed on a mobile orientated game to keep the complexity down. This decision lead me to a few game play types but I ultimately settled on a tower defence game. Tower defence games can get fairly complex however I think stripping back the gameplay still leaves room for strategy and enjoyment. As for the concept and design, I knew I wanted something seated in the realm of fantasy medieval time however I settled on the type of game before the art style, or concept.

Audience

This is a casual game, made to be played when you have a spare couple of minutes, while it does involve strategy its not meant to be a game where you need to be thinking 20 steps ahead. This game is being made for the mobile gamer, someone who doesn’t have the time to play story driven narratives and instead wants a chill with a casual game. Since the game isn’t overly complex in its strategy, it's also aimed towards a younger crowd, a beginner or anyone looking for a simplistic tower defence game.

Competitive analysis

This game is a 2D track based tower defence game, to which there are many, many similar games out there. For me the first tower defence game was of course Bloon TD, the simplistic art style, simple concept creates a very compelling game. Another similar game is Kingdom Rush, the art style is a little more involved with both the backgrounds and animations. Certain elements in the major tower defence games I want to implement in mine, for instance the ability to play towers anywhere on the track ver dedicated stations like in Kingdom Rush. 

Concept Art

Maps 

1. Day time Castle

The daytime castle, I want to be the easiest level, a good introduction the game. For this reason, I have made the track, fairly long with plenty of space to place towers.

There are 2 main components of the design of this map, the stone wall and the ground textures. For the stone, I want it to be a lighter grey that leans into the more hand drawn side rather than a perfect vector created stone texture. For the grass, I plan on creating a solid colour with slight variations through out as well as a number of small details such as stones or small flowers in the grass.

2. Water based map

While the track is fairly simplistic, this one reduces the path length as well as introduces the need for some more strategy since you cannot place towers in the water. The green representing small plots of land that the player can place towers on. the brown is going to the the track made up of a wooden bridge.

For Textures, I am thinking of going with more of a stylised water. Im going to go with a teal colour which will complement the other colours in the scene.

The other main texture that needs to be created is for the wood plants that will make up the bridge. I'm thinking a dark coloured wood with rough edges. 

For enemies I plan making three different kinds, Skeletons, Ghosts and Ghouls. Below armer sketches, I have not included any colour since I haven't found a colour palette that works across all three enemy types. 

Cartoon Of The Wood Floor Texture Illustrations, Royalty-Free Vector Graphics & Clip Art - iStock n.d., viewed 26 August 2022, <https://www.istockphoto.com/illustrations/cartoon-of-the-wood-floor-texture>.

Cartoon Wood Texture Vector Art, Icons, and Graphics for Free Download n.d., viewed 26 August 2022, <https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/cartoon-wood-texture>.

Free Vector | Stone wall texture n.d., viewed 26 August 2022, <https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/stone-wall-texture_957408.htm>.

Seamless Cartoon-styled Water Texture by Berserkitty on DeviantArt n.d., viewed 26 August 2022, <https://www.deviantart.com/berserkitty/art/Seamless-Cartoon-styled-Water-Texture-743787929>.

Steam Workshop::Cupro’s Stones n.d., viewed 26 August 2022, <https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2018621294>.

Steam Workshop::[LTo] Water n.d., viewed 26 August 2022, <https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2572360687>.

stone texture + bump | OpenGameArt.org n.d., viewed 26 August 2022, <https://opengameart.org/content/stone-texture-bump>.

Textures for 3D, graphic design and Photoshop! n.d., viewed 26 August 2022, <https://www.textures.com/browse/grass/238>.

Water Lines Stock Illustrations – 74,547 Water Lines Stock Illustrations, Vectors & Clipart - Dreamstime n.d., viewed 26 August 2022, <https://www.dreamstime.com/illustration/water-lines.html>.