game design

• core idea

  • this project was developed for the Quiver Games Incubator which was a 6 week-long mentored game jam program.

  • we starting by designing several small-scope game ideas together. by the end, we all agreed on the idea of a DJ tower defense game. the original concept was a third-person action defender, protecting your music gear from angry fans! similar to something like Orcs Must Die.

  • after some discussion, we pivoted to take advantage of the rhythm elements that a DJ character allows. we pivoted to a mix between rhythm game and tower defense.

  • we decided to ditch fighting the audience and introduced vampire enemies, (because vampires are cool!) and also because this way we felt it gave players a goal/motivation to save the audience from these hostile creatures, an in-turn, the audience can then reward you for your kills in the form of hype(currency).

• reference games

  • now with a core concept, we looked to similar games for reference. however, we quickly found that rhythm games x tower defense has almost never been attempted before. 

  • to continue forward, we looked at examples of both genres that we enjoyed such as Bloons TD, Plants vs Zombies, Crypt of the NecroDancer, Hifi Rush, etc.

  • from these references, we ideated some secondary mechanics:

    • a UI rhythm indicator and gameplay elements that pulse on-beat for UX feedback

    • performance-based currency/score system (common for rhythm games but uncommon for tower defense)

    • on-beat attacks (attacking with towers is the rhythm element, your ability to play on-beat, affects your attacks)

    • multiple enemy spawns (as the game progresses, more enemy spawn-points are activated, progressing difficulty)

• synergizing strategy/rhythm

  • the biggest challenge was finding how to synergize tower defense and rhythm gameplay. one is very strategical and requires methodical play while the other is very quick/reaction-oriented. 

  • we wanted towers to attack on-input with accuracy to the music, but we had to balance this with the strategic element somehow.

  • originally, players could assign an input to each individual tower. assigning multiple towers to a single input would increase the input's cooldown. the intention was that this would add strategy to tower placement.

    • this didn't quite work as input assigning felt arbitrary and many players couldn't memorize their chosen inputs. it was overall too many steps at a time for players to make, giving them decision paralysis.

  • to fix this, we made tower placement spots have a pre-assigned input. this proved easier to memorize and reduced mental load overrall. it also helped strategy as now there was more risk vs reward in tower placement.

 

 

level design

• 2D layouts

  • for our environment, we wanted a concert venue layout with multiple enemy pathways and many tower placement options. to get an idea on scale, pathway number, and difficulty, i created 3 different 2D level layouts to test.

• blockouts

  • after making the layouts i blocked them out in Blender and play-tested them to get opinions/feedback.

  • with the playtest feedback, me and Brenden, the other designer for the project, blocked out a final level iteration including ideas from all previous iterations.

 

 

art

• mood board

  • to find an art direction, me and Adam, the other artist on the project, created a mood board, we took inspiration from early 2000s vampire rave media such as Bloodrayne, Blade, etc.

• modelling

  • as the environment artist, i modelled and textured everything in the game except for the characters. 

  • I tried to keep everything low-poly as our camera is very far away from the environment and too much detail would clutter the screen.

• vfx/shaders

  • i also worked on the vfx/shaders using Unity's shader graph, creating an ink outline shader + about 10 vfx.

• set dressing

  • on top of modelling the environment, i also brought it to life through set dressing. my goal was to make it look chaotic and rave-like while keeping important gameplay elements free of clutter.