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I. Game concept:
This project was made during a game jam that lasted 4 days. The theme was "10 billion consumers". I thought about crossing a city-management game with a tower defense aspect. That's how I pitched the game before creating a team.
Protesters are the enemies coming for him down the streets of the city. If they arrive at the office, the player loses money. If money goes down to 0, game over. The goal is to avoid bankruptcy until the last wave. So, it is about using the money efficiently to not lose it all.
To get rid of the enemies, the player can put diverse shops in their way. An enemy can be considered vanquished if enters the shop. Shops have several parameters :
- Stock: how many enemies can enter to buy the product. When an enemy enters, the stock decreases by 1
- Profitability: how much money the player earns per enemy entering the shop
- Building price: money to spend to create a shop in an empty building slot.
Along with shops, the player has special abilities :
- Delivery: spends money to refill a shop's stock with a delivery drone
- Sales: profitability goes down but the shop can attract some extra enemies for free (no stock loss)
- New product: spends money to increase maximal stock and profitability
The last tool player has is advertising, another type of construction that is cheaper than a shop. It can change the paths enemies will take and control waves' flow. For example, a fast-food ad will make more enemies go to a fast-food shop.
Map where the protesters
Office, the place where all protesters will go
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Empty slots for buildings and advertising
Tech shop, few products but high profitability
Clothing shop: lot of product but low profitability
Fast food: average product quantity and profitability
II. Personal contribution
After pitching the game to all game jam participants, I ended up with a team made of 5 game artists, 2 game programmers, 1 sound designer, and 2 game designers (including myself).
It was my first experience as a team leader. The jam started with several meetings. We discussed all together about our visions of the project. After we all agreed about the 3C and the gameplay loops that I documented, I started by making separate task lists, one per role (1 list for artists, 1 for programmers, 1 for the sound designer, 1 for me and my game designer teammate).
Then I moved on to the game designer tasks. For level design, I made a quick scheme of paths the enemies will take and placed all the empty building slots. Then I proceeded to balance the game. For this unique level, I used excel to evaluate shops' variables (money spent, money earned, how many enemies can enter, upgrade prices, etc). According to these values, I defined how many enemies the player will have to face for each phase. Finally, I deliberately made the game easier by boosting gains in order to offer a better first experience. I brought these values into scripts made by programmers.
Next task was asset integration to let artists have more time to finalize their work. So I made a file hierarchy where artists could upload the assets. I integrated them into the placeholders that were already in Unity.
The last day I proceeded to some QA to get rid of bugs.
III. Post-Mortem
This project was my first experience as a team leader of 10 jammers. One of the most positive aspects of these 4 days was time management: regardless of having only 4 days the deadlines were respected and everything was done on time. I've insured good communication between all team members.
The biggest personal challenge was decision-making. We had to cut features, and I needed to ensure it didn't impact my teammates too severely.
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