Game Concept

Working Title:

Galactic Colony Defence

Concept Statement:

Concise Version (this one is intended to be marked):

Galactic Colony Defence is a Tower Defence game. Defend the colony you have been charged with protecting, and yourself, against a perpetual force of robots! Attack the robots yourself, and build automated defenses to help save the colony!

Extended Version:

Galactic Colony Defence is a Tower Defence game. The game not only incorporates towers, but a controllable character who is part of the Colony Defence Force which aids in the defence of the colony. The colony is under attack by a never-ending force of robots. Initially the only one able to stop them from destroying the colony is you, the player, armed with a trusty standard issue Colony Defence Force gun. As the player kills more enemies, they will eventually build up enough of the currency to build turrets, these will automatically help defend against the waves of robots which will become progressively harder to push back.

Genre:

2D Tower Defence (subgenre of strategy) with elements of Top-Down Shooter and an theme genre of Sci-Fi

The main genre of the game is strategy, more specifically 2D Tower Defence, this is realised through the tower placement and enemy wave mechanics of the game. The strategy element comes from the way in which players have to devise a plan on how to place and upgrade turrets in order to help protect the colony and themselves. The Top-Down Shooter element is implemented through the use of a player character, who can move around the map which is equipped with a gun to help defend against the enemy robots, the player must also keep track of the player character and keep their health from reaching 0, otherwise it's game over! The theme of the game comes under the Sci-Fi genre, you are based on a fledgling colony that has been established in the galaxy and are charged with protecting it against the menacing robot forces of an opposing colonisation corporation, hell-bent on claiming the territory for themselves.

Concept creation process and influences:

The tower defence genre is a heavily established genre, they provide the player with a strong sense of achievement and satisfaction by allowing them to build up a varied defence system to overcome the almost constant stream of enemies trying to defeat them. Over the years I have played a wide range of tower defence games, both 2D and 3D. There is one that I really loved the concept for, Sanctum 2 (Coffee Stain Studios 2013). It is a 3D tower defence game which incorporates a first-person shooter element as well, as seen in the image below. This amongst other mechanics added an extra level of excitement to the tower defence style that I hadn’t experience before, so for my project I have decided to implement a more traditional 2D style tower defence game with an added top-down shooter element in the form of a controllable character, as inspired heavily by Sanctum 2’s 3D futuristic sci-fi take on the genre. This is in the attempt of implementing a game that utilises a subtractive design focusing on Sanctum 2’s most interesting feature, which in my opinion was the controllable shooter aspect.

Audience and Competitive Analyses:

Colony Defender is designed for people who are already familiar with tower defence games, however its play style will be simple enough for even those who re not familiar with the genre to quickly pick up the mechanics. It should interest those who have played many tower defence games in the past though, this is achieved with the added top-down shooter aspects in conjunction with traditional tower defence mechanics. The loose setting of defending a colony on another world with the sci-fi robot elements should appeal to audiences both young and old. Sci-fi and futuristic settings in gaming tend to appeal to a wide range of gamers.

Through identifying other successful tower defence games and looking at the mechanics within them we can discover what makes them successful and interesting. Sanctum 2, in addition to the implementation of first-person shooter aspects also implements many varying turrets which suit a wide range of strategies and game stages. Some feature slow fire rate, these towers generally do high damage with a higher attack range, whereas faster fire rate towers generally have lower damage rates and lower range, the game also locks towers behind a player rank system and the in-game economy. Some turrets also do AoE (the Rocket tower) or chain attacks (ranked up Lightning tower), these work as crowd control towers. These towers all lend themselves to different placements and game stages. Each tower additionally has a ranking system which changes its stats. Looking at other tower defence games this tends to be a rather standard way to implement numerous towers and make gameplay more vibrant and diversified, game series’ like Bloons TD (Ninja Kiwi) and Plants vs. Zombies (PopCap Games) both take this type of similar approach to tower implemtation (both games are displayed below). Some games even support style or passive towers which work as range extender and DPS multiplier towers for example. Most of the allure with tower defence games is trying to hone your strategy for tower placement as much as possible, which means the more diverse and balanced the towers are, the more potential for varying strategies there will be. There are many tower defence games with varying learning curves, this game will be a rather easy to pick-up game, what makes it appealing to more advanced tower defence players is the shooter aspect.

Game Treatment and Concept Art:

Premise

Galactic Colony Defence is set in a human colony on another planet within the Milky Way galaxy, the colony is under attack by the robot forces of another opposing colonising corporation which is trying to claim the planet for themselves. You, the player are in charge of colony defence, which is mostly automated, as a new colony on the planet you haven’t yet had time to setup the defence systems, so you have to start fighting off the robot waves while you erect the defence systems. If you hope to stay alive and establish a successful colony, you will need to erect a defence system quickly, otherwise you will find yourself overwhelmed very quickly by the increasing difficulty of the waves. To erect this automated defence system, you will need to kill enemy robots, to gain in-game currency. This currency can be used to build new towers, upgrade existing towers, heal the character at the end of each round or upgrade the character’s damage output. The game is keeps going through endless waves, the ways the player can lose is either by letting the character die, or letting too many robots past the defence system.

Scene

The scene mockup for the defence is pictured below, the white tracks are traversable by both the robots and the character, the rounded squares are tower tiles and the grey is unnavigable terrain. The left side is the side of the colony and the right side is where the enemy robots come from. The robots can never take a direct path but always go directly forwards, they instead take a zig zag approach through the track due to a confusion matrix placed near the colony.

Towers and Character

There will be four types of towers:

• Ion Cannon: Very slow to fire, high damage AoE cannon, minimal armour piercing
• Repeating Plasma Gun: Very fast fire rate, low damage, no armour piercing
• Railgun: Medium fire rate, mid-tier damage, moderate armour piercing.
• Defence Base Station: Passive tower range increaser with low level character healing.

Each tower will be continuously upgradeable with multipliers for each stat increasingly rising.

The character will have the following attributes:

• Health: Static amount (100), slowly recoverable by standing near the base station, or by using the in-game currency at the end of a wave.
• Armour: Base amount (100), upgradeable (by 25) and recoverable at the end of each wave
• Damage Per Second: Base amount (TBA), upgradeable at the end of a wave

Enemy Units

Galactic Colony Defence’s enemies are a robot military force from an opposing colony on the planet, they want to destroy the colony you are trying to establish so the planet can solely belong to them. They will constantly attack in the hopes that they can destroy you and your colony as per their programming. There will be multiple types of robot, their will be basic weak enemies that are sent in force, tank tier which are sent more sparingly along with other types of units that vary in speed, strength and armour. Each wave will increase their difficulty and spawn amount to some degree.

References

All references are applied as hyperlinks on images and and text.