Stronghold Defenders
Year
2023
Genre
Tower Defense
Platform
PC
Team Size
1
Engine
Unity
System Design
Technical Design
Gameplay Design
Art
Game Description
Stronghold Defenders is a Tower Defense game with a resource management aspect
This adds another strategy layer to the game where you have to make decisions both on defense but also on what resources you need and where you want to invest them.
Preperation
Prototype
Back in November of 2021 I was studying at Future Games and was gona make a game in 10 weeks solo for my degree project.
I decided to challange myself to see how much I had grown during my studies and wanted to bring my childhood concept to life.
I managed to complete it after working hard for 10 weeks. It was an interesting game concept and I was satisfied with the execution considering the time limit.
Reviving The Project
Now in 2023, little more than a year later I went back to this prototype and felt like it had potential. I had now a lot more experience and time to make it to a proper game. So I looked over the prototype to find out what is missing, but ended up deciding that I would have to redo everything anyway. With a lot more time, I could structure the code properly, find a more fitting and defined art style, and rework the systems to bring the whole concept together.
System & Technical Design
Game Phases
The game takes place in turns, which is called days. Each day is split into two phases; Downtime Phase and Invasion Phase.
During the downtime phase you do most of the planning and decision making in the game.
During the invasion phase you mostly observe your defense structures deal with the waves of enemies, so you can assess the danger level and plan accordingly for the future.
Grid Placement System
I created a grid placement system which all gameobjects in the level will either be spawned or placed onto. I call these objects gridobjects.
Gridobjects can be of many different sizes, but would all fit into a set amount of grid cells. Usually their shape is square like, so they fall into sizes of 1x1, 2x2 and 3x3.
If a grid cell is occupied by anything, it will store that object information and it will also prevent anything else from occupying that grid cell.
Defense Structure
All defense structure has the purpose to stop the enemies from reaching the Stronghold and damaging it.
Some defense structures shoot projectiles at target enemies. Others deal damage in an area around them.
Then there are more supportive defense structures, that might not deal damage but can assist other defense structures deal with the threat.
Gathering Station & Resource Nodes
Gathering stations will gather resources at the start of every day from a nearby resource node. You can chose yourself which available resource node you want it to gather from.
Resource nodes that are being gathered from will eventually deplete and leave that grid cell empty. This can open up oppurtunities for the player to build structures where they previously could not.
Food & Worker Management
Food is one of the resources that you can acquire from your gathering stations. Food is used to feed and acquire Workers.
Workers can be assigned to almost all gridobjects to greatly boost them. Depending on what kind of gridobject it will boost it in different ways. The worker management is a core part of the game. It give the player short term strategizing, where they consider each day what they want to prioritize.
Accords
Throghout the game you will be able to gain experience from multiple sources.
When you have reached a set amount of experience you will level up and get to choose one of three development accords that will grant different kind of benefits.
The accords that you get to choose from will be randomly selected among hundreads of unique accords.
Corruption & Corruption Raid
The narrative of the game is that a corruption has spread from east to west, all the way to the Stronghold. The player needs to locate the source of the corruption and destroy it.
This purpose of the corruption is for the player to have a goal, a victory condition. This corruption is the main threat, and it's slowly increasing. Every day the enemies grow stronger from the corruption, which increases their health.
The player must explore to the east, but must first clear up the fog that is caused by the corruption. Destroying a corruption raids will clear up some fog nearby.