Crawling Castles

Role: Team Leader/Designer

Platform: Windows PC

Development Platform: Unity 3D using C# in Visual Studio 2017

Team Size: 5

Development Time: January 2018 to February 2018 (3 weeks)

A head-to-head turn-based strategy game in which you must mine resources and build an army to defeat your opponent!

About the Game

Crawling Castles is a competitive turn-based strategy game in which two players vie for control of important resources and territory by controlling movable castles and deployable units. Set in a world combining elements of medieval times, futuristic technology, nature’s wrath, and dark fantasy, players take turns moving castles and units, gathering gold and cannonball resources to deploy more units and upgrade existing units, avoiding environmental obstacles, and attacking their opponent’s castle to emerge victorious. Gameplay is strategic and exciting, focusing on movement, resource management, progression, level awareness, and combat.

My Work on the Project

Role: Team Leader/Designer

Work:

Managed the team and kept everyone organized
Collaborated in creating the design
Programmed key elements of the board and combat systems

Download Here (Windows)

Level Design

We started the project with a physical prototype. Once we had the basis for the combat, we decided to make a hexagonal shaped board, thinking that the shape would draw players into the center of the board and encourage more competition. For the first iteration, the board was made with triangle spaces, which could allow for interesting movement combinations. The square spaces in the middle of the board would be a river separating the two halves of the board giving players a chance to stock up on their resources before they started full on combat.

Physical prototype game board layout

Additionally, inspired by the board game Settlers of Catan, resources were randomly placed on each half of the board, though each half had the same amount of each type. The river splitting the board would give players an equal chance for resources in their territories as well as time to strategize and build up their armies. As soon as one player was ready to attack, they could build a bridge across the channel. Before any playtesting, we hypothesized that the bridge would channel players and instigate combat.

After going to QA and getting feedback, we realized that there were a lot of issues with the game board. The triangular spaces were difficult for players to navigate and created more confusion than cool movement patterns. For the digital version, we planned to then implement hexagonal spaces but ran out of time for the 3-week project and ended up making a square grid with square spaces. Additionally, we decided to place a permanent bridge on the board to allow earlier competition and combat because gathering the resources to build a bridge took a substantial amount of playtime, causing players to get frustrated and lose interest in the game.

Final digital game board

Development Process

Crawling Castles was the first game that I worked on in my Production I class at Champlain College. My professor asked a designer to step up to be the producer for a fourth team. With no one volunteering, I decided to try it. The rest of the students were randomly placed on the teams.

As the producer, I managed the team and kept everyone organized. I scheduled and documented meetings. I also kept track of what everyone had completed, what they were working on, and what needed to get done.

The design for the game was a collaborative effort. For the first meeting, the designers-- myself included--brought three game ideas to pitch and discuss with the team. Although none of my ideas were chosen, we all worked together in designing the mechanics, stats, and context of the game.

We started with a physical prototype of the game. On a hexagonal board with triangular spaces, we created paper assets for all of the resources and character pieces. We went into QA testing with the physical prototype to see how players enjoyed the mechanics. After receiving valuable feedback, we made changes to the board and decided to start a digital prototype.

The game was originally created in Unity 3D, but with most of the team more comfortable working in 2D, we had to make a last minute switch. With three days remaining before the project was due, I began implementing everything into 2D for my team and started by programming the grid for the board, now a square grid.

The next few days, we met for many hours, working on the game late into the night. In this time, I programmed the health and combat for each castle and unit, and I programmed the health bars in the UI.