This game was developed for a submission to the “GMTK 2022” 48-hour game jam. Initially we had an MVP and playable game, for the submission deadline. After the deadline passed I wanted to add more polish so that it met our original vision for the game. I continued to work but kept the additional work to under 20 hours, to help keep in line with the Game Jam spirit! What is shown here is the project after the additional work had been done.

I was the sole programmer for this project. I worked with a friend that handled environment art, U.I creation, and design.

The theme of the game jam was: “Roll the Dice”. The game that we created was a simple tower defense game. Each tower would be a fire, water, earth, or electricity element, this would affect how much damage they would do to an enemy. Enemies also had element types, as well as weaknesses to certain tower elements. If they are hit with an elemental projectile they are weak against, they take extra damage. To conform to the theme we decided that the player would “Roll the Dice” to determine which elemental tower they will get. They select two tower elements and then select the odds of spawning each kind of element. If the player sets the odds higher for a tower they will get a weaker tower, but if they set the odds lower they will get a more powerful tower. When the player rolls, a tower is selected based on the odds and a random number generated. This added an interesting trade off for players fighting off the elemental enemies: do they risk getting a more powerful tower by setting the odds low, or do they set the odds high so they are guaranteed a tower of the element of their choice?

Highlights:

  • Elemental enemy, tower, and projectile system
  • Tower placement
  • Adjusting tower fire rate and range based on the odds that the player selected
  • Enemy spawning
  • Enemy navigation, using Unity navmesh
  • Particle effects
  • Game/Level progression

Here is a link to the game!

The project can be found here: https://etmander.itch.io/dice-tower

Here is a video of the gameplay:

- palace