Jordan Rauch
Game & Systems Designer
I Don't Even Like Sand Witches!
Role: Game Designer, UI Programming
Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Team Size: 10
Development Time: 14 days
Platforms: PC
With heavy machinery and magic, defend your lunch against pesky seagulls who want to take it from you.
Made in 14 days for the Comfy Summer Jam
Responsibilities
Game Designer:
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Drafted entire Game Design Document, setting guidelines for turret stats and gameplay.
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Implemented design and setup blueprints for all UI.
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Assisted in VFX setup, character animations, and camera setup.
Gallery
Postmortem
What Went Well
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Our programmer for the project already had basic parts for a 3D tower defense game prepared prior to the jam, this made implementation and adjustments quick and efficient.
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Keeping the map small and simple both fit the theme and made level design minimal.
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Overall graphical fidelity was top notch.
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With only one 2D artist and one 3D artist, we opted for a pixel-style character billboarded to the camera with the rest of the models in 3D.
What Went Wrong
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There was some confusion and back and forth on how to implement the camera for the game, mostly coming down to having everyone on the same page.
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We did not account enough time to do proper balancing, this also meant having to cut additional game content as we couldn't balance a turret maintenance system.
What I Learned
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Having a library of assets and code to pull from allows for much more ambitious projects in shorter amounts of time. Even with them though, the man-cost is still something to be considered.
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I got to refresh myself on blueprint scripting, especially for the less desirable tasks like necessary UI design.