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Root Defender is a tower defense game played from a top-down perspective where the goal is to protect the mighty tree from destruction by goblins. You do this by managing your plants and roots to secure control of the entire garden.

This game was made during a 5-day Game Jam hosted by Breda University of Applied Sciences.

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Role: Technical, UI/UX & Game Designer

Genre: Top-Down Strategy

Engine: Unreal Engine 5

Team size: 5

Duration: 5 days

Platform: PC (Itch.IO)

RootDefendersTransparent (1).png
Game Design

ENERGY GAINING DEFENCE TOWER

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  • Prototyped and implemented an energy-gaining defense tower.

    • Implementation model.

    • +1 energy after x times has passed.

    • -3 energy after the tower has been bought.

    • Implementation of the ghost model when in tower placing mode.

    • Implementation of sounds:

      • Placing sound.

      • Energy gaining sound​.​​​​

Energy Flower
Energy Flower Close-up

SHOOTING DEFENCE TOWER

  • Prototyped and implemented shooting defense tower.

    • Implementation model.

    • -5 energy after the tower has been bought.

    • Set focus on the target.

    • Shooting functionality.

    • Projectile functionality.

    • Implementation of ghost model when in tower placing mode.

    • Implementation of sounds​.

      • Placing sound​.

Shooting flower
Shooting flower Close-up

MAIN TOWER

  • Prototyped and implemented the central tower.

    • Implementation model.

    • Implementation of health and connecting the functionality to the health bar.

      • death functionality.

    • Implementation of an energy system and connecting the functionality to an energy bar.

Main Tower

GAME/TECHNICAL DESIGN

UI/UX

UI/UX

TECHNICAL UI/UX SYSTEMS

  • Prototyped and implemented a variety of different technical UI/UX systems.

    • Tower currency updating within the UI when tower prices have been updated.

    • Tower images turn red when the player does not have enough energy.

    • Tower images turn colored when having enough energy.

    • The energy updating when a tower has been bought.

    • Made the zone influence button work with the zone influence functionality.

    • Implementation of sound​s.

      • Hovered over a button sound.

      • Clicked on a button sound.

Tower Bar

MENU'S

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  • Prototyped and implemented two Menus.

    • Main menu

      • Functional buttons.

      • Hovered sound​.

      • Clicked sound​.

    • Pause menu

      • Functional buttons​​.

      • Hovered sound​.

      • Clicked sound​.

PROJECTS ROLES & CONTRIBUTIONS

GAME/TECHNICAL DESIGN

PROJECT ROLES & CONTRIBUTIONS

  • Designed and created  Energy Gaining defense towers.

  • Designed and created a shooting defense tower.

  • Designed and created a main tower.

  • Worked on all design aspects, from brainstorming to sketching to building to iterating.

UI/UX DESIGN

  • Created Technical UI systems.

  • Created Menu's.

SOUND

  • Implementation of sound for menu's and features.

ASSETPACKS

  • Importing & Implementation a variety of asset packs.

LEARNINGS

  • How to work with GitHub.

  • How to perform fast & effective brainstorming & prototyping with a provided theme.

  • How to create an aesthetically pleasing game without having any artists on the team.

Learnings
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