New frontier breach
American Cowboy strategy game against the unknown
elaboration
For this project we had a greater emphasis on systems design, we made a strategy game with zero input randomness, our goal was to make a game that could be experienced like chess. I learned a lot about designing games and engine usage in this project. Having such an intensive relationship with Unreal Engine has taught me a new level of respect for programming and brought me a rekindled desire to learn more about prototyping and engine usage.
my roles
Game Designer:
-Prototyped core mechanics and gameplay loop
-Studied reference material (XCOM2)
-Tested and determined game variables
Vision Keeper:
-Evaluated design decisions
-Feedbacked art and design concepts and iterations
Engine Programmer:
Learned and used grid based Toolkit from the Unreal Store
Designed and created in game grid
Implemented grid based movement
Studied Unreal Engine 5
Fixed several major game breaking bugs
process
We decided to use fairly standard mechanics from turn based strategy games, especially drawing inspiration from XCOM. The way our design deviated was by having heavy triggerable fog that obscured strategic information; where the enemies were and where the objectives had gone to. To test this I made a very simple paper prototype, where the player only knows what going on in revealed cubes. They then moved around and gained information. After finding that this worked we dove into creating our own strategy-fog game.