VANGUARD
SOLO
ABOUT
3 MONTHS
"Vanguard" is a solo developed first person shooter tower defence.
It includes a tutorial and one combat zone level. The player must build defences and stop waves of enemies from reaching an energy core on the map. To do this, the player builds walls and turrets, as well as shooting at the approaching enemies themselves.
UNREAL ENGINE 5
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CONCEPT
01
For a few years I’ve been fascinated by the potential of mixing strategy with first- or third-person combat but felt it’s been an area where games have historically struggled. A prominent example of success in this area has been the Orcs Must Die franchise, which I played as research for this title, but what inspired me more was the game “Sanctum”, an FPS shooter that was exactly the type of game I was trying to create.
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CHANGES
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A focus of the project was making both the tower defence and shooting aspects feel rewarding. Through waves of testing, I reached a point where users had to rely on to succeed. Allowing for player expression & creating their own defence adds to the replayability of the game.
Testing the game with other players helped me find some fun quirks with the building system. I had to implement a system in which enemies would target towers if there was no possible path to their goal. This was to prevent an obvious way to cheat the game, by blocking enemy spawns.
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03
REFLECT
I enjoying working in a relatively underexplored genre. The current replayability could be expanded on dramatically with more weapons, more towers, more enemies. What exists now is a solid prototype of a title, I’m pleased with the results considering the limited scope & solo dev effort.