Solar Defense System was made as a class project with the restriction that we had to use a “non-traditional” controller for the game. The goal of the game is, as with most tower defense games, to prevent enemies from reaching their goal.
We decided to ditch the traditional set path that most tower defenses use, opting to have enemies approach from varying points around the edge of the screen. The player must place and move planets in order to stop the alien menace from destroying the sun.
The biggest challenge with this project was the sheer size of the undertaking. We had a huge number of features we wanted to implement, but at the beginning none of us had a proper sense of what our scope really was.
My approach to this was to come at it swinging, prototyping several key features the day after we finalized our concept, as well as constantly communicating with the designers about what needed to be cut for time constraints. This proved to be a bad approach in the long run, as when the fourth week rolled around I was starting to feel the burnout from throwing myself at a project for so long, but by the last week I had nothing to do. This taught me a valuable lesson in how to manage a workload.
Programmer:
Avery Dibble
Designers:
Leonardo Robelz-Gonzalez,
Aiden O’Connor
Artists:
Riley Morrissey,
Zoe Hammonds
Producer:
Christopher Eigenrauch
Avery Dibble's Hobbit Hole 