Force of Nature is a head to head turn based combat game where Rock Paper Scissors and Pokemon collide. Each player chooses a party of 5 fighters from a pool of fighters of 3 different types: Fire, Water, and Earth. After choosing their party each player can assign a special ability to each of their fighter types to use when they are at a disadvantage. Players then face off in a 1 on 1 battle to see who is the better Elemental Fighter.

Making this game was actually a lot of fun! My team members included Alexander Frey (Designer), Lucas Spiker (Programmer), and Alana Slattery (Artist). We had 3 weeks to design and build this game using the Unity 2D Engine. It was our first attempt at a real production cycle and our final build proved that we used our time wisely.

The demo that we built for the final milestone lacked some of the visual and audio feedback that we were hoping to include due to lack of time. Had we had another week to work on this the game would have featured unique attack and ability animations, tweeing, particle effects, custom sound effects, and more. I learned during this cycle that even though the priority is to showcase the mechanics in a digital prototype, having those visual and even audio elements as well really can amp up the gameplay experience. That will be something I’ll have to remember for next time!

I acted as Team Leader on this project. My responsibilities included scheduling team meetings, organizing our wiki page, and creating game pitch presentations.

I also acted as one of the designers on this project which came with a whole other set of tasks. With each milestone I updated certain design documents like our Proposal Outline and Visual Design Document (featured below). The proposal outline consisted of the game concept, win/lose scenarios, target audience, game mechanics, menu systems and navigation, and other aspects of the game that need to be explained–so basically everything. The VDD shows off the game’s mechanics visually to help communicate how it works and what would actually be happening in game. In this case, I showed how the different abilities in the game would work, what elements were strong against others, and a mock up of the in game battle screen.

Working on this game was a really great learning experience for me. I was able to broaden my skills not only as a production team leader but also as a designer within a production team. I’ve already started working on our next project and I’m really excited to see how I improve this time around.

Until next time!