Halloween 2019 Update! Fresh Start

Halloween 2019 Update! Fresh Start 1920 1097 andrew

2019 has been mostly silent as far as public posting or marketing has gone. As mentioned in the previous update, a lot of the high level planning has already been finished, now we are diving deep into every pixel and detail of the game.

The First Village (Grass Themed)

This is a core part of the gameplay, even though the game is a “tower defense” game, there is also an RPG element to it.

Each main section of the game takes place in a different village / location. In the first section of the game, we will be in the “Grass Village” (temporary name).

Top Down Scenes

Each section has different “scenes” as indicated by the red arrows at the corners of the screen. So the Grass Village is much larger than just this single scene, but this is one of many scenes within the village.

I would like to imagine each scene like a page in a story book. The scenes will be animated and various objects and villagers can be interacted with. In this sense, it should feel as if we are peering down into a lively tiny village. This top down viewpoint is the most relatable to us regular sized humans.

“Grass Village” Town Center

These four buildings in the center of the village will play a large role for side quests as well as getting some key items.

Top-Left: Candy Shop

Top-Right: Weapons Shop

Bottom-Left: Rare items Store

Bottom-Right: General Store

The player should be able to zoom in on these scenes and get a closer look at what is going on in this world. I want to design the game so you can control the characters and where they go, but you can also simply tap / click anywhere on the screen to instantly get wherever you need to.

Entering Structures

This is just a concept, not finalized, but we wanted some interesting way to enter a structure. I had always been fascinated with “cross section” drawings since I was a child; I felt that it would be an interesting way to go about this.

View from outside a structure.

Zoom in on a certain structure, tear away the front and have an x-ray view inside; Possibly we could blur out the background and let our main characters inside the structure.

This was just the concept idea we had for structures and various indoor areas in the game.

Pictured above is the “Dark Magic Shop” which is a secret structure you’ll have to locate, but the types of items you can get from this shop should prove quite useful!

Dark Magic Shop Owner

The shop owner was a new character that needed a design.

After polling the fans on Twitter and Facebook, we decided on the final color combination.

Haven’t decided on her name yet.

Other Areas

Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of show regarding the other areas of the “Grass Village” as we haven’t finished the concept art for these at this time.

Tiny Graveyard

This is the graveyard. It reveals some very important details about the tiny people as well as the story.

What is the Purpose of These Areas?

In this update, we have not shown a single piece of “tower defense” gameplay. All of these areas are simply part of some RPG engine placed in a game that’s supposedly a tower defense game? What’s going on here?

TinyWars is a story driven game. The production value in the music should have given this away.

The “main” story will probably be presented in the usual way through some cinematic cutscenes that play before and after levels, however anything that goes quite deep into the lore, the backstory, all the interesting tiny details that a majority of the players may not actually want to sit through, these details are splashed throughout the vibrant world of TinyWars.

You could just go straight to the “Tower Defense” stuff and ignore most of this, though you will be missing out on a lot of small details (that may enhance your understanding of the story) and you might also miss out on the rewards / secret item unlocks that you can only get through these side quests.

The choice is up to the player if they want to skip most of these things, as I want the game to be playable by a wide variety of players who can choose their own way to enjoy the game.

I don’t think this type of game has ever been produced in this way, so I will call the genre “Story Book RPG – Tower Defense” for now.

This concept could either be hit or miss really, but that’s why it’s taken us nearly 5 years (on and off) working on this project. I think the idea is worth pursuing and we will do some extensive player testing to see how fun and interesting this idea is.

New Music

With the conclusion of this brief project update, I want to present the newest piece of music for the game.

This will be in the very first level of TinyWars (tower defense level) as the first introduction to the story as well as the tutorial. The only way to make a cool tutorial level is to have some good music!

Thank you for following the development, everyday we inch closer towards a more complete click through prototype to help present the concept. After the prototype, the “Story Demo” can finally be started. Until then, not a single line of new code has been added to the project!