Year
2023
Genre
Tower Defense
Platform
PC
Team Size
1
Engine
Unity
System Design
Technical Design
Gameplay Design
Art
Game Description
Stronghold Defenders is a Resource Management Tower Defense Game.
Gather and manage resources, defend your stronghold, explore and expand your kingdom and fight back against corruption.
A once prosperous kingdom, has now fallen into despair. Corruption, a great evil has taken over your lands and turned all living beings against your kingdom. The final stand is the heart of the kingdom, the stronghold. Now is the time to fight back and seize your kingdom once more.
Prototype
Prototype
Back in 2021 I was studying at Future Games and decided to make a 10 week solo project. I was so happy with the result, that I in 2023 decided to make a proper game out of it.
System & Technical Design
Game Phases
The game takes place in days. Each day is split into two phases; Downtime and Invasion.
During Downtime phase you build and interact with your structures.
During Invasion phase you observe and assess the danger level and plan accordingly for the future.
Grid Placement System
All game objects except for enemies are spawned or built on a grid. I call these objects nodes.
Nodes can be of many different sizes, but would all fit into a set amount of grid cells which is usually either 1x1 or 2x2.
Defense
All defense structure has the purpose to stop the enemies from reaching the Stronghold and damaging it.
Some defense structures shoot projectiles at target enemies. Others deal damage in an area around them.
Then there are more supportive defense structures, that might assist other defense structures deal with the threat.
Gathering & Resources
Gathering nodes will gather resources at the end of every day from a nearby resource node. You can chose yourself which available resource node you want it to gather from.
Worker Management
Food is one of the resources that you can gather with gathering stations. Food is used to acquire Workers.
Workers can be assigned to almost all nodes to greatly boost some of their stats.
The worker management is a core part of the game. It gives the player short term strategizing, where they consider each day what they should prioritize.
Accords
Throghout the game you will be able to gain different kinds of Accords.
You'll always get the option to choose one out of three accords that will grant different kind of benefits.
The accords that you get to choose from will be random
Corruption Fog
With the Stronghold Ray you are able to fight back against the corruption, and uncover what hides behind the corruption fog.
Tech Tree
Between games you can unlock new features in the Tech Tree by spending science points. The more you accomplish in a game, the more science points you acquire.