This is the final exam / project for Canvas Team #17 for Justin Selgrad's Fall 2022 CPI 111 class

Sabrod

A tower defense horde game where you defend your castle against the waves of enemies with tactical placement of your towers and secure your freedom after surviving 10 waves of hell in this dark, gothic, necromantic high-fantasy setting.”

How To Play

Tutorial

In this game, you are a mercenary captain tasked with defending a series of castles and strategies positions for a local kingdom against an evil onslaught of monsters and mayhem. Your objective is to defend the castle by constructing towers and commanding soldiers, your companions, to man these defenses and repel the invading forces with wonton slaughter. There will be 10 levels, and for all 10 levels, you must survive 10 waves of fiends and foes who will throw themselves against your castle to break through one of the five weakest spans of castle walls you are defending, the Achilles. The forces of hell and chaos come out to ravage your defenses at night, but you are offered a small window of reprieve when dawn breaks. The five sections of wall that you are defending the Achilles, have a limited pool of health - and if the enemies bring any of these Achilles does to 0 health - that section will crumble, the castle will be breached - and you and all your fellow compatriots will die a horrible and painful death. You will have fulfilled your contract as a commander when you have beaten all 10 levels, after which you will have achieved victory and the game will end.

Key bindings

• The player character is moving north, west, south, and east via | W, A, S, D | keys. You can also move north-west, north-east, south-west, and south-east via combinations of the aforementioned key presses.
• There are four companion menus, where each one can be accessed by their respective keybind:
  • Companion 1 
  • | Z |
  • Companion 2
  • | X |
  • Companion 3
  • | C |
  • Companion 4 
  • | V |
• Once you have opened the companion menu, you’ll be able to command them to take up arms at one of the five tower slots on the map, doing this by pressing one of the following keys:
  • Tower Slot 1
  • | 1 |
  • Tower Slot 2
  • | 2 |
  • Tower Slot 3
  • | 3 |
  • Tower Slot 4
  • | 4 |
  • Tower Slot 5
  • | 5 |
• Additionally, you can command the companion to remain idle, doing nothing as it remains by your side by pressing the| 6 |key instead. Anytime you need to reposition your companions, you’ll start at the top of the process again.
• The companions will operate the tower weaponry by themselves, but to operate a tower yourself all you need to do is walk into the tower square, a space demarcated by a blue box on the floor, and press the | Spacebar | key. You will be able to fire the tower using the spacebar key for as long as you remain in this blue square. If you exit the blue square, you will no longer be able to fire the tower.
• Construction works in a similar fashion to companion commands. To construct towers, you walk up to empty tower slots and stand in the square. You’ll see a “Tower Chosen: “ prompt pop up, displaying the tower you are able to construct. To select different towers, press | J | and | L | to cycle left or right through the tower list. When you are ready to build the tower you have selected, press | Enter | and the tower will be built.
• Some towers feature a range of rotation. In order to rotate these towers, press the | ⮜ | and | ⮞ | arrow keys.

One of the four towers, the Vlad, has two firing modes. The default mode, the Impaler, is melee-based and is controlled by rotating the tower using the arrow keys. The alternate firing mode, the Harpoon, allows the spear to be ejected as a projectile just as the ballista bolts are. The Vlad becomes a ranged weapon in this way, and can be fired by pressing the Spacebar key when in the tower square. You can alternate between these two firing modes by pressing the | I | and | H | keys.

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W, A, S, D : To move up, left, right, and down respectively

J,L: Cycle through buildable towers

Arrow Keys , left and right: To aim the towers

Spacebar: To shoot the mounted tower

Z,X,C,V: To command your companions to use a tower, make sure to hold the keys while selecting numbers 1-5

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Post-Mortem Write-Up: 

1) What went right 

- A base game did come out of our original concept

 - The art / aesthetic / themes of the game were unique and still play a big role, they were good decisions 

2) What Went Wrong

 - Programmers encountered issues with branch management, over-written code, corrupted branches, merge conflicts

 - Artists lost assets due to application crashes, struggled with resizing pixel art when creating it 

3) How it was changed 

- Had to cut the concept of factions 

- Had to cut all story / narrative

 - Had to cut the geographical importance of the continent

 - Had to cut 13 of the 16 planned enemies 

- Had to cut 4 of the 8 planned towers

 - Had to cut the unique mechanics of the companions

- Had to cut the 10 levels we had plan, only 1 level now 

- Had to cut the win conditions from the game, now you must survive 10 waves to win 

- Had to cut the day-time exploration / peace period mechanic

 - Had to cut the concept of a world map and the "Mario World" level transition style 

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The Team

Game Designer

Nick

Level Designer

Alexandria

Producer(s)

Mika

Artist(s)

Izzy
Alexandria

Programmers

Yousef
Matthew
Edrick

Sound

Edrick