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Emutilation
Emutilation is a Tower Defense with a unique twist! Coming from a dystopian future run by Emu's, a few surviving humans develop a time machine to send the player back to the great Australian Emu war of 1932 to right the wrongs of the past, and change the course of the future!
Trailer
Full Gameplay Video
Level 2
Gameplay
Emutilation brings a fresh and unique twist to the Tower Defense Genre. By juxtaposing the normal dead playtime of tower defense with a quick, reflex intensive bullet hell, it adds a fun and lively new element made to spice up an already populated genre, while still being able to lean on what makes it them great. The game has a blend of strategy, with players having the expression to freely place fences and turrets, and intense action, a unique blend that keeps both your mind and fingers constantly working. It features exponential scaling design that allows for longevity of gameplay due to the difficulty scaling with the player's skill and familiarity with the mechanics of the game. The game's comedic setting is one of its selling points as it was made to capitalize on the popular "Emu War of 1932" meme.
Role and Development
This project was created in about ten weeks with a team of two and was completed on November 22, 2019. Emutilation forced me to step outside of my comfort zone. During its ten-week development, I created all of the art, helped to design and balance the game, and coded wherever help was needed. I learned to be flexible and adaptable and also gained experience using the Unity Engine.
Obstacles and Challenges
This was the first time I had ever used Unity before, so I had to learn another engine quickly to complete this project in only ten weeks. It was also the largest game I had done to date in a traditional coding language. But the biggest challenge for me was stepping out of my comfort zone and doing 2d pixel art. It was something I had done very little of but still needed to make every asset for this game; including the animations.
Inspiration
Emutilation was bred from an idea I had a while ago of a simple genre fusion between a first person shooter and tower defense game. I wanted to fill the boring tedium during the waves of traditional tower defense games with high octane bullet-hell gameplay. It's Emu mutilation theme came from a popular meme at the time.
What I learned
Emutilation reinforced my skills within Unity and taught me a lot more about traditional code outside of blueprinting. Emutilation was my first experience as being the lead artist on the team. Although our initial project focus was design, I quickly learned how to create pixel art, make sprite sheets and incorporate them into Unity to run. It exposed me to the 2D art side of game development which was a new skill. This skill will help me in the future not only as a producer but also better able to communicate with other artists that have these same skills.
Emutilation is a blend of two distinct types of game templates. This blending of genres was new and outside the box from traditional standards. I was able to later apply this same process to Memoriam, a later project. Emutilation reinforced my ability to design using math. By creating a scaling algorithm, we were able to make Emutilation continue to increase in difficulty, matching the pace of a player’s improvement. This knowledge can be applied to future games ensuring a smooth introduction and many levels of play.
Contributors
Leo Lo- Game Designer and Artist
