Original idea

We want to create a Tower-Defense game. The game is supposed to be tile based. There are multiple tiles placed in a grid with each fulfilling its own function. The enemies will walk down a path set by path tiles and they have to be defeated by towers placed on tower tiles.

There will be multiple towers and multiple enemies. Defeated enemies drop "gold" used to build and upgrade towers in the level. Additionally, there will be resources used to upgrade towers permanently outside the level.

The goal is to survive waves of enemies with continuously increasing difficulty and get a high score.

Important features

• Tower Defense Game
• Tile based
• Limited amount of towers
• Multiple tower types
• Multiple enemies
• Money is earned by killing enemies and beating waves
• Upgrades to boost the towers already placed
  • This should also be the main way you get stronger and beat later waves
• Global resource to upgrade towers permanently

We will review the features and explain changes to them if there were any in Results.
While working on the game the original design got altered largely thanks to an aesthetic shift in the game.

Final Game Description

Cyber Siege is a Tower Defense game. Here you place Towers to defend your System from Viruses. Each Tower has a unique way of attacking the enemies. You need to find the best setups to defeat as many enemies as possible and survive for as long as possible!

Your final score is submitted to a global high-score List where you can compete against players from all around the world!

Do you have what it takes to beat the best of the best and protect your System from incoming damage?

Moodboards

Originally we wanted to create a more retro style game with the intent to portray the workings of a antivirus software in a playful manner.
To achieve the aesthetic we wanted to use a segmented font with a black and green color scheme similarly to the screens of "hackers" in older movies.

This is what the original moodboard for the game looked like:

This proved to be difficult as the whole design was very simple, monotone and boring which then lead to major rethinking of the whole theme.
We decided to leave the retro theme behind and went in the opposite direction with a more futuristic hyperwave style with a blue, pink and black color scheme.
We also abandoned the idea that we were an antivirus software as this idea was impossible to make unique and limited the development process in the art department.

The moodboard got changed to the following:

Team and work distribution

Maximilian Kaminski	Valentino Saitz	Lucas Knaeuper
UI Elements	Game Foundation	Economy
Game Balancing	Editors	AoE Effect and Tower
Documentation	Server
Early Tower logic	Special Effects

Additionally, Valentinos girlfriend Kim helped by creating most of the assets used in the game.

Lucas unfortunately left our group due to issues with the communication in the group and a disparity in perceived effort in this project. More on that in Lessons Learned

Group Organization

Progress on the game was done in weekly sprints.
Every Thursday there was a meeting with Mr. Schubert where the progress up until that point was presented and discussed and then the goals for next week were discussed.
Afterwards we went over everything discussed and created tickets and assigned them to each other. Tickets were usually assigned based on what everyone wanted to do and could realistically achieve. We also went roughly over some of those tickets discussing how they could be implemented.
Every Tuesday we had another meeting. Here we discussed what we achieved and what we wanted to show on Thursday. If somebody was stuck on their task on Tuesday, we would go over the issue together in a group call and try to solve it.
Sometimes there were additional calls on other days because somebody was stuck early on, or the regular meeting couldn't happen due to outside influences.
This routine continued the same way even after Lucas had left the group.

Discussions

Throughout the process of creating the game there were multiple discussions on how the game should work in the end.

A few discussion topics were:

• Design choices like the font and the overall theming
• Wave design: whether the waves should be handcrafted or if we wanted to randomize them
  • We decided to handcraft waves, giving us more control and making balance easier and more realistic
• Tower Selection:
  • A simple List style selection menu either on the side or the bottom of the screen or a ring menu
    • We have decided to use the ring menu as it felt more unique and wouldn't add to many things to the screen
• Towers and their designs

These discussions mostly happened verbally but the points that were documented can be found under Discussions.