The Tower
Darrith Phan, Gabe Saldivar, Michelle Wan
The Tower is a single player serious strategy role playing game (SRPG) set in the distant past. The player takes on the role as an all-seeing “strategist,” tasked with managing the soldiers of two warring nations: Edros and Ostral.
Will the nation of Edros succeed in its quest to seize the tower of Ostral, or will the nation of Ostral prevail?
Play the game here.
Overview
Our team designed The Tower to educate players on battle strategy and conflict. The key goal for this game was for players to enhance their skills in forming strategies and solutions based on the constraints in the forms of the unit types and map formations, with the secondary goal to teach that there are always two sides to any conflict through our narrative and gameplay. We also wanted the overall game to be fun for the players, even for those who were unfamiliar to the SRPG genre. We were confident we could accomplish this since we modded many aspects of our gameplay from the popular SRPG franchise, Fire Emblem.
The Tower
The Tower more obviously refers to the tower inhabited by the narrative’s main antagonist, King Diz. However, The Tower also refers to the metaphorical tower of oversight when viewing the conflict that unfolds throughout the gameplay. Each chapter represents a level up this metaphorical tower, building up to the top and final level that is the highest vantage point that allows the viewer to clearly see the situation in its entirety. Another reference of the The Tower is connected to the 16th trump or Major Arcana card in Tarot decks. This card is often interpreted with meanings such as danger, crisis, sudden change, destruction, and, most interestingly, awakening and liberation.
Gameplay
The game is sectioned into seven chapters, each with different units placed in an environment mirrored by the context of the narrative. The gameplay of each chapter consists of a loop of two phases, starting first with the player phase and transitioning to the enemy phase next.
During the player phase, the player has control over all their allied units on a 2D grid. Each of their units has different stats and type advantages. The player may move and attack with their units to complete the main objective for the given chapter. Once the player has moved each of their units, the enemy phase begins.
During the enemy phase, the enemy AI will move their units in attempt to oppose the player and defeat allied units, so the player must plan accordingly for this. This loop continues until the player completes the objective for the map, in which case the player will move on to the next chapter. Otherwise, when the player loses all of their allies before completing the objective, it will automatically restart the same chapter to allow the player to try again. In doing so, all allied units keep any experience and level ups gained previously, so the player will have an easier time completing the chapter objective in future attempts.
Our biggest concern for The Tower was balancing the mechanics of the game. This included balancing the stats of all of the allied and enemy units, along with overall map design and layout. Early on in our playtesting, we had lots of feedback on units that felt too weak and passageways in maps that felt too narrow or unnecessary. We also wanted to make sure that our game included a satisfying narrative transitioning between the two sides of conflict. To do so, we designed the gameplay of our final two levels to reflect this narrative.
Iteration Devlog
Assessment
In our final set of playtests for the game, we playtested with 16 people and gave each of them a Google Form to fill out before and after playing The Tower after we had completed bug fixes and design changes. We conducted this survey to assess whether our game met our goals to be fun, to build confidence in strategy making, and to raise concern about the effects of war and conflict.
Based on the form and written feedback we are content with how our game addressed our goals. Most players said they had a lot of fun and based on the data, it would appear that almost all of our playtesters qualitatively satisfied those goals.
