Project Info
Work Areas
For
Activision / Black Lantern Studios
Date
November 2014
Coming on the heels of the Duck Dynasty 3DS adventure game, Black Lantern Studios was contracted to move the Duck Dynasty IP to the mobile space in the form of a tower defense game.
I served as the creative director on the project, putting together the initial pitch to Activision and working to make sure the core vision stayed consistent. Additionally, I served as lead gameplay and UI/UX designer. I worked closely with all disciplines to manage user experience, testing & iteration, and load-balancing under an extremely tight schedule.
ABOVE: Screenshots showing the final game played in both tablet and phone modes.
I studied and utilized the best elements of contemporary tower defense games while adding a few unique touches to attempt to set this title apart – notably a modular tower upgrade system, special abilities based on hero loadout, and hero-specific special powers.
ABOVE: Various spreadsheets I constructed to plan out and balance content such as enemies, towers, and heroes.
BELOW: A spreadsheet for level layouts I developed; this was provided to artists to assist in background image creation and then subsequent object placement in Unity.
The UI has a handcrafted, wood and metal feel but with chunkier colors, rounded edges, and defined outlines. This helped to improve readability and present a more generally accessible, casual interface style that complimented the rest of the game art.
BELOW: Samples of various screen layouts and interfaces I produced; the bottommost image shows a progression of the modular tower upgrade system I designed.
Overall this was a fun project to work on – I’ve long been a fan of tower defense games and this was an exciting opportunity to create one myself!