Slaylien

Incoming transmission: An established colony on a desert planet is in dire need. They are getting attacked by angry creatures from a local hive, disturbed by their colonization. They are on their last oxygen generator and we are tasked with protecting it. Without it the colony and in turn the game—is lost.

Slaylien is at its core a third person tag-team tower defence bug smasher.

Take control over three different characters, each with their own role. Your mission is to protect the generator from waves of creatures, to save the colony.

You are able to switch characters at any time. Making the other two stay in place where you left them, attacking everything within their given range. So be careful about where you leave your teammates—and yourself. Keep track of where the creatures are coming from and where your teammates are with the help of a mini map.

Between waves you can upgrade your characters and build barricades to obstruct and redirect the swarms. 

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We are students at Future Games in Malmö and this game was our third game project. We were given the theme ‘Queen Slay’ and nothing more. 

We started thinking about how the game would fit the theme. It proved unsuccessful so we instead started with deciding what mechanics we wanted to have in the game. 

We wanted to make a character heavy game since we were more character artists than environment and prop artists. We decided on character switching so that the characters we made would be used in-game which would also be our main mechanic and selling point. Which in turn meant that the other characters had to have somewhat of an AI when not controlled by the player. We always wanted the AI to be less effective than you would be controlling them.

We wanted a hack & slash feel, the killing of the enemies had to be satisfying and for them to be many. An enemy wave system seemed like the best option to fulfill this. 

We needed a purpose in the game, and protecting something at the center of the map made complete sense.

Now it was easier to apply the theme to this idea. The ‘Slay’ would be the satisfying slaying of the enemies. The ‘Queen’ was originally going to be the final boss at the end of the last wave, but it got cut so as to not overscope. So it became a narrative feature instead. It was having a queen as a final boss that made us think of an alien bug hive controlled by their queen and the theme and narrative grew from there.

We took inspiration from Star Wars for the characters, their ability to look cohesive but be so different at the same time.

Environment was inspired by ‘Surviving Mars’, the LOD and buildings by ‘Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’ and ‘Satisfactory’.

Our intended audience is anyone who loves sci-fi, aliens and satisfying bug smashing. 

What we learned from this project is that making a full character takes more time than you think and the importance of early implementation and testing in engine.