Summary
Orchestra Wars is a virtual reality game I created as one of my final projects for college.
A game like this was a project assigned to all students about halfway through the GIMM major.
Its main purpose was to simulate as best as possible the process behind developing a game
while also putting students' personal time management skills to the test. Aside from a couple
courses that were taught in tandem with the project, students had to develop the game on their
own time while other courses took place normally. As such, it took place over a couple years
and was due as a final project just before graduation. This project is something I may continue
to improve in the future.
The game itself can best be described as a mix between tower defense and beat 'em up style. The
player is tasked with defending a scroll containing sheet music against invading red enemies. At the
same time, the player has blue allies attempting to steal the red team's scroll. The player
can spawn turrets and use a violin they are given as weapons to defend against the red team.
My hope was to address a common criticism of tower defense games; the player's lack of personal
involvement. That is to say, some find it boring to have an overhead view of the game and only
watch as their towers do all the fighting for them. To resolve this, the player is down in the
action as well - almost literally thanks to VR.
Conceptualization
Development began with the creation of a Game Design Document (GDD) for the game. The course this was
introduced in also served as a guide on how GDDs should be structured and written. At the time,
multiplayer
was a required functionality for the project. Due to how new GIMM is as a major, the 1st cohort (aka the
first people to ever take the major at my college)
were still discovering just how finnicky multiplayer can be to develop in Unity, and it wouldn't be
until a
year later that the multiplayer requirement was dropped. Regardless, my initial plans for the game were
built around that and some remnants of it are still present in the game today.
Initially, the plan was to have two teams duke it out in a strictly player versus player only mode. I
pulled a lot of inspiration from the game Team Fortress 2; there would be a few different playable
character
classes each with their own weaponry and unique abilities based on their musical instruments, and
various objectives to compete for. This system
was later cut after hearing how much of a nightmare VR multiplayer was to create in Unity at the time,
and
the multiplayer requirement was dropped from the curriculum. Below are a couple images from the GDD of
this early concept.
Finalized Mechanics
Not long after the multiplayer cut, I created the tower defense/beat 'em up hybrid we have today. The structure of the level supports up to two players, as I still want to try making a versus mode in the future. For now, the game features a red team and a blue team. The player is always on the blue team, which is also represented as the string family of orchestral instruments. The player is given a violin to grab as a weapon and a console with which to spawn a couple of what I call MegaCello Turrets. The NPCs, meanwhile, are following set paths in an attempt to reach the opposing side of the map. The way I have it structured, if the player does an adequate job defending, they will eventually win. However, without the turrets, they can become overwhelmed very quickly. See the video below for a more detailed explanation of the game's inner works.