Tower
(Sparkypants Studios) When I read the short story Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang I just had to put down the book and start working on an image. It was really inspiring. In his story he described people living on the tower spending their entire lives ferrying food, bricks, and mortar up to the next level where they were passed along. This sparked the idea of a game where the player would gather resources and combine them into materials to race upward toward the heavens constructing their own tower. To add challenge we put in "enemies". Bugs and plagues that would slow or stop the player's progress.
A 3D concept of the tower and surrounding lands. The idea was a minimalist clean look. The TOWER would be like a sliver rising from the flat lands around it.
Mock up of how the tower might begin.
This was demonstrating how the different add-ons would affect the tower as it grew.
A paintover of the tower top showing a lightning attack, one of the many perils faced by the builders.
Modeling some simple builders so that we could understand scale and show some expressions, reactions and work.
Playing with potential material changes and customization of the tower.
A rough sketch to visualize some of the gameplay elements.
Another sketch of a floating island, an idea for a resource the builder could encounter as the tower rose.
This was to show a cuter friendlier vibe to the game.
This video shows the unity proto in a state where bugs attack from below and fly down to the base to destroy the tower. The enemy turrets on the tower are how the player defends their construction.
A player's tower could just keep growing and growing.
Unity proto where we tried giving the workers a circular path up the tower. This allowed the player to see the flow of resources to the top.