Beach Please! Tubular Mayhem
Beach Please! Tubular mayhem was a school project related to a game production course. We formed a team with the goal of publishing a MVP by the end of spring semester 2023. This gave us roughly four months to build the project in Unity, which had the predetermined genre of a tower defense game. The team worked different roles during the production: Lila Lukkarinen as the environment, UI and logo designer and also as the leader of the team, Mauri Rahkila as the concept artist, Christopher Solis with animation, Unity, VFX and some 3D, and Jenna Toivonen as the programmer and Unity wizard. I worked mainly on 3D assets, sounds as well as an leader of an academic writing course which was related to the game. (If you want to read a great thesis practice related to visual clutter in tower defense games hit me up!)
In the game, you play as a Kraken, trying to protect their treasure from sea creature pirates. To do this, you must build defenses from the things lying around on the beach. The gameplay has a building phase, during which the player may spend their currency to purchase defenses and place them on the grid without being disturbed by enemies. After they are satisfied, they can begin the attack phase during which building is disabled and it's time to sit back and see how the sandcastles hold up against the pirates. The enemies also spawn in waves. In-between each wave the player can build or fix their defenses with the currency they gained from defeating the pirates.
After a long and cold spring, we managed to create an amazing, sunny game and I would like to thank all my team members and those who helped along the way! This was really fun to work on!
A screenshot of the main menu. UI and logo design by Lila Lukkarinen.
A screenshot of the gameplay area. Each team member created some 3D assets for the game and most of them visible are not mine.
Turtle character I modeled, rigged and hand painted the textures on.
The turtle is the strongest "boss" enemy in the Beach Please! Tubular Mayhem game.
The concept art is by Mauri Rahkila, and the character was modeled to fit the style of the game.
A pufferfish used as a projectile by the turtle boss' cannon.
Palm trees I modeled with hand painted textures.
Top view of the trees.
I made individual parts which could be easily modified to create variation.
The game has three different tower types, of which I modeled two, including this "basic" one. The shading on the sand, seaweed and starfish are hand painted.
The idea was to combine toys that can be found on the beach to a sandcastle the Kraken has built. The guns were textured in Substance Painter.
Again, the concept art was provided by Mauri Rahkila.
This is the "heavy" tower type, which deals a lot of damage but in a short range and slowly. The sea urchins and shells as well as sand shading are hand painted.
The gun design was inspired by the Air cannon children's toy.
After multiple variations of the weapon design (by Mauri Rahkila), we ended up with a sturdy look, resembling a cannon.
The game offers an option to protect your sandcastles with walls which I modeled and made sure that they would connect with eachother.
The smaller and cheaper wall type.
The more expensive and larger wall.
The walls in action, crabs are by Christopher Solis and Kraken model by Jenna Toivonen.
A close up of how the assets look and scale in-game.