Masters of Conjuration

• The concept statement.

In ‘Masters of Conjuration’ you are a conjuration wizard who has challenged a fellow conjuration wizard to battle for the title of master of conjuration. This battle is conducted in a specially made arena of tiles, where you will take turns controlling minions you have summoned to destroy the enemies tower. To do this you will be able to summon units using mana, and terraform the environment to make it advantageous for your army. For example, a maze of valleys that obstruct a ranged unit’s attacks.

• Genre or category of game.

PvP turn-based strategy game, as this game will be 2 players taking turns strategically controlling units and modifying the environment to defend you base and destroy the others base.

• Concept creation process/area (e.g. subtractive design, anti-game, mashup, etc.) and influences.

The concept of this game has come from my love of turn-based-strategy games and Unity’s tile map system, which inspired me to make a turn-based strategy. I thought of how in most turn-based strategy games you control units that go through the environments picking locations around a pre-built environment that give them the geographical advantage over their opponents, for example placing high defence units to block pathways so that enemies can’t get past without defeating them. I thought it would be an interesting idea to be able to create the environment that will give you that advantage. I plan to be minimalist in the stats the units have (like games such as Polytopia, in which units have 5 stats: health, attack, defence, movement and range) and focus more on how they interact with the environments. 

• Audience and competitive analysis.

The intended audience for my game is people who enjoy competitive turn-based-strategy games or people new to the genre. This game will be easy to pick up for people new to the turn-based-strategy games as the units will have limited stats and basic movement but will have a high skill cap as you take into account how all the environments effect the battle. The ability to alter the environments is present in lots of turn-based-strategy games but it is usually not the main focus of such games mechanics, thus this is how ‘Masters of Conjuration’ will set itself apart compared to its competitors.

• Game treatment and concept art.

The game will be set in a medieval fantasy world where you will play as a grand wizard of conjuration magic, controlling the world around you to your whim; but recently you have heard of someone of equal ability and skill. You decide to challenge them to battle of strategy where the winner will be announced as the master of conjuration. To facilitate this battle, you worked together with many wizards of several schools to create an arena of tiles that will house this competition. The rules of the battle will be as follows, each wizard will set up a tower in which will be their home base, upon its destruction you will lose the game. They will be able to terraform the environment in a limited range around their tower (place environmental tiles that give certain units an advantage). Using mana you can create golems and conjure creatures that will fight in your place. The units will trek across the environments that the wizards have created to destroy the opposing sides tower. (These units will be summoned using mana, a limited resource. They will at least have damage and defence for melee and range, have speed for how many tiles they can move, and sight for how much fog of war they can see through.) The image below is a mock up my brother made at my request. Note that in that in the actaul game I plan to make so they can only move orthogonally.

polytopia website - https://polytopia.io