Isle of Thylanna
Management Game
A short city management game based around maintaining an Ancient Greece themed island
This game was a group project for an Intro to Unity class. The goal was to create a clone of Sim City. I assumed the role of programmer and helped with some of the initial art concepts. Pretty early on we had the idea to set the game in Ancient Greece, so I drew up this mockup of how a scene could look.
The main goal of the project was to create an isometric building game where buildings can interact with each other over time. Some liberties had to be taken with the Sim City formula to accommodate the change in era. Farming and trade became a big part of gameplay, alongside appeasing the gods.
The project was made under pretty heavy time constraints, about a month, including a week break, so while scope didn't suffer much, features beyond that were cut to save time.
I'm probably the most proud of the tutorial which I completed in a day, I've sort of got a knack for completing interactive tutorials fast. Of course it's never by choice, usually hours before the deadline, but I haven't failed yet. Still, I think it is an admirable effort to explain all the needlessly complex systems I insisted on including.
During development, I made a special point to maintain a comprehensive Development Diary to track my progress. The main purpose was to keep teammates informed about where I was at development and mindset-wise.
The diary ended up proving itself to be a great help in the creative process. Not only to document, but as a way for me to think through problems. Development, specifically where code is involved, is rarely a straight line. There are struggles and solutions that all eventually get smoothed out in the years to come, but I like having a place where those moments are immortalized. I like seeing the diary gradually become more disorganized and unhinged over time, as more 1:00 am rants fill in.