Pollinator, Flower Defense - Design and Prototyping

This week I've been working on prototyping some designs for my team's GDS game, Pollinator - Flower Defense. It's a tower defense game where you play as bees defending their hive. The target platform is mobile (of all types, but most immediately Android phones).

While I haven't completed a prototype yet, I do have a concept diagram I can show you (warning: programmer art incoming).

The green area at the bottom will contain UI info later.
I'm not sure why the background came out so pixelated. Needles to say, the final version will look much better.

Here you can see the play field, which in this design is a hex grid. Each level starts with flowers strewn around the field. The user assigns bees to flowers, and the bees use the flowers as an attack base and also "work" the flower, producing resources.

Resources include the following:

• Pollen. Produced often, used to buy more bees.
• Nectar. Produced rarely, used for "tech" style upgrades between levels.
• Seeds. Produced rarely, used to plant new flowers.

There are still a lot of variables up in the air, design wise. For example, we don't know exactly how the enemies will move, whether they attack bees or simply fly past toward the hive, and whether they can fly over flowers or are blocked by them. We are hoping prototyping will help us determine the answers to these questions. Ultimately I don't have to worry about these decisions too much, since we have a dedicated designer on the project.

It's also awesome having a real artist on the team. She has come up with several concept sketches for the bees and wasps so far, and they are looking awesome.

Next week, we are hoping to have at least on playable prototype done. Additionally, we're looking to have a few enemy and bee designs from the designer so the artist can start producing game art or at least more targeted concept art. It's amazing to see it coming together, and I'm really excited! It's also good to know that everything I learn through this project will help me when it comes time to make my team's Dare game.