Pollinator, Flower Defense - Detailed Enemy Design

We've been working like busy bees on the Pollinator project for the Abertay Game Development Society. While we still don't have a fully playable prototype, we've made a lot of progress on enemy, bee, and flower designs. In addition, our wonderful artist Piia has produced some gorgeous concept art, as well as as some initial enemy art.

In case you missed the game description, Pollinator, Flower Defense is a tower defense game in which you play as bees defending their hives. Previously we had planned for the main enemies to be wasps, but we've since changed that to ants. This makes more sense for a lot of reasons - first, it differentiates the heroes and enemies more. Second, it makes more sense for ants to be blocked by flowers, since they are land creatures.

In the last week, our designer has been generating all sorts of interesting enemy designs.

• Worker Ant - Straight-To-Target: Plows on towards the hive, mostly for scouting rather than actual offense.

• Soldier Ant - Creature Attacker: Attacks friendly creatures that move against the creep wave.

• Winged Ants - Flyers: Weak flyers that bypass flowers.

• Stag Beetles - Tank: Slow to move but packs a punch and can take a beating. Hive destroyers.

• Rhino Beetles - Flying Tank: Very slow to move but packs a punch and can take a beating. Can fly over flowers. Extremely dangerous. Hive destroyers.

• Millipedes - Iron Defenders: Protects other creeps with long carapace body. Creatures attacking creeps under the millipede or the millipede itself will do less damage.

• Hairy Caterpillar - Spiky Defenders: Protects other creeps with long spiked body. Creatures attacking creeps under the caterpillar or the caterpillar itself will be damaged.

• Cricket - Speed Boost: Increases the speed of nearby creeps with its violin music.

• Kamikaze Ants/Pea Aphids - Suicide:  Rushes through defenses and explodes at targets.

• Grasshopper - HexSkipper: Hops quickly between hexes instead of regular creep movement. Skips one hex then pauses before the next leap. Can leap over flowers except Wallflowers.

• Water-Skimmer - Non-Slowed: The pads on the feet of these insects prevent them from being slowed by honey or sap.

• Dung Beetle - High Defense Wave Leader/Protector: Moves at the head of the line of creeps, taking attacks with its large ball of waste. Melee attackers will be slowed when striking the dung ball. Speeds up when ball is destroyed, though has low health.

He's also been working on bee, flower, and tech designs - but those will be the subject of a later post.

I'm quite excited at how well development is going. I'll be posting a video of a playable prototype as soon as we have one ready, hopefully in the next week.