Game Concept

Lebral's Keep

Concept Statement

Protect Lebral from hordes of enemies who have broken in to his Keep. Use a variety of towers and technologies to push back the invaders and win back Lebral's castle.

Genre

Lebral's Keep is a tower defence game fitting in the strategy game genre. It fits as a strategy game as you need to make full use of limited space for placement of towers, exploiting weaknesses of enemies while not sacrificing damage on other enemy types and working out the most efficient use of a money/space/damage type ratio.

Concept

Lebral's Keep centers around the tried and true idea behind a tower defence game, placing turrets or towers along the edges of a defined path to stop waves of enemies reaching their goal.  Lebral's Keep will use a top down style similar to that of GemCraft and Bloons TD, both found on Steam, in which the player can see the whole map/level and the path the enemy will follow and is able to plan tower placement strategically.

I will be likely be using a pixel art style for my assets, keeping the game simple in design and able to run on lower end system hardware and possibly be capable of being ported to mobile at a later date.

Audience and Competitive Analysis

Lebral's Keep is targeted towards a more casual audience, although will have difficulty options for those that want more of a challenge. My goal for age is to make it more accessbile to most, but will likely contain slightly more mature visuals(the presence of blood and mild violence).

A big downside to creating a tower defence game is the market has quite a large variety already, although this does give me plenty of inspiration to draw from to work out what has potential to release successfully.  Looking through the Steam market, a key factor seems to be variety in turret types and enemies, two things I plan to focus on during development.

Game Treatment

You play as Lebral, a medieval weapons designer living in his keep in the middle of a forest.  One stormy night Lebral wakes to find his castle overrun by monsters he's only ever heard rumours about. Starting from the workshop at the top of his keep, you must help Lebral rid the castle of these creatures using a variety of magically automated weapon turrets.

• Access an array of turrets that use a variety of magical and physical effects.
• Fight enemies with a variety weaknesses and health to counter.
• Play through multiple levels as you make your way down the castle.

Lebral will be facing a variety of monsters, mostly drawn from folklore and legends. The main bulk of the enemies will be Orcs, probably one of the most recognisable enemy that tends to gather in hordes. Each level will end with a boss wave introducing a new and tougher enemy. Amongst these will be minotaurs, ogres, golems and trolls. Each following level will spawn the previous level's boss as special enemies

Orcs:

• Orc - The basic Orc, unarmoured and with a low amount of health will be the main mass enemy. Easy to kill but can overwhelm poorly placed defenses with sheer numbers.
• Runner Orc - These Orcs are faster than any other enemy but have very low health and are a two shot kill from a first level ballista turret at the start of the game.
• Armoured Orc - The Armoured Orc will be similar to the basic Orc, the biggest difference being they will be more durable against physical damage such as a ballista or rock thrower. They will be fewer in number and act as a bit of a "bullet sponge" for the lesser Orcs.
• Orc Shaman - The Orc Shaman is an enemy that will have strong resistance to magic damage. While it still takes full damage from physical type damage, it will have slightly more health than a regular Orc.
• Orc Boss - The Orc Boss is the toughest of the Orc variants, having average resistance to both magic and physical damage, while also having more health than any other Orc type.

Ogres

Ogres will be the second enemy type for the player to encounter. These enemies will only come in 2 types, an unarmoured and an armoured variant. 

• Unarmoured Ogre - These ogres are simply tough, having a health level between the Orc Shaman and Orc Boss. They have no resistances but will be a more numerous tougher enemy.
• Armoured Ogre - The armoured ogre is simply an ogre but with strong physical damage resistance. These lumbering brutes pose a real threat to any player who has forgone magic type turrets in favour of mass physical damage.

Minotaurs

Minotaurs come in a single type. They are a similar to the Orc Runner in that they are faster than other enemies. Whilst slower than the Orc Runner, they have more health, giving a higher chance for them to break through clumps of towers.

Trolls

Trolls are a regenerative type enemy and come in a few different types, each with it's own strength. They are a slower enemy, but pose a significant threat if not constantly being damaged. All Trolls have equal health and rely on their resistances or abilities to get through the player's towers.

• Regular Troll - The Regular Troll has no resistances and relies solely on it's ability to regenerate health. It's regenerative ability is faster than that of the other variants and needs to have constant damage applied to it to reduce it's threat to the player.
• Mana Troll - The Mana Troll is, as the name might suggest, a Troll nearly fully resistant to magic type damage. It also has weakness to physical damage, but still uses regenerative abilities.
• Stoneskin Troll - The Stoneskin Troll is nearly impervious physical damage. It will go down quickly to any type of magic damage however, forcing the player to ensure they have the right setup of turrets along the path.

Golems

Golems are, at this point, the toughest enemy. They will appear only as bosses or on special occasion. There are 3 types of Golem, each with unique abilities.

• Stone Golem - The Stone Golem has a large amount of health and takes very little damage from nearly all towers. It's only weakeness is the Slammer tower, from which it takes significant damage each hit.
• Iron Golem - The Iron Golem has just as much health as the Stone Golem, but takes serious damage from Lightning, Slammer and Fire towers. It has the ability to disable towers it is next to for 3 seconds, recharging every 6 seconds.
• Shielding Golem - The Shielding Golem protects enemies in a small radius of itself. It is weak to Lightning and Slammer towers.

Towers

The current list of turret ideas is as follows.

• Ballista - Basic bolt firing tower.
• Slammer - Creates a area of effect shockwave of damage around itself.
• Lightning - Fires lightning magic.
• Fire - Shoots fireball magic dealing area of effect damage on impact.
• Ice - Slows enemies within its radius.
• Enhancer - Improves turrets within its radius.
• MultiShot - Fires up to 3 bolts at different enemies but deals less damage per bolt than ballista.