Flick Wars

Description: Flick your objects to knock your enemies off the board

Role: Sole developer

Platform: Unity, Blender

Language: C#

Duration: February 2021 - Present

Conception

I was doing an assignment for my “Game Design Workshop” class at USC in which I had to make the player feel powerful. We had to use Tabletop Simulator which simulates board games digitally. The game has a “flick” feature where you can literally flick a game object across the table, and this seemed like a good basis because you have to exert force to do so. In addition, my classmates were already doing this to play around during lecture.

Mechanics

I took inspiration from a Korean game named “Al-Kagi” where players flick go stones to knock each other out. I added a 12 sided die to add unpredictability — even though it may not always go towards the direction it was flicked at, when it nevertheless knocks a piece out, players were elated. The giant quarter served to help players feel powerful by its presence, as well as knocking them out with a smaller piece. I varied their weights so that they had to control how hard they flick different pieces to keep them engaged.

Standalone Game

I received positive feedback from my teammates, and succeeded in my prompt. I was motivated to make it playable outside of the base game to make it more accessible. I decided to implement it in Unity.

Unity

Implementing the game logic. I drew the aim indicator with a red line using vector physics. The redder the line, the greater the force.

Blender

Recreate pieces from the original concept.

Plans

The base game loop is finished. I want to implement multiplayer via P2P to test it locally. Eventually, it will be on mobile platforms. For gameplay, I would like to incorporate the piece variations and add an obstacle piece that doesn’t belong to any player to encourage strategizing.