Best Senior Design Project Drexel College of Computing, Finalist in Intel 2015 Student Games Competition

Developed as a Senior Design Project as a collaboration between students in the art and computer science colleges. The design goal was to utilize elements of MOBA design to make a casual friendly RTS. The game would not have micromanagement, would not last for a long time, and would not overwhelm players.

Gygan Reign plays as an RTS where players build defensive towers on the map. Each player guards a Gygan, a gigantic monster representing the player. Every tower on the map will have display a line walking directly towards the enemy Gygan, and every minute or so, every building will spawn a unit that automatically walks this path, attacking everything in its way. Players can redraw these paths at any time and can orchestrate play as if they drawing a sports play. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that the buildings themselves will uproot and become super units once they have spawned a few units. These unique dynamics lead to a streamlined RTS experience unlike anything on the market. The fact that there were a variety of Gygans to choose from and each provided unique units and buildings led to tons of replayability.

The team was selected to represent Drexel at the Intel Student Games 2015 GDC contest and was a finalist, and it also won a best project award throughout the entire College of Computing (beating out games and non-games alike).

My role on the team was as a design and programming lead, and I eventually look on a large portion of team management responsibilities as well.

The final release was a multiplayer only version of the game that was released for free as an early access game. Future planned features included a single player campaign, matchmaking, more Gygans to choose from, special abilities with cooldowns, and the ability to uproot your Gygans to make them fight. The team has expressed interest in working on the game but the loss of enough key team members makes it much more likely that the project would be rebooted rather than resumed.

For more information see http://www.whalehousestudios.com/games/gygan-reign/

Alpha Build At: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4SnIgzUKfHeVnNXUUUzZFlWMnc/view?usp=sharing

Last Major Release I Worked on: May 2015
Made With: Unity
Made For: Drexel’s Senior Design
Awards: Best Senior Design Project Drexel College of Computing, Finalist in Intel 2015 Student Games Competition

Team:
Ryan Daugherty: Head Programming, Design, Team Management
[1 name withheld]: Programming, Design, Technical Direction
[1 name withheld]: Assistant Programming, Documentation
[1 name withheld]: Art, Design
[1 name withheld]: Team Management
[3 names withheld]: Art