I confirm that the following website and associated work within is all my own work and does not include any work completed by anyone else other than myself
Kai Pearson
10705838@student.bpc.ac.uk
Project Proposal
Research
Pre-Production & Planning
Production log
Final production
Evaulation
Bibiliography
Analysing existing game shows and events
Researching pitch styles and formats
Studying audience engagement—what makes these games sell?
Considering platform suitability—YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, etc.
Gathering peer feedback to refine your idea
audience engagement—what makes these games sell?
reviews? opinions? updates? Images? inspiration map? enjoyability? tower upgrades?
The official description on the roblox page :
“Tower Battles is a strategical tower defense game. You must defend yourself and your team from waves of zombies longer than your opposing team. Play offensively by sending zombies, and also defensively by placing your customized towers.”
Images and description from Planet3arth (2011). Tower Battles. [online] Roblox. Available at: https://www.roblox.com/games/45146873/Tower-Battles [Accessed 19 Mar. 2026].
However this description overlooks major features such as the Co-op mode, balancing farming and upgrades and the increasing difficulty in the enemies spawned each wave. Tower battles is a incredibly fun game, though mostly because of my nostalgia for it.
Tower battles is solo developed and with the developer not wanting to hire other developers or sell off the game to a dev team, the game does not recieve many updates.
0 Million
Total visits
Though despite this the community stays active and the game has done well in in the long time since its release in 2011.
Inspiration: Towers and upgrades.
Damage type: Single
Placement: Ground
Base range: 12
– Visual Change: added sunglasses.
-Range increases from 12 to 15.
-Sell price increases to $175.
– Visual Change: Gun becomes darker and larger.
-Damage increases from 1 to 2.
-Sell price increases to $275.
– Visual Change: added sunglasses
-Damage increase from 2 to 4
-Firerate increases from 1.45s to 1.21s
-Sell price increases to $575.
– Visual Change: Black suit and dual wield
-Can detect Hiddens
-Firerate increase from 1.21s to 0.66s.
-Range increases from 15 to 16.
-Sell price increases to $1,175.
My main take from this mechanic is the visual change for each level. Not only does it make each level of the tower easy to distinguish it also in my opinion adds to the enjoyability of the game as you literally build up each tower to be more powerful. Furthermore the single path upgrade system from Tower battles will be used on my Hero units as I only want them to become more like the specifc heros as they level unlike the normal units that could visually change into different things.
Additionally the low poly style and shape of the characters is similar to how I would like to plan my units, with them being simplistic base meshes with low poly textures and accessories ontop.
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There is no comments to prove individual enjoyment or criticisms but the overall reviews of the game are positive.
Pegi rating:
Roblox is rated PG or a 7, and within roblox, Tower Battles is rated ‘Mild’ for Crude Humor (Mild) and Violence (Repeated/Mild). Therefore My game will easily be able to target young children as the only rating against it would be mild violence.
Maps?
https://www.roblox.com/users/14449080/profile/
https://www.roblox.com/communities/3404390/Tower-Battles-Community#!/about
https://roblox-tower-battles.fandom.com/wiki/Towers
Konosuba is a goofy isekai comedy about Kazuma Satou, a guy who reincarnated to a fantasy world and forms a party with: the useless goddess Aqua who he brings with him from his reincarnation, the explosion-obsessed, chunibyo mage Megumin, and the masochistic knight Darkness who can never land an attack on the enemy.
The plot focuses on their failed attempts at adventuring, often leading to debt and chaos rather than fame and money.
Despite their constant arguing and dysfunction, the party develops a strong sense of friendship, sticking together through their mistakes to overcome any oposing force. Because of the parties combined incompentence the isekai theme of powerful heroes taking on demon armies to defeat the king and save the world is turned into a formidable adventuring group taking on quests to try pay of the debt from their previous shenanigans.
Inspiration: Story and Environment
Konusuba primarily inspired my ideas for the theme of my game, that being a low poly, fantasy world. Recently, I have really enjoyed watching Isekai anime where the main character is reincarnated or summoned to a new world gaininging the ability to use magic and being forced to fight off monsters and demons. Konosuba Is a good example of a quest system, in which they form a party of adventures and head out to do a task like clear a dungeon or paid labour.
Depending on the amount of production I have time for, the guild is where I want the main menu to be set and you click onto the quest board and pick a quest. However my idea, inspired by konosuba is different from the anime as the guild is primarily used as a hub and bar for the adventures.
Additionally the houses in the village I want to create are inspired by these fantasy worlds with Konosuba being a good example, and these images showing the exterior and inside of the guild building.
The quest board to the left inspired my ideas of this being the UI to select the map and your party members before starting the game. Similar to how the adventures would form a party to take up quests in Konosuba.
When Axel is attacked in Konosuba the adventures are summoned to the guild to go out and defend the city. Based of this, my idea to have partys go out to stop the invasion of demons from their portals makes sense.
The general story that should take place if the anime wasnt about the incompotent party is that Kazuma Satou should defeat the Demon Lord and his armies and save the world from terror. However because Konosuba plays on this idea and instead focuses on the party that makes mistakes and barely function, my inspiration for the story of my game comes from other animes and the general fantasy theme itself.
Depending on my planning and production there will be some story aspect or cutscene if possible, explaining the reason why you have to fight the demons, or lore uncovered as you play. Tho because it is only a game demo there would only be one maps worth of lore to uncover not a full quest boards worth of maps.
Inspiration: Character design
One of the characters I am going to plan and create upgrades for will be inspired by the character Megumin.
Her iconic staff, hat and cape along with potentially creating fx similar to the animes when she attacks, will all be planned out to gradually apear as the hero unit is upgraded.
Megumin’s most defining trait is her obsession for Explosion Magic with the unparalleled destructive power which is the primary attack I would make my hero use.
If possible I would love to learn how to simulate something like this for vfx, however mechanics and level design are a higher priority and therefore it is likely I will not attempt the vfx. However the hero I create inspired by megumin will still do devastating splash damage alike Megumin’s explosions.
Reviews:
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Crunchy roll reviews
“hilarious storylines, lovable characters, stunning animation”
–https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5370118/reviews/
“The story itself is interesting, and the main quest had a lot of potential…
…shift more toward slice-of-life comedy rather than progressing the core story.”
–https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5370118/reviews/
The show does get a lot of hate from people who do not enjoy the comedy or because Konosuba plays on the normal isekai story, with the characters being incompotent and silly. However the overarching story that kazuma is told when he is reincarnating ( that he needs to help the people defeat the demon king’s army) is what primarily inspires my games story and theme.
Age rating:
Konosuba is rated a 14-15 beacuse of the dirty humour, suggestive situations and occasional revealing clothing. However this has nothing to do with the story of Konosuba which is what im taking inspiration of. My low poly characters in my game will be simplistic and unrevealing since they are most likely going to be pixelated/ cubic. Therefore my games age rating could easily be targeted lower despite Konosuba having a higher rating.
Blooons TD6 is a 2D low poly Tower defense game where you place monkey towers to stop waves of Bloons from reaching the end. Each tower can be upgraded through multiple paths, allowing different strategies using the same monkey. As the rounds progress, stronger Bloons like camo, lead, and purple blooms, which require specific monkeys with specific upgrades to combat. I like the 2D stylised, almost drawn like art style. You can also equip a single hero unit which works differently to other monkeys, icreasing replayability.
Inspiration: Upgrades
Btd6 has a multiple path upgrade sytem, where you can specialise a unit in one path with 5 upgrades then 2 from another. Additionally some monkeys have paragons and the end, which are incredibly expensive towers that require 1 of each T5, additional money ontop of the cost to buy the upgrade which gets sacrificed and also many 4-2 monkeys which get sacrificed to create and empower it.
In my game their will be no crosspathing from BTD6. This means that I will not have the problem of the spash icon and monkey on the map, not looking the same if you crosspath. Furthermore it will be easier to make as I will only need to make models for each indivual upgrade and not worry about compatibility with the cosmetics from the other path clipping or not showing in the splash icon.
Similarily to Tower battles, each upgrade adds or changes a cosmetic on the monkey that you can see placed in the map. The splash Icon only updates for the path with the highest upgrade unlike the monkey on the map.
I will use a questionaire and research how many paths (2-3) with how many uprades (4+) for the non hero units that I will create for my game. However I know I also will not create paragons being the upgrade that requires merging of many monkeys into one powerful one, as it does not fit my fantasy theme.
I also will not include activateable abilities like the one you can see on the left, as personally they are a inconvience to remember to press. I much prefer games where the abilities simply run as attacks as you level up the unit. Bloons reasoning for leaving them manual is so you can purchase a bot with real life / ingame earnt money to run the power continuously. However I do not want to promote micro-transactions so any abilities I think of will be passive attack for the heroe units.
Inspiration: Heroes
Although this isn’t direct inspiration, the hero system I want to create is similar to bloons. The only differences are the amount of levels, no passive leveling up and that in bloons you can only have a single type of hero, whereas I want the player to utilise multiple but not all of them at once. Like BTD6 you will only be able to place one of them and they will not have the multiple paths like other towers, and instead have a single path of increasingly expensive and powerful levels. I will decide on the amount of levels and appearnce changes each level based of a questionaire in the planning.
Inspiration: Level design/ art
Again, although it isn’t a direct inspiration to my initial ideas, this map called Town Centre in BTD6 is similar in ways to how I want to create my map.
The art style is similar to what I want to create in my game, though the camera angle would be more isometric.
The map is smaller scale than what I plan but the village houses and trees are along the lines of what I would like to create.
Pegi Rating:
I can’t find a definitive or official rating of the game but it is considered suitable for all ages, since it is only features mild catoon violence against balloons. My game will not have gore and will be similar to bloons, stylised art. However they will be fighting demons and the potential backstory/ lore of my game features death and destruction. Although its obviously set in a fantasy world, children could still be upset about villages being destroyed and therefore I will make my game suitable for children around 8+.
Reviews:
“Overwhelmingly Positive”
Steam store reviews
0.23%
Steam DB rating
0
97.2% Positive reviews
“Best Tower Defense of all times, by far. I am a huge fan, since the fisrt flash browser based edition. This one has a huge amount of content: Many heroes, towers, enemies, maps, difficulties. You can play this being a casual gamer on easy settings, or play as a hardcore try hard on almost impossible settings. There is also 4 player CO-OP, which is super fun with friends. Game is also super cheap. Cant go wrong with it. The Overwhelmingly Positive rating here on steam is very well deserved. 10/10”
–https://steamcommunity.com/id/sid5151/recommended/960090
“It’s both a “haha monkey shoot balloons” game and a “this tower has exactly 17 pierce and with pixel perfect placement I can use it to save $1000 on upgrades” game. A great tower defense that’s both easily accessible and has a lot of depth for those looking for a more complex challenge.”
–https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199630909374/recommended/960090
These reveiws show how loved of a tower defense Bloons TD6 is. The second review shows the importance of balancing the game so that all people can enjoy it. I want my game to be suitable for all and therefore this balance of easy to play but tedious to perfect is something I would like to focus on, though because of time this may only be something planned if I had a full dev team.
Inspiration: Story and theme
This is a generic Fantasy, isekai anime where 3 highschool students are summoned to another world to help fight off the demon armies. They gain the ability to use magic, and the type they have is determined by the colour of the crystal ball.
The kingdom believes Kazuki and Suzune are destined heroes meant to help defeat the invading Demon Lord’s army, but Usato is accidentally pulled in with them.
The ball reveals Kazuki and Suzune have magic abilties for light and lightning meaning they can train to become heroes and protect the kingdom.
However Usato has a even rarer affinity for healing magic. He is then trained harshly to become a superhuman healer, as he uses healing magic to enhance his strength, agility and endurance.
They train and go on to fight and overcome the demons.
This generic fantasy, heros versus demons theme inspired my games storyline and characters.
Pegi Rating:
Crunchyroll rates it a 14+ for profanity and violence, though with my low poly style not including wounds and blood. I should still be able to target suitability for all.
Reviews:
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Crunchy roll reviews
“…Is a refreshing take on the isekai genre, blending humor and action seamlessly.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15237152/
“The anime offers a great mix of action, comedy, and a little bit of romance. It also showcases intense training, power-ups, and the struggles of the protagonist, making the journey feel rewarding. The pacing keeps things exciting, and the fight sequences are well-executed.”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15237152/
Not too many people review the story since it’s generic but most people agree the action and and style is great, so it will be a good inspiration for the main fighting theme.
Game pitch styles and formats:
Once I have created the majority of the game demo I will need to create a game pitch to showcase the core concept and game mechanics. If it was a real game development, I would use the pitch to seek funding and a dev team to create the full game. Therefore it is crucial to have a excellent game pitch as there is many game developers seeking funding.
What is a game pitch?
In game development, a game pitch is any concrete, externalized information you offer about your game with the intent to sell it in a B2B (business to business) setting. Your goal is to convince the publisher, investor, or platform that your game is the one they should get involved with.
Toresson, J. (2024). How to Pitch a Game to Publishers and Get Accepted. [online] Game Design Skills. Available at: https://gamedesignskills.com/game-development/game-pitch/ [Accessed 26 Mar. 2026].
A good game pitch should include these key features:
- Title slide: Grab attention with your game’s name, logo, and an eye-catching image.
- I will create a identity for the game with a logo and name, so I can showcase my outcome.
- Introduction slide: Introduce yourself and your team, emphasizing your passion and experience in gaming.
- There is obviously only me working on it, so this page won’t be that full.
- Game concept: Describe your game’s concept in an engaging way. What makes it unique?
- Gameplay mechanics: Explain how your game is played. Include key mechanics and user experience.
- I will probably include a gameplay video.
- Story and characters: If your game is story-driven, bring its narrative and characters to life here.
- I will explain the lore and characters.
- Art and design: Showcase the visual style and design elements of your game.
- Close up pictures/ video of my production.
- Target audience: Define who your game is for and why they’ll love it.
- Information based of my inspiration’s age ratings.
- Market analysis: Present your research on market trends and your game’s place within it.
- Marketing and sales strategy: Outline your approach to getting your game into players’ hands.
- Development timeline: Offer a clear timeline for your game’s development process.
- Based of my development logs.
- Budget and financials: Be transparent about your financial needs and projections.
- Made up or predicted, since I don’t actually need funding.
- Competitive analysis: Compare your game to others, highlighting your competitive edge.
- Show features inspired from other tower defense games and there downsides.
- Technical details: If relevant, include technical aspects like platforms and system requirements.
- I could research average pc specs and do a survey on how it runs.
- Demo or prototype: If available, showcase a demo or prototype of your game.
- Maybe upload my game demo to itch, for others to play and give feedback.
- Next steps slide: Conclude with what you need (funding, partnerships) and your immediate next actions.
Krukowska, D. (n.d.). 18 Winning Game Pitch Deck Examples to Follow (+Templates). [online] 18 Winning Game Pitch Deck Examples to Follow (+Templates). Available at: https://www.storydoc.com/blog/game-pitch-deck-examples [Accessed 26 Mar. 2026].
This is a short, simple and formal pitch showcasing the game quickly. I like this style though I think it could lack reasoning for the investors/ stake holders to invest in the game and also details about all the features and mechanics. The pitch covers: The game name, an overview of the game and gameplay video link, overview of features, platform support, pricing and timeline and a introduction to the developer team.
I do like how formal the visuals of this pitch are, with clean fonts and backgrounds and the screenshots of the game blending into the background. So in my pitch I might want to match this format, although my fantasy style doesn’t fit the sci-fi modern format aswel.
Game title, detailed game concept, community support and why u should play it, technical details/ platforms, Timeline and budget, pages of individual features , team, art and screenshots
This pitch is much longer with more details and key info. Visually I think it is much less formal and they didn’t spend much time on the looks of the pitch. However they covered a lot more content
Target Audience & platform
To refine my ideas and confirm features with my target audience, I created a form with some general target audience questions but primarily feedback and ideas for the game.
10 people within my target audience range filled out the form, therefore all of the information I gathered will be input from people who would potentially play the game.
Nobody was against my games theme and genre although some where just on the edge of being interested.
Therefore my game idea could succed If the development goes well enough.
The majority of people play on pc (90%) and therefore there isn’t much point in developing support for other platforms. Although I could widen the Target audience with support for other platforms slightly the development time for the small potential player increase is not worth it.
Looking through articles, most
game developers want to target PC game production as PC games still dominate the market. The graph on the right is from one of these articles:
Kolakowski, N. (2024). Which Platforms Do Video Game Developers Want to Build For? [online] Dice Insights. Available at: https://www.dice.com/career-advice/which-platforms-do-video-game-developers-want-to-build-for [Accessed 29 Mar. 2026].
The majority of people think the price should be below £5, which I agree with.
Many ower defense games are priced around £5-15. However proven by my form and personally, people want to spend around £5 on a game like this.
For example, BTD6 made by Ninja Kiwi. They have a dev team but are independent from large corporations such as E.A and therefore BTD6 kind of classes as a Indie game.
BTD6 has many sales as shown in the graph from https://steamdb.info/app/960090/
Most people would buy the game when it has a flashy 60-90% discount. Playing bloons myself I wouldn’t say it isn’t worth the £11.79 its priced at however its more enticing to buy when its £4.71-£1.17.
A Indie tower defense made by a solo dev, Isle of arrows. https://store.steampowered.com /app/1946970/Isle_of_Arrows/ prices their game at £10.99. Though they don’t have as high percent disounts, they still have frequent price reductions.
Therefore If I were to price and sell my game I would probably use the same strategy of pricing the game around £10-15 but have frequent sales to the affordable <£5 price that the target audience seeks.
Peer feedback
In the same questionnaire from above I mostly included questions like this. They were to help me finalise specifics of mechanics and take in input from my target audience.
This shows my idea for low poly and stylised artsyle could work as nobody I asked was against it or seeking hyper realism like alot of games go for.
For my UI design I think the majority of the ingame UI will be incredibly simplistic similar to Tower Battles where it is just a hotbar of your towers and their prices. However the one cool idea that I had, If I get around to it in the production was the main menu, and pre-game selction UI. So checking with the target audience they agree it would be a cool feature and therefore I should aim to squeeze in the time around the main game production to create it in the way in envisioned.
I am pretty indecisive when it comes to key features as I always want to add more than needed. So these 6 questions where useful to see how many of each type of unit the target audience wanted. Additionally it helped me decide the amount of upgrades and upgrade paths, meaning I can get to planning out the characters. Further more it showed me how many waves the target audience would want to play through, so I can target the power curve to be shallower or steeper in my planning, with stronger enemies sooner.
I also wanted more ideas for the units that I will create in the game. The key unit I picked up on was an “archer”. I completely forgot these exist, and are a much better long range unit than using a mage for that purpose . Instead I can use the mage unit with a ice/water and fire path as the target audience wants, and it also gives the player more choice for basic unit selection. Other useful feedback on my units from this form will be put to paper in the planning stage.
I asked for some feedback on my main map idea and also any other map ideas for the future, however I will not have time to create multiple maps for the game demo. Therefore I am only showing this pie chart above, with extra environment art ideas. The Farming villagers, inspired one of my money making units. Though, again, since I dont have much time I might not include this tower as it won’t be the primary money generator. Could be cool though.
Finally, I consider vfx kind of important for the style of this game and it seems so does the target audience. In development it will not be my priority to make the vfx perfect, but when im creating the projectiles and attack systems, I might aswell add some form of static mesh to add to the visuals. It does not have to be particle systems, although I may research them later, but any cheap visual effect I can come up with will be effective at increasing the attraction of my game.
Audience engagement
words
Following this decision, all pathways MUST include:
UI and design
Sound
FPS/Performance
Story
Gant chart or calendar with key dates
Storyboards or visual plans
Risk Assessments if going to locations for research etc.
Production Schedule
Contingency Plans
Graphics or UI designs
Time mananagement Gant chart
Story
Althogh I probably will not have enough time to embed the story within the game demo. I did create a story when initially coming up with ideas for the game. This was to keep everything on a relatively similar theme and reasoning, and also to further inspire my ideas.
The world was peaceful, until demons appeared through portals led by a demon king.
They destroyed villages and people scattered away.
Anyone capable of fighting tried, but humans had no efficient way to fight back so the losses were great.
The demons destroyed everything in their path until they were finally subdued by the human forces.
Humanity was devastated, but they had won this battle.
They focused on rebuilding over the next decades but monsters started to appear.
They were weak and fairly easy to deal with, but it was unknown where they originated.
Then abnormalities were noticed in children born in the previously destroyed villages.
They seem to have abilities and were named heroes.
The children were taught how to fight to defend against these monsters.
Humans researched the demon attack further and discovered the demon portals spread magic essence into the human realm, which had been absorbed by the children and animals in the area.
The essence affected everyone differently allowing the control of magic or enhanced strength.
However the later generations of children have grown up with weaker magic essence bonds and could not be named heroes, but still have enhanced abilities.
They were named adventurers and the adventurers guild was formed to protect civilians.
The adventurers were given the easier and more trivial quests as the heroes were either tasked with training the adventurers or taking on older and larger monsters.
Things did not stay this calm though, demon portals started to open again with even more formidable forces.
This time we are ready, the heroes were organised to command and aid attack teams to take on the demon’s forces and protect the villages.
However, this is still useful to help other people get a better idea of my vision.
Environment art/ level design
Created a top down veiw for the isometric
one ref https://pikuma.com/images/blog/isometric-projection-in-games/tiles-textures.png
Mechanics
Upgrade, place, spawn
Character planning
units illustrations. hand drawn textures
Heroes:
explosive mage megumin
Nature mage dryad (summons animals)
Divine smth/ priestess (Debuffs and buffs) with useful dps attacks only at later levels
Wind mage (knockback and slowing)
Spirit knight (summons spirits)
Ice mage (freeze and DOT)
string?
Units:
Mage path1:
Mage path2:
Witch path1: Debuffs
Witch path2: Necromancer
Knight path1: Heavy swinging
Knight path2: swift swinging
Merchant Path1: Magic dealer
Merhcant Path2: investor
Farmer Path1: farms field to sell
Farmer Path2:
Archer Path1:
Archer Path2:
Unit 8:Weekly blog 2
Rough Character planningQuestionaire to answe, target audience, platform suitability, pricing, and peer feedbackDetailed upgrades, units, enemies and wavesLevel design This week…
Unit 8:Weekly blog 1
This week I spent finishing the proposal and initial ideas, and then starting the research. Firstly I created a Gant chart…
High-quality visuals and audio
Engaging presentation
Custom graphics, titles, or overlays
A finished game demo that shows off key features from the chosen focus area
FINAL DATE DO NOT TOUCH 18/5/26