Planetary Guard: Defender - iOS Shoot 'em up

Hello everyone,

We here at the Blackland Games have been working on our first title Planetary Guard: Defender for quite some time now and it’s readying gold stage soon. Before I go into details, we are proud to present to you a teaser trailer for your viewing pleasure.

Blackland Games is a three man start up company with one programmer, one artist and one designer so there has been plenty of work for all of us in here.



Overview:

Planetary Guard: Defender is tower defense elements incorporating casual shoot ‘em up game for mobile devices. Player has to defend a planet from endless waves of aliens by using buildable defense structures and his own fighter ship.

Planetary Guard will be free on AppStore and include In App Purchases. The game will in it's initial launch have 30 campaign missions and several bonus missions with plans on increasing the numbers through regular updates. Player will have several tank hulls, shield systems, weapons and defensive turrets to buy and upgrade.


World:

Player steps into the boots of a Planetary Guard’s space tank pilot with the massive task of defending his home regions from an assault of enemy aliens. Planetary Guard is the neglected part of the Galactic army consisting only of conscripts and volunteers. They are left to defended strategically less important backwater colonies of the galaxy and they have to do it with outdated machinery and equipment.

The plot is mostly in the background and it's not a large element of the game. However the world around is something we have put a lot of thought in, especially the title faction in which ranks the player joins in the game. Planetary Guards look and feel comes from the style of mid-20th century war machinery. Kinda if they would have went to space back then with what they had then. Also everything looks a bit silly, short and condensed to keep the game from looking too serious. Most effects use hand painted sprite sheet animations and have a cartoony look to them.

All 3D models have been modeled and their textures have been hand painted in Blender. We have been aiming to create a space shoot 'em up a with a distinct graphical style. For instance we have space tanks instead of space ships



Features:

• Fast paced Shoot ‘em up gameplay for iOS
• Fight endless waves of enemy ships using an arsenal of varied and destructive weapons
• Upgrade your ship and equipment to match the ever toughening missions
• Buy, upgrade and place defensive turrets to help you
• Test your pilot skills by squaring off with challenging bosses

What's so special then?

All enemies drop pieces of debris along with power ups and such when they are destroyed. We have managed to be able to have dozens of enemies, pieces of debris, power ups, defensive structures and bullets on screen at any given time and it runs just fine on iOS devices. We have also tested the game with several Android devices, one windows phone and a Blackberry and results have been good. Code is heavily optimized to allow this.

Naturally graphics are pretty optimized as well. Most of the enemies use one of two materials created for them and their effects use a single material. Enemies have been built from set of pieces which has allowed us to create lots of different shaped enemies for player to shoot in a short span of time and ensure that there won't be too many materials or textures for the game to load. Hand painted look also gave us a possibility to create interesting looking world without using too complex shaders. Most of the game world uses a slightly modified mobile/vertexlit shader.

We have aimed to create a gameplay experience, which begins with simple goals and easy gameplay, but have left room for more complex goals once player progresses in the game. Initially player will only have to shoot everything that moves, but soon he has to battle large bosses, defend ground or orbital targets, destroy enemy targets and learn to deploy turrets and use special weapons to beat the larger and tougher waves of enemies. Enemies also vary from simple fighters of the beginning, which only try to destroy player and to planet destroying bombers, huge frigates and defenses targeting destroyers. Everything is introduced to player a one feature at a time.

Screens:



We attempt to update this thread with our progress in the near future. In the meantime you can follow our regular updates at:

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- Tero Kuparinen

 

Posting more screenshots here as the first post reached a cap of some sort.





I'll be posting some concept art and images of the process, which led to this game once I locate them and arrange into some meaningful way. I could also try to shed some light into our work practices or elements of Planetary Guard: Defender, which might interest you. Just ask in here and I'll see if I'm able to tell something.

For now here's a link to:a blog post.
In it I write about how I painted the textures of PG: Defender in Blender

 

Whoa, this looks great! I especially love the art style, it's very professional looking!