CupDrakes is a cute, spooky strategy game made by a team of eight Game Design students. Defeat enemies by baking sweets and coordinating drakelings on the map!
Download Game HereDesign Lead
January to May 2022 (4 months)
3 Designers
5 Programmers
Visual Design
Interaction Design
UI/UX Design
Game Design
Our team had 8 students and when we were initially discussing game ideas, we all loved themes of monsters and fantasy. Most of us were loyal players of Plants Vs Zombies when we were little, which became one of our main inspirations: except we wanted to make the monsters the good guys instead. At first, we wanted a variety of monsters to be able to battle on board, but soon realized that it would be better to focus on one kind of fantasy creature: dragons.
To make it clear that the dragons are the good guys, we explored designs that were chubby + cute with a rounder frame.
We decided that we are going for an isometric perspective for our game, which would show a slanted top-down view of every character's design. To make sure that the characters don't cover up the tiles above, every character was made shorter than we initially anticipated.
These are the initial sketches of the dragon character: we originally wanted to go for a baking dragon figure as more emphasis was put on the baking aspect of the gameplay. But we ultimately went for the baby drakeling, as it was more neutral and served more as a pawn figure.
The Drake Juniors are little dragons who were forced by human invaders into the Forest, where they hid for years. Their Grandpa Drake was badly injured in a fight with humans, so baby Drake Siblings have to use their budding baking skills and defend their home at all costs.
Grunts are the most basic human enemies. They wear a skull head to appear more frightening and a green cape to blend into the forest greenery and hide their chubby features. Because of their short limbs, they cannot climb over half-rocks or logs, and can only move one tile each round.
Tanks are the buffest of them all. They're not only really tall and strong, but they also carry a shield with them at all times (though it doesn't cover but of their bodies). Naturally, to eliminate them, knock down their shield first
The Assassin is the most dangerous enemy. They hide behind their cloaks, waiting to attack with knives in hand. Because of their trained agility and assassin skills, they can jump over most obstacles and move two tiles in one turn. But they're also the easiest to deter and kill.
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For the map, we chose to go with isometric perspective because it showed more of the dragon's body whilst not covering up the tiles and ingredients. In this case, only the diamond shaped field is interactive, which leaved much room of creativity. We discussed between forest, cave and ruined castle, and decided to combine the cave and forest idea: this is because a cave and forest both has the capability of having mystical ingredients for dragon baking - suitable for our game's lore.
The Drakelings' monster friends are happy to help them defend the forest and snack on any invaders that come into their reach. Push enemies off of the rocky, rectangular front yard and into the overgrowth to ensure their death.
Initially we wanted a combination of a spooky and cute atmosphere. The environment should be reasonably fantastical and intuitive for dragon habitats. To set the atmosphere, we decided on the color scheme of darker magenta/purple, forest green, hints of teal and beige-tinted orange. Magenta/purple often implies feelings of mystery and magic, and it is an uncommon color found in nature; and the green intuitively sets the scene in a grassy environment and compliments the greens in the characters.
When we were creating the very first sketches of the environment, we knew we needed to be extra careful, because unlike many other strategy games that lock multiple environments as the player progresses through the story, our protagonists are defensive: which would be unreasonable for them to change location if the player defeats the enemies in each level. To set the tone of spooky and cute initially, we made clear contrast between the cutesy, brightly colored design of the characters, and the dark, realistically drawn environment, but it felt out of place.
This initial design also made no implication that our game involved around baking, which made me realize that my job as the Lead Design is not only to help craft the most intricate artwork, but to create visual clarity that sets our game's message. Thus, we made the environment much lighter and saturated, and added dessert elements to the mushrooms (one of the main ingredients in the game) such as frosting and sprinkles, and also changed many of the rocks into pumpkins and soft candy. These changes made the characters look much more harmonious.
I hope you enjoyed the making process of CupDrakes!
Though it was the outcome of a short semester project and a team of new friends, it was truly one of my best experiences in college and my personal golden child.
If you would like to play the game, feel free to use the link on top of this page! It is free to play and really fun (not biased).
