Project Description:

Lactose Wars (Working Title) is a turn-based, asymmetrical two player strategy game that takes places atop a glass of milk. One player controls a fleet of naval ships equipped with unique abilities, the other controls the stage via a straw equipped with an arsenal of abilities. The naval commander wins the game if they destroy the stage and cause the milk to spill. The straw wins the game if they either drink all of the milk or sink all of the naval commander’s ships.

Development Info:

• PC (I plan to publish the final product on Steam)

• Solo development project

• Developed part-time (February 2020 - Present)

• Developed using Unity 2019

• Utilized agile and scrum techniques to guide planning and road-mapping

Rules:

• Turn Based 2 v 2 Combat: The Naval Commander vs. The Straw

• Naval Commander choose 5 ships from a list of 8 and places each ship on the board

• The Straw takes their turn

  • The straw may take as many actions as they would like as long as they have energy to spare

  • The Straw has 5 total energy and each action has a unique energy cost

  • The Straw’s turn ends when they run out of energy or choose to end their turn

• The Naval Commander takes their turn

  • The Naval Commander can move and take one action with each ship

  • A ship’s action consists of one of the following:

    • Basic attack the stage or a bubble within range

    • Use active ability (each ship has a unique effect)

    • Fortify and heal each turn (self or allied ship)

  • The Naval Commander’s turn ends once all ships have moved and taken its action or once they choose to end their turn

• Turns alternate back and forth until on player wins the game:

  • The Straw wins by:

    • Sinking all 5 of the Naval Commander’s ships

    • Drinking all the milk in the glass

  • The Naval Commander wins by:

    • Dealing enough damage to a single point in the glass to poke a hole and drain the milk (lower damage threshold, affected by milk level)

    • Dealing enough total damage to the glass to cause the whole stage to shatter and spill the milk (higher damage threshold, not affected by milk level)

Design Philosophy:

Creating a full digital game as a solo developer with entirely original assets is a large undertaking, however it is one I do happily. The challenge was a large part in why I started this project to begin with, I wanted to test myself and push the boundaries of what I was capable. Throughout this process I strive to learn new techniques and best practices and expand my skill set as much as I can.

Conception:

The early concept for Lactose Wars was simply inspired by children blowing bubbles in milk. Having done this as a kid myself, I knew there was some sort of appeal but I was unsure what exactly it was. Puzzling over what the appeal could be, I eventually came to the conclusion that it had something to do with creation and destruction. One aspect I enjoyed about blowing bubbles as a child was toying with the different variables that lead to bubbles forming in my glass. I played with how much total air I blew into the straw and the rate at which I blew it to get a better understanding of how to blow many small bubbles or a few big bubbles. The other aspect of blowing bubbles I enjoyed was the act of destroying them. I would use the straw to poke the bubbles, spit milk at them, swirl the milk and mix them, whatever I could think of.

In my initial designs for Lactose Wars I wanted to focus on capturing this feedback loop of continually creating and destroying bubbles. With this, the decision to split both aspects into warring sides seemed like the logical next step as the two aspects be default are in opposition of one another. From here I put myself into the head-space of a child’s imagination where anything and everything is possible and zoomed in on what could be going on in a micro scale within this theoretical glass of milk. I pictured little naval vessels under siege by the bubbles this child is creating and this imagery was so vivid I just knew there was something there.

While I want to capture the playful and vividness of a child’s imagination with Lactose Wars, it is important that it not feel like a child’s game while still being accessible to anyone 10 and up. With the inspiration of Battleship, I took careful consideration to incorporate a few layers of complexity and intricacy to the strategy elements of Lactose Wars. The only agency players have in Battleship are placing their ships and taking pot shots at tiles on their opponents board. With Lactose Wars I gave players the ability to not only place their units how they so choose, but I allow them to move their units, attack, and use special abilities. This gives the gameplay a layer of complexity similar to Chess in terms of predicting the opponents movements and developing a counter strategy. In doing this, the gameplay becomes less trivial then Battleship but more approachable than Chess; as each player has a more limited set of possible moves than the latter.

Development:

Determined to do this right, I kicked off the digital prototyping phase with a plan. I knew I would need something to assist development in terms of task & bug tracking, feature planning, and time management so I set up a road-map/sprint planning board on airtable. With this, I am able to divide tasks by discipline (art, design, programming, production), assign them a priority level, indicate a progress status, and assign them a due date. This helps me track the game’s overall development progress and serves as a checklist for all features big and small.

Development information for Lactose Wars is divided by discipline and can be accessed via the buttons below.