Robert Piwowarek

Robert Piwowarek

Game development enthusiast and backend developer

Happy Tree Enemies - SGJ2019

Happy Tree Enemies is a 2-player (local, no internet) 2D Tower Defense(-ish). The game was developed in Unity3D in a team of 7 people.

The theme of Slavic Game Jam 2019 was “growth” hence the concept of growing your tree to gain more ground for developing your defenses.

hte screenshot 1 hte screenshot 2 hte screenshot 3
Gallery

Notable Features

  • Grow your tree
  • A selection of different “pears” to defend your tree
  • Camera that dynamically zooms out when players move away from each other
  • Cute, sugary art style by Katarzyna

Objective

The main challenge of the game (apart from playing a buggy jam game) is: coordination in spending share resource (money) to protect both sides of the tree from incoming enemies.

The heart of the tree has a limited, unrecoverable health pool that gets quickly damaged by incoming flying avocados and bees. How can the 2 wild spirits protect their home? With the help of the helpful pears, and the power of friendship of course!

The helpful pears

Pear Description
He attacc He attacc (It increases the damage of other pears)
He protecc He protecc (It increases the armor of other pears)
But But most importantly he helps others attacc (It increases the attack speed of other pears)
pear-Rick! I turned myself into a pear Morty! I’m pear-Rick! (Also health increases)
Pear the builder Pear the builder, can he fix it? (Reduces the cost of buildings)
Mr. Pear Mr. Pear (He does the damaging)

Only Mr. Pear can actually deal damage - this design choice enable more strategical thinking - where and when should non-attacking pears be placed; are there enough Mr.Pears around to benefit from buffs?

Fully grown tree

tree Killing invaders grants the only and most important resource - money. Quite a lot of money needs to be spent to fully upgrade the tree.

Furthermore, setting up helpful pears costs a varied (depending on pear) amount of money as well. With 2 players simultaneously performing actions one might stop the other from setting up a crucial pear or money can be wasted on an upgrade instead of defense - this is why coordination is important.

Traversing the tree is required to upgrade it - as there are different spots on the tree where players can grow it. Certain upgrade levels unlock spots for further upgrading. This creates a difficult decision: what to focus at any given point in time - upgrade or defense?

Credits (the Team)

  • Robert Piwowarek
  • Eryk Kłoss
  • Maja Jabłońska
  • Filip Majewski
  • Hubert Lipiński
  • Daniel Król
  • Katarzyna Machowina

You can view the gameplay in the video below: