Hooman Invaders - Insights From Our Game Development Department

The Story so far…

So what is Hooman Invaders? It's a FREE tower defense game available for iOS and Android built by our Game Development department in Suceava, Romania.

We hope that Hooman Invaders will be a success story but foremost is the creation of a dedicated team that wanted to develop a game with all the care and passion they have. It started with the main focus of adding a fresh take on the tower defense game genre, not only from a mechanical standpoint but the storyline too. So we started with the game's universe and we looked at one of the classic depicted battles between two iconic opposite factions: humans and orcs. 

Hooman Invaders CGI Trailer 

 

A classic tale of good and evil, but what if in our universe the orcs are not the bad guys and they are just trying to save their homes?  How will they perceive the humans? How will the narrative work? All of these questions helped shaped the buildings blocks of our game. 

We wanted from the start to create a story with a sense of humor and put a smile on the player's face as he learns more about the game's world. So the best solution was to create the “Orcopedia” (the book of knowledge of the horde) where we could easily add all the lore we wanted and give the player the opportunity to discover more about the world in a nonintrusive way.   

The next step was to create the actual visuals for the game and here we sought a medieval fantasy theme but at the same time enforced an orcish design. It was truly a team effort where everybody was involved in contributing with their vision and giving feedback to our 2D artists.  In the end we hope we achieved a visual style that helps the player immerse himself in this universe. Last but not least, one of our main goals was to add new elements to the old formula of the tower defense genre. We understood from the start that this is no easy task and for the most part the majority of games try to perfect the old formula not reinvent the gameplay. 

Looking now in retrospect, I understand that the core gameplay elements that make this tower defense game stand out came from the attachment of the team to each tower. Everybody had a favorite one and all of them wanted to have full control over the towers and not just build and forget about them.So we decided to go for a small number of towers and add a series of control options for each of them( from target priority , to reload and fire toggles) , giving the players a better sense of involvement and allowing them to take actual strategic action that would impact the battlefield.  

At the same time we started working on the teaser trailer for our game where new challenges awaited us in the realm of CGI animations. We can’t wait to share with you our experience and process behind creating a CG short animation.

Passion for game development in Romania

We started this project knowing that it would be more than just another application for us. For the team involved, it was a great opportunity to surpass themselves and work together to achieve something that they would look back on with pride and care. In no way was this an easy journey and we hope this is just the beginning. Nevertheless we want to share our experience with you because we truly believe that great things can be achieved by anyone that has a passion. This is why our team will share their thoughts about their work and maybe spark an interest in game development, may it be in programming, 2D design or 3D modeling. 

I can promise that  it will be a great experience and to give you a taste of what’s to come here is a “teaser” from our lead character concept artist Tudor Moldovan:

As a 3D artist, working on Hooman Invaders was a great experience, if indeed a challenging one, in that it allowed me to fully appreciate and understand the many intricacies of creating and “bringing to life” a 3D character, specifically tailored for a CG short. Modeling and texturing the character (the emblematic orc chieftain Raluku, “frontman” of our game), was a challenge in itself because of the realistic and imposing look we were aiming for. Therefore, anatomical accuracy and proportions, proper posing and texturing were my key priorities in establishing the heroic and hard-bitten nature of the character, as well as his rank and prolific military status, most notably hinted at through the details and larger-than-life elements of his armor. Once all of that was in place, his personality and iconic role adequately conveyed in the modeling and texturing stages of the pipeline, it was through actual animation that his true presence and ability would be “invoked”, in a scene representative of his duty: leading the defense against the infamous “Hooman Invaders”.

What’s next for Hooman Invaders & Our Game Development Department

We have just started the story of “Hooman Invaders” and there is a long road ahead to develop and make this game the best we can. New challenges await the team with each improvement but at the same time we grow in skill and as a team with each problem we face. So expect new features, updates and many surprises from the “Hooman Invaders” team and of course as previously stated, we want to share our experience with you and hopefully aid you in becoming a game developer in the near future.  For now enjoy our game and give us all the feedback you can, because with your help we can make the game better and prove that great ideas and quality come from all places where people with passion want to innovate. 

More info about Hooman Invaders & download links

→ If you want to find out more about the author of the article click play on the below video.