🌟 Introduction

Rokkatensei is a mobile turn-based fighting game set in an Asian, Samurai-themed universe. Monsters represent divine or fantasy creatures like Oni, Kappa, and more. Allies include Samurai, monks, and other warriors.

Each character, whether enemy or ally, has unique abilities and fighting styles — some push, others deal area damage, and so on.

We made the game as a school project to explore mobile game development. On top of that, we tried our hand at turn-based combat. It was really fun to make, even though we were all beginners with no prior experience in either mobile or turn-based games.

My goal for this project was to learn more about the turn-based genre, and how to design a game that’s easy and intuitive to play with fingers on a phone. It was really interesting to figure out how to reduce buttons, UI and keybinds compared to PC or console games.

👾 Gameplay

Rokkatensei is a turn-based fighting game playable on Android. The gameplay is simple: you control units, set them up, move and attack each turn. Enemies do the same with their units.

You can use the environment and your characters’ unique abilities to your advantage. Each tile and character has specific traits that make the gameplay strategically interesting.

📃 What I've realized on the project

• Schematizing the game

  I created a full brief on the whiteboard covering all the mechanics and structure of the game — the rules, how a level works, how rounds progress, how to finish a level, the main objective, and even ideas for juiciness and player satisfaction.

  I wrote a step-by-step overview for all these parts to make sure the team shared the same vision. We used paper to build a small prototype and test different ideas without spending time coding. The more we used our brains early in the project, the more confident we were that things were built on solid ideas.

• The characters

  We wanted both enemies and allies to have unique abilities and movement styles. Inspired by chess, and keeping in mind that perfect counters aren’t fun, we worked hard to make each character creative and distinct.

  Starting from taking as inspiration the game of Chess, and keeping in mind that it's never fun to have a perfect counter to a character, we had to think a lot to make characters uniques and being able to move and fight in the most creative way possible.

  - The Skeleton, Can split into two to move. While split, the bones are invincible and can only be damaged once reformed. He can attack only when reformed.

  - The Oni, Dashes across multiple tiles in one move. If he touches you while moving, he deals damage and bumps you back 2–3 tiles. His movement and attack are the same action, but he can hurt himself if he crashes into a mountain.

  - The samuraï, Moves tile by tile and attacks in melee range. When he kills an enemy, a demonic katana appears on the enemy’s body, and the Samurai gains control of it for extra attacks. He takes more risks early game, then becomes safer and stronger later.

  - The monk, Moves quickly and deals no direct damage with punches, but bumps enemies back. If he bumps you into a mountain or tree, you take collision damage. He can also push you into water.

  We had a lot of fun designing other characters too, but sadly, due to time constraints, we couldn’t implement them all.

• The achievements

  Just for fun, we designed all kinds of achievements to unlock by doing specific actions.

  We spent time coming up with fun or complex ideas, like killing an enemy in one turn, pushing one into water, surviving as the last character alive, and more. It was a blast.

📌 Lessons Learned

⚡ Quick infos