Project Info

Tiny Tactics

Game
Role
UI Design
Game Design
Visual Design
Art
Programming
Tools / Tech
C#
Godot Engine

Tiny Tactics is a 2D fantasy strategy game created as part of my final year project at university. It is inspired by auto-battler games such as Teamfight Tactics and DOTA Underlords.

In this project, I aimed to research how visual and interaction design impact the immersion of a game and applied the techniques learned to create a functional prototype.

Research included mental processes that affect user experience in games, types and methods of immersion and the various ways in which UI (diegetic, spatial, etc.) contributes to this. There was also analysis done into the games I was drawing inspiration from to measure how much they succeed in providing an immersive experience.

Try the game here

Design - Visuals

Characters

As far as art goes, the characters were the first thing created in order to establish scale for the rest of the art. As the user is viewing the world from an aerial (top-down) view, the characters were made small to convey a miniature look without having to rely on zooming out. The initial character design was adjusted multiple times until they looked visibly tiny but just big enough to add stylistic detail to weapons and armour.

minifying the original character design
final designs of the 8 units available

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Iconography

I created a variety of rune-like symbols for use throughout the UI to push the fantasy concept further.

Stone-like buttons with runic symbols
Runes representing each character

Effects

Part of my research went into understanding visual techniques such as tilt-shift blurring which add dream-like qualities and amplify the miniature look greatly.

the game with no special effects
with subtle vignette and tilt-shift blur added

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Design - UI

Sketches

The first two sketches show different layouts for present team compositions to the player in a way that can be quickly understood.

The third sketch is of the scoring system.

Font

Criteria CF was chosen as the font due to its “playful” personality, which complemented the game’s “cute” fantasy vibe without veering into child-like. It is also versatile in its ability to serveas both a display font for larger graphics and logos and a body font for in-game text and descriptions.