Towers of Vallas

Towers of Vallas by R. Watson 2018-2019. Mount Olive, NC, USA.

Additional Credits
Music by Nicole Marie T

Development of Towers of Vallas began in August 2018 as an entry into Gameboy Jam 6. Developers are given 10 days to create a game reminiscent of a Gameboy cartridge game: four shades monochrome, 160 x 144 resolution, and chip sound.

However, development of the game engine began much earlier--the oldest incarnations date way back to 2015. Vallas Engine is a 2.5/3D isometric game engine built on top of Stencyl, a 2D platform. Much of the difficulty of programming the game stemmed from adding the extra dimension on top of Stencyl's, while incorporating dynamic-casted shadows, lighting effects, and 3D physics.

Prior to Towers of Vallas, only one game has been created with any incarnation of this game engine: Temple of Idosra. This game was created as an entry into Stencyl Jam 16 in October 2016, and used a (at the time) new variation of the engine that allowed for gameplay--as opposed to simply displaying static test screens. Many sacrifices had to be made to create the game within the 10-day time limit. Even more sacrifices had to be made after five days were lost to Hurricane Matthew. The result was very simple, buggy, but a complete game that won an honorable mention.

Since then, many features were designed and included. Dynamic lighting was re-implemented. edmap, a 3D tile map editor and VSEdit, a multi-track sound effects mixer were built. Also introduced into the game was a spin-off of Utility AI, dubbed ``Atomic AI'' that powers NPC actions.