Shinobi Warfare

This was the last project of the Digital Bros Game Academy Game Design Course, Called "The Big One" because is the longest project of the course (5 months of development). My role in this game was as a Lead Game Designer

The brief was to make a turn-based strategy game having as a customer Slitherine the publisher specialized in strategy games.

We decided to make a game set in feudal japan because we saw that Slitherine didn't cover that historic period yet. We also decided to make a stealth game genre because was a perfect fit for the location and time period. Inspired by Into the breach we decided to make all the game into a multi-level grid. Both ninja and Enemy turns happen contemporarly giving to the player the felling to do combined actions and also making the strategy level deeper.

We paid particular attention to the graphic style, inspired by Japanese paintings. The game has shaders that give to the assets in the scene brush effect and a canvas effect just like in a painting. Thanks to this we won the best project presentation prize for this project.

Shinobi Warfare is played through different missions which correspond to different maps of the game.

Every mission starts with a briefing, where you choose your team of ninjas and their equipped tools. The next phase is the actual gameplay, which is structured in a chessboard patterned map on multiple levels, where the player can make his moves with his team. The player can achieve the goals of the mission in various ways, thanks to the structure of the map itself and to the strategy the player decides to apply to the various ninja characters(the player controls every ninja in his team during every turn).

It’s a stealth game in a multilevel chessboard, so the player has to put his mind into the strategies to move his characters. The gameplay is divided into player turn, and computer’s turn. In the player’s turn, the player decides the moves his team is taking (e.g. move, climb, using ninja skills, attack, run, etc.). Once plotted, the moves will happen simultaneously, in order to make combined actions. The computer during its turn can defend, patrol or react to the player’s attacks. Every unit of the computer’s team has a limited field of view (Line of sight), whereas for the player’s team applies the “fog of war” system. The player can enlarge his vision thanks to actions such as peeping from behind an obstacle.