Colony Wars is a third person shooter game made in the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) for a game design class. Our class was split into two teams and each team made their own game. I was Team Lead for my group as well as Game Designer. The role of Level Designer I split with another teammate and he was the one to actually build the game world.
We were allowed to choose whatever engine we wished. My team chose UDK for its popularity and reliability.
The player plays the game as an ant with the goal of defending his colony from, and attacking, the opposing colony, thus the name. Unfortunately, we had only one artist to try and carry the entire project and along with several last minute technical issues, most of the characters are the standard UDK robots rather than ants. Only the Queen made it in. However, we still carried the idea of being an ant through the game environment.
In addition to the usual information about the player's weapon and health, two new important features were added when we redid the User Interface. First, the player now has an amount of food. In various places throughout the level, the player can find piles of food, which can be brought back to the colony.
Once brought to the colony's food pile, the player's food is added to the colony's reserve, which is displayed in the upper right in the second new User Interface element, along with the Queen's Health. The Queen does not regenerate lost health, and if she dies, the game is over. Conversely, the ultimate goal is to kill the enemy Queen, which will win the game. Given that real ant colonies have so many ants in them, the loss of one is insignificant. Following that reasoning, the player can immediately respawn after death, and can do so an unlimited number of times. Therefore the player can keep up the fight until the game is won or lost.
To assist in the fight against the enemy, the player can utilize the Colony Control feature which allows them to expend stocked colony food to do one of four things: Heal themselves, Heal the Queen, or spawn a new AI controlled ant of either of the two types, Gatherer or Soldier.
Gatherer ants pick up and return food to the colony, taking some of the responsibility for keeping the colony stocked off the player. Soldiers will charge into towards the enemy colony to seek out and destroy and foes they can. Ants spawned through Colony Control are in addition to the ones already existing, and all ants respawn automatically. So, spawning new ants actually increases the size of your army, rather than just replacing fallen allies.
The area between the colonies is an outdoor area, and helps enforce the ant perspective with grass towering high overhead. It is also the primary place to locate food and the only means of crossing to the enemy colony. However, it is also a deadly battleground.
While still far from complete, Colony Wars is still neat and fun to play for awhile.
DOWNLOAD: Colony Wars
Platform: Windows 7
Should work on any system that UDK supports.
Controls: Standard First/Third person shooter controls, immediately familiar to anyone who has played them and/or worked with UDK.
Special Control: Activate Colony Control by pressing E while touching the food pile.