Prototype Entry

For this prototype, my main focus was building the system that makes my game unique, which is the dropping tiles. I started from the ground up, creating the tile blueprint itself. That meant assigning materials, getting the tile to drop on command, and then rising back up. This was essentially the tile cycle.

Once a single tile was working, I moved on to creating a tile manager. This controls all the tiles in the level. Deciding which tile stays safe each round, managing the round flow, and triggering the drop and rise sequences for every other tile. Getting this system working was the most important for the core loop. And now after working on it, I realized how much balancing I am going to have to do to make the flow and difficulty of the game natural. 

Through prototyping, I realized how small things in the system could break the loop. For example, initially only the last tile would drop because I wasn’t calling the drop function on each tile instance correctly. I also learned that the round flow needs to be clearly separated. First the round countdown, then drop, then rise, and only after that does a new round start. 

I used Unreal Engine 5 for the prototype because it allows me to quickly build gameplay. For assets, I just created simple tiles using primitive shapes and used the UE5 default vehicle.

This prototyping phase taught me a lot about moving on to the next thing when you get stuck, because the focus of the prototype is just to prove the concept works, so if something is not working, it is not a big deal as long as you have the main system down. Also, it taught me about finding flow and event management. Moving forward I am going to have to focus on refining the timing between rounds, improving visual feedback in the UI for tile colors and timers, and eventually layering in more obstacles and variety to the arena. This will require a lot of playtesting.