Tower of Dawn was created by Milo Fisher, Bill Wong, Mark Wolverton, Zirui Li and was made for the Game Development Experience class at UC Santa Cruz. In this game, the player embarks on a journey to ascend a tower, choosing to play as either a warrior, rogue, or mage. Each class offers a unique storyline for wanting to reach the top of the tower, as well as unique combat skills. As the player makes their way through the game, various enemies ranging from slime monsters to nature spirits will attempt to stop them. To combat these foes, the player must level up and find better gear to improve their combat power.

For now, the game only has the first 3 levels complete, and exists only as a demo. In the future, production of this game may continue, beyond the current demo build. There are already extra art assets made and the storyline is planned out.

On this project, I was the lead programmer, as well as a game and level designer. This game was made in JavaScript using the engine Phaser 3. I personally designed the class abilities of all the playable classes and implemented the effects.

For the warrior class, I wanted the playstyle to reflect very close melee combat, while shrugging off damage. To accomplish this I gave the warrior an ability allowing them to quickly travel in a direction, damaging enemies in the way (charge). To compliment this movement towards enemies, I gave the warrior 2 separate AoE abilities, one which does high damage in a short radius around the player (ground slam), and another than does lower damage in a larger radius around the player for a longer period of time (whirlwind). Finally, to help the warrior sustain this close combat, the last ability allows the warrior to ignore damage for a few seconds, increasing the warrior's damage as well (berserk). When combined, the warrior has fairly good mobility, damage, and sustain, provided the warrior is within melee range of enemies.

For the rogue class, I intended to make a character that was less combat oriented. To accomplish, I gave the rogue only 2 combat abilities and 2 utility abilities as well as a ranged basic attack. For the first ability, the rogue teleports behind an enemy target, dealing damage and stunning the target temporarily (backstab). The next ability, which happens to be a utility one, allows the rogue to pick the lock of any chest, opening it without requiring a key (lockpick). Next, the rogue has another utility ability that allows her to turn invisible, preventing any enemies from seeing or attacking her (stealth). Finally, the rogue has an ability that launches a barrage of shurikens in a cone (barrage). These abilities combined give the rogue the choice to either maneuver around enemies without engaging, or to take them down from a distance.

Finally, for the mage class, I wanted to create a class that had many diverse abilities that could be combined to create deadly combinations. While having a melee basic attack, the mage has a short cooldown on his first ability, which launches a fireball that does AoE damage upon impact (fireball). The mage's next ability is an AoE lightning effect that damages and stuns every enemy within range of the mage (thunderstorm). The third ability of the mage is freeze spell that hits enemies in a rectangle in front of the mage, freezing them for a longer duration that the stun from the prior ability, but not dealing damage (freeze). The final mage ability summons a meteor from the sky that deals massive damage to any enemies caught within the explosion radius (meteor). The mage has access to 2 high damage abilities and 2 incapacitating abilities, allowing for different combinations of disabling and finishing off enemies.

As our team's programmer, I was responsible for implementing all of these abilities I designed, as well as everything else in the game. I implemented the enemy AI and abilities, the combat system, the inventory system, and built the rest of the underlying game mechanics using the Phaser 3 engine.