Role:
-System Designer
-Blueprint Programmer
-UX Designer
-Music
Timeline:
For some reason, you are drawn to the top of the tower. Each failed attempt ends in rebirth, granting new upgrades and another chance to climb higher. Players navigate a series of increasingly difficult floors filled with trials and challenges, where failure becomes part of progression.
Lucky Life: Tower of Trials is a solo project developed in Unreal Engine 5.3 for the Alt + F4 48-Hour Game Jam. Built around the theme of “rebooting,” the game centers on a loop of death being a source of progression, where each reset strengthens the player and encourages new strategies.
September 2024
(48-Hour Game Jam)
Engine:
Unreal Engine 5.4
Rebirth Mechanic
The rebirth mechanic serves as the core progression system in Lucky Life: Tower of Trials. Originally, the design aimed to grant players entirely new movesets upon each death. However, due to the 48-hour game jam constraint, the system was scoped down to a more focused and achievable implementation.
Instead of unlocking entirely new abilities each time, players progressively unlock a limited set of core moves (melee and ranged attacks), while subsequent deaths provide stat-based upgrades. These upgrades include increased health, faster attack speeds, and improved damage output for both melee and ranged attacks.
Upon death, the player is reset to the start of the tower, reinforcing a roguelike-inspired loop. However, unlike traditional roguelikes where currency is collected and spent, progression in this system is directly tied to player death, each death acts as a form of currency that grants permanent upgrades.
Wave-Based Tower Combat System
The Wave-Based Tower Combat System is an enhanced iteration of the arena system originally developed in my other game, Ninja Quest. It was adapted and expanded to support structured encounters within the tower environment.
The system manages combat through a sequence of waves. Each encounter checks whether a wave is currently active, and if so, spawns the appropriate enemies for that wave. Once all enemies in a wave are defeated, the system evaluates whether additional waves remain.
In addition to enemy spawning, the system supports dynamic pickups. When all enemies across all waves have been defeated, and no further waves remain, the system triggers an "end state". In this state, a special wave is spawned, which drops a key item instead of enemies. This key signifies that all the encounters on that floor have been cleared and allows the player to progress to the next floor of the tower.
Level Design & Difficulty Balance
The level design of Lucky Life: Tower of Trials is structured around a tower composed of individual floors, with each floor functioning as a self-contained level. Due to the constraints of the 48-hour game jam, the scope was carefully managed by focusing on a limited number of reusable environments while still creating meaningful variation across floors.
The game features two primary environment themes that are reused across different floors with variations in layout and encounter design. Floors 1–10 emphasize pit-based hazards, where players can knock enemies into pits for instant elimination. These same hazards also apply to the player, reinforcing risk-reward gameplay and spatial awareness. Floors 11–20 focus on environmental interaction and positioning. These floors include objects that allow players to maneuver strategically and trap enemies.
Difficulty progression is structured through every five floors, introducing a stronger variant of existing enemies, allowing players to gradually adapt to increased challenge without overwhelming them. To communicate this progression, transitional floors include environmental storytelling elements such as skulls and bone decorations, signaling that upcoming encounters will be more difficult. Additionally, every tenth floor features a boss encounter. The game includes two bosses in total, each designed to combine mechanics and challenges introduced in previous floors. These encounters act as skill checks, requiring the player to apply everything they have learned from prior levels and combat scenarios.
