Goal: To implement different hazards for each level to add a heightened sense of danger

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Result: Hazardous events with eye-catching visuals forcing the player to strategize around them

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Details: As we worked on Elemental Defense, we began to realize a player could just place an infinite amount of towers in the level--the only bound was money ("mana" as we called it). Thus, we came up with the idea of adding hazards to each level beyond the waves of enemies that added an extra sense of danger, as these hazards would be able to destroy the player's towers. When we were brainstorming ideas for the hazards, we decided right away that the hazards should reflect each level's theme. Thus, the hazards became a volcano for the first level (fire), thunderstorms for the second level (water), and tornadoes for the third (grass). (The connection between grass and tornadoes isn't immediately obvious; our thinking was the association with the Plains region and frequent tornadoes.)

Implementing the logic of the hazards was not terribly difficult; what I had trouble with was making the hazards look visually appealing. As one of my professors succinctly put it: "juice it or lose it." That is, gameplay needs to have impact added to keep players engage, be it through visuals (particles, hitstun, tweening, etc) or sound. Gathering inspiration from our professor and the internet, I set about making the volcano, thunderstorms, and tornadoes look as beautiful as I could.

Another thing I realized while working on these stage hazards was that the player should have some measure of defense against these events, else they will only grow frustrated with these seemingly-unavoidable dangers. I got with the team and we came up with the idea of totems that the player could place down to protect towers against specific hazards within a certain radius. (The "juice it or lose it" philosophy came back into play, when I was designing the look of the totem radius.)