Introduction

In Camden County College's Game Design II class, students were required to break into separate development teams. Our mission was to create a fully functional 2D video game with three levels ready for an audience presentation in 15 weeks. Each student took on a real world game industry position and had to fulfill all of its entailing responsibilities. After we chose our positions we decided on the team name of "The Lords of the Mole People."

Once the team was established, we then set upon the first challenging task for the project, deciding what kind of game we were going to create. After much deliberation we agreed on a turn-based role playing game. We chose a turn-based style game because it would be easier to program and implement. The game was named Ember: The Last Dawning, and the high concept for Ember was: "One liberator fights for his people's freedom in a fierce battle against a tyrannical warlord in a post-apocalyptic wasteland."

The game had two separate phases-a free roaming phase and a battle phase. During the free roaming phase the player can explore the map, searching areas for new weapons and hidden items. If the player encounters an enemy force, the battle phase of the game then begins. In the battle phase, the player and enemy take turns and each individual character in a side's army has their own turn. During their turn, a character can move, attack, use an item, or pass, when all characters have taken their turn, the player's turn is over and the enemy's turn begins. This cycle continues until one side is victorious.