Story and Setting

Pacific Battlestorm takes place during the era of World War II during the Pacific campaign. You command the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to destroy Japanese fleets to allow each island's capture as the Americans advance across the Pacific. These missions, unfortunately, aren't based on any historical battles or islands. Almost everything wasn't suitable for this game, such as the amount of time I had to complete it, the variety of ships involved, aircraft carriers often being far outside the combat area, or the time it takes to research and recreate scenarios.

Game Mechanic

The player has access to three different types of units. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise functions as a main base of operations. This aircraft carrier stores a number of two types of aircraft, Fighters and Torpedo Bombers, which can be launched from the deck to use in battle. 
Fighters can only attack other aircraft and are incredibly effective against defenseless Torpedo Bombers. Torpedo Bombers have a single torpedo that can be lined up and used to great effect against enemy vessels. Both Fighters and Torpedo Bombers only have so much ammunition, so they must return to the aircraft carrier to rearm.

Asset Models

Every model in the game, other than the low poly water, was modeled and textured by myself using Blender during this game's development time. I had previously established a workflow for different game prototypes that allowed me to produce decent enough looking models in around 2-3 hours. I went into this project idea confident I could uphold the modeling requirements and still have plenty of time to code the functionality. The decision to make the low poly style was due to the project's limited time, my lack of experience drawing or texture painting the details, and my love for the low poly style look. These models are directly from historically accurate vehicles during World War II, with some small inaccuracies due to the simplification of complex shapes, specifically the naval vessels, into the low poly style. All of the ships also have had a reduced weapons count from their historical numbers, as it wasn't practical and necessary to include all of them either on the modeling, development, or gameplay side. Below are some of the models I've made.

The game's most important model is the player-controlled aircraft carrier, the American USS Enterprise (Historically numbered CV-6, as multiple US aircraft carriers had the same name).  As it was the first model needed for gameplay purposes during development, it was done first and confirmed I would like the games' style. 

It's a real shame the aircraft units will turn out fairly small for most gameplay, as they turned out better than I expected. The first two are the US Fighter, F6F Hellcat, and the US Torpedo Bomber, TBF Avenger. The second two are the Japanese Fighter, A6M3 Zero, and the Japanese Torpedo Bomber, B5N2 Kate.

I felt I couldn't miss an opportunity to include such a well-known ship as the Japanese Yamato-Class Battleship. Truly a beast of a ship, in-game, I do my best to represent its combat strength, primarily through its large number of anti-aircraft batteries. It was the most challenging ship I modeled to accurately represent its correct shape and detail with the low poly style.

Part of a Game Expo!

I made Pacific Battlestorm as part of Florida Polytechnic University's 2020 Virtual Game Expo. We all had about a month or less to design and develop a game while having the option to use assets such as models that weren't ours. The games will be published on November 20th and will be ready to play. There are some great games being made, so be sure to support them by voting!