Shootshi
A local multiplayer tower defense game played on real map tiles in augmented reality.
You play as sushi chefs defending your supply of salmon. Evil Lovecraftian monsters want to steal your fish to start their own intergalactic sushi restaurant. You will not go down without a fight: weaponize your delicious treats and defend your fish pond from the onslaught of Cthulhu chefs and waiters.
Shootshi is an app-driven board game. The board is real: map tiles on a table, 3D-printed turrets, and a stack of enemy tiles. A companion app on iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac augments all of it, so the towers fire, the monsters walk the path, and the gems pile up on screen. It is cooperative, for three to five players, ages 13 and up, and it was planned in English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), and Japanese.
The Board Is Physical. So Is the Strategy.
Most AR games put the whole world on the screen. We kept the pieces you can hold in your hands, and that changed the design.
- Build by placing. Put a tower tile on the board in front of the camera, and a first-tier tower appears on it. Can’t afford it? It shows up red and dead, with a warning: “Not Enough Gems.” Leave it there; it comes online the moment you can pay.
- Upgrade by tapping. Upgrades are digital. Tap a tower through the app to see its health, damage, fire rate, and kills, then buy what comes next. The new tower looks and fights differently, but it stays bolted to its tile, so you can still pick it up and move it.
- Move your towers mid-fight. The path and the towers are both tiles, so both can move. Between waves there is a setup phase to rebuild the path: long straightaways to spread out big, slow enemies, or loops and tight angles so splash damage hits a crowd. Towers can move at any time.
That last rule exists because you only get so many tiles. Instead of covering the whole path, you chase the enemy with your towers and focus your fire where they actually are. Whoever’s tower lands the kill takes the gems.
The Menu
| Tower | What it does |
|---|---|
| Problematic Tempura Shooter (P.T.S.) | The basic turret. Fast and cheap to build, fast to fire, and low on damage. |
| Takoyaki Launcher | Splash damage. Medium damage in a small area, cheap to build, slow to fire. |
| Salmon Shooter | The heavy hitter. Expensive, fast, and brutal on a single target at short range. |
| Problematic Tempura Shooting Device (P.T.S.D.) | Lobs tempura over a large area, hits hard, and takes forever to reload. |
The Kitchen Staff
Ash Hammett is you: a human sushi chef who can build and command the towers. Everyone else works for the other side.
| Monster | Who they are |
|---|---|
| The Head Chef, Dudley ‘Of The Deep’ | The overlord of the Lovecraftian monsters. Takes every life you have left if he gets through. |
| The Busboy, Voorm | A lowly servant, not special in any way. He no longer cares about anything, which makes him dangerous. Spawns in threes. |
| The Sous Chef, Ubb | A large gray-green slug. He sends slackers to the nth dimension and leaves a trail of slime that Voorm has to clean. |
| The Line Chefs, Nug and Yeb | The terror twins, promoted from waiters for their bond. Fast attackers. |
| The Waiters, the Walters family | Souls of the departed, molded into servants of the darkness. The basic invaders. |
We went for a cute, anime- and manga-inspired style, set in a seaside Japanese restaurant where the Cthulhu crew lands.
The Design Document
Everything above comes from the game design document our team of seven wrote together: the UI flow, every system, the tower and monster stats, the story, and the art direction.
Read the full game design document (PDF, 10 pages).