Gatecrash was a game I pitched at Epic Story Interactive, where we successfully secured Canada Media Fund support to take the project from concept to playable prototype. Set in the Slugterra universe, it began as a reverse tower defense concept but evolved into an RTS-lite experience. Our goal was to preserve the strategic depth of classic real-time strategy games while making the mechanics intuitive and accessible for mobile platforms.
The core development team consisted of just three senior studio veterans who had worked together for many years: our Technical Director handled the bulk of the foundational systems programming, our Art Director created all of the visuals, and I served as Lead Game Designer, responsible for design and implementing many of the progression and gameplay systems. We knew each other’s strengths, respected each other’s perspectives, and—despite strong opinions and spirited debates—remained good friends throughout development.
As passionate RTS fans, we resisted oversimplifying the genre’s fundamentals. Instead, we focused on streamlining interaction for touch controls, knowing the precision of a mouse and keyboard wouldn’t be present. We leaned into macro-level strategy and pre-combat planning while reducing micromanagement to player-triggered abilities, resulting in a fluid and engaging gameplay flow. While yes, we don’t expect any e-sports to spawn out of this, we wanted to distill down what we found fun about the genre.
To add depth without overwhelming players, we designed a progression system where army units could be collected much like loot in an ARPG. This gave the pre-combat phase a deck-builder-like feel, with each unit type offering subtle differences that allowed for deep strategic expression. In many ways, Gatecrash became a blend of our favorite elements from StarCraft and Diablo II, with heavy inspiration from both.
One of the most exciting features we implemented was real-time PvP multiplayer. Using PlayFab’s party system for matchmaking, players could jump into battles with friends or face off against others. While the core progression leaned toward single-player, PvP was always available for a change of pace. We even let players swap armies between matches for counterplay opportunities, something that made matches incredibly fun. For a small, three-person team, the system worked remarkably well, and the gameplay was an absolute blast. I remember the nights after work testing out the multiplayer latency and finding we had been playing for hours.
After completing our prototype and using the initial funding, we pursued commercialization funding for full production. Our first application was unsuccessful, but after making some design changes and removing the Slugterra branding, we secured funding to produce the new version, which was later named Titan Fury.