River School - Prototype

River School is a tower defence-inspired management game set inside a system where students continuously run through a looping daily routine. As the school manager, your job is not to fight enemies—but to shape education.

Students circulate the school in a repeating loop that represents daily school life. Each looped “day” gives you opportunities to influence their progress by strategically placing towers around the environment. Using the mouse, you click buttons along the bottom of the screen to purchase towers and place them anywhere in the world to affect nearby students as they pass.

Your main objective is to help students gain knowledge efficiently while carefully managing their energy levels. If a student’s energy drops too low, they may fall asleep mid-cycle. To counter this, you can also build support towers that restore energy and keep students active and productive.

Every few in-game days, students must take an exam. Those who have sufficiently leveled up will pass and leave the school, while new incoming students join. 

*Over time, students who remain in the system for too long will visibly age.

*You can interact with students directly with the mouse and replace them. 

*The game encourages experimentation. You can build an efficient, highly optimized academic pipeline—or intentionally create chaotic educational systems where students are overloaded, reorganized, or constantly reshaped by conflicting tower effects.

This project was developed as part of a game design module during my studies. Here are supporting materials, including presentation, dev logs, a high concept document, and records of playtests and analysis: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Oyks8G988l67tCvAlKYZcbf8sDHIpDaY?usp=dri...