A turn-based tower defense game where players stop climbers from reaching the summit using a card-based obstacle system. Built with a team of 6.
The Peak — Don't Climb It is a turn-based tower defense game developed in Unity. Players prevent a group of climbers from reaching the top of a mountain by strategically placing obstacles through a card-based system inspired by Clash Royale. Each climber has unique behaviors and counters to specific obstacles, adding a layer of strategic depth on top of the core tower defense loop.
Developed as a university capstone project by a team of 6, it won the Best Game Award at the end-of-year showcase.
Darío Calderón Tornero — death system, camera, managers, vignettes, counters, audio.
Grid, pathfinding and card-placement logic.
Climber behaviors and obstacle interactions.
Particle effects and visual polish across death sequences and abilities.
Mountain environment, climbers and obstacle models.
Card system balance, climber types and level progression.
Working within a team of 6, this is the part of The Peak that was entirely mine — from architecture to implementation.
Full pipeline: hit detection, death type classification, dynamic cinematic camera framing, per-death-type VFX and animation triggering.
Dynamic HUD showing every active climber ordered by urgency, updating in real time, with click-to-focus camera interaction both ways.
Reaction logic tying each climber type to its counter obstacle, visually surfaced directly on the vignette UI.
GameManager, TurnManager and SpawnManager — global state, turn sequencing and climber spawning tied to level progression.
Full camera system: WASD panning, smooth rotation and zoom, plus automatic cinematic framing during deaths.
All sound effects and music, implemented as event-driven reactions to deaths, counters, card placement and UI.
Participated in the tile-based mountain grid and the pathfinding system that keeps climbers finding an upward route.
Score tied to climber eliminations and efficiency, with mountain difficulty scaling across levels.
Climbers reorder in real time in the vignette HUD based on live proximity to the summit. Clicking a vignette moves the camera to that climber, and clicking a climber on the map highlights their vignette.
TurnManager recalculates paths once per turn — not per climber — avoiding direction-change artifacts. SpawnManager ties climber spawning to mountain level progression.
A tile-based mountain grid with camp nodes defining intermediate waypoints, ensuring climbers always find a valid upward route each turn.