Carpool Carnage

Inspiration

I enjoy tower defense games but wanted to make something where the player is more actively participating in the defense game vs the traditional place a tower and wait style of game in this genre.

What it does

Carpool Carnage is a roguelite tower defense game where the player navigates their van full of gun wielding passengers to help settlements get rid of their zombie problem. The player can build towers along the route to get help defending as well as parking their van near the tower to repair both the players van and the tower.

How we built it

I used Claude code for all code in VS Code. Using this set up I prompted the game I was looking to build and built tools for manual placement of things the AI struggled with, like the camera positioning and character positioning and rotation for example.

Challenges we ran into

I had some issues with performance and dialing in game feel.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The game plays great and looks fun. Running your van through a crowd of zombies is extremely satisfying.

What we learned

I've only worked with three.js on websites in the past so using it for game prototyping was a great learning experience.

What's next for Carpool Carnage

I'll be adding character traits to the different passengers you can get, so players like the police officer might get a damage buff with bullet based weapons or the engineer can actively heal the van without returning to a tower.

I'd like to put more time into making each map feel different and balancing rewards to make builds feel more powerful each run.