Doodle Clash

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gameplay
units
how to deploy unit

Inspiration

Doodling armies in the margins during class. Drawing the actual moves yourself, instead of just imagining them, seemed obviously better than the usual tap-and-wait deployment.

What it does

Doodle Clash is a 1v1 PvP battle on a sheet of notebook paper. No lanes. You press a unit card, drag your finger across the page, and the unit walks exactly that line. Blue ink vs red ink, 3-minute matches, kill the enemy Core first (or have more HP left when time runs out). Both players get the same random 6-car hand each match, so it's about who reads the page better, not who grinded longer.

How I built it

Every unit is a rigid ink shape — square, triangle, blob — never a stick figure. That's a production decision: rigid shapes slide, rotate, recoil. No joints, no rigging, no walk cycles for ten units. One grammar for the whole roster: body size is HP, weapon size is damage, weapon shape says melee or ranged. Look at the silhouette, know the unit.

Challenges I ran into

Obstacles almost broke the "no fixed lanes" idea. The second a path could get blocked, I was looking at pathfinding and navmesh, exactly what this game was supposed to avoid. Fix: obstacles aren't walls, they're terrain with HP. A path is always valid. If it crosses something, the unit fights through it and keeps walking. No pathfinding system, ever.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The roster, the ink economy, and the draft all feel like one idea instead of ten features stapled together. Every card reads at a glance. Every system points back to the same thing: you draw, the page remembers.

What I learned

The best constraints are the ones you pick yourself. "Everything fits on one page" sounds small, but it's the rule that made the art, the combat, and the production plan agree with each other without much extra work.

What's next for Doodle Clash

A practice mode against a basic AI so new players can learn Drag & Draw without ladder stakes. More arenas that actually change the page's shape, not just its skin. Eventually, a Scholastic Ladder — fight from 1st Grade to Senior Year against bosses who bring their own mess onto the page.