Bricks and Steel: A game that celebrates the Dialou of Kaiping

In Grade 8, I took a field trip with my grade to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, located in my home province of Guangdong. In the countryside of Kaiping City, a few hour drive from Shenzhen, stand hundreds of tall fortresses that are neither European nor Chinese design.

Diaolou are watchtowers that also function as residency, built primarily to defend the bandits and pirates that roam around Guangdong since the Ming Dynasty - when they were first constructed. 

The architecture of these unique buildings are intricately connected with its owners, many of which were overseas Chinese, who have accumulated great wealth through commerce and trade. This explains the blend of European and Chinese architecture, similar to those in French Indochina and the Indies.

I was quite inspired by the rich stories of the Dialou. We also watched a movie at the time called “Let the Bullet Fly”, which was a political satire film set in the Warlord Era of China, which revolves around an image with Dialou.

I decided to make a video game about it, to celebrate the rich history of the Diaolou.

The game was called “Bricks and Steel”, which is also a traditional Chinese idiomatic expression for something that is enduring and strong. Both in literal (bricks) and symbolic sense. It was a turn based strategy game on a grid.

There are two types of recourses in the game, Gold and Grain, which is used to raise new units. Your Diaolou serve as home bases, which also has a health bar and range damage (snipers often hide inside these watchtowers).

Starting base arrangement, a Diaolou, two farmlands (+ 1 grain per turn) and two shops (+ 1 gold per turn).

All units have health bars, which you can order them to move and attack.

To celebrate their rich history, I decided to make the game into small “chapters”, each representing an important period in Chinese history, alongside with a small story written about it.

The chapters were: Rebellion (The Taiping Rebellion of the Qing Dynasty), Conflict (The unrest of the Guangdong Region in the late 19th century, land disputes between villages often resulted in xiedou, a village-wide armed conflict), Revolution (The Xinhai Revolution and the collapse of the Qing Dynasty), Resistance (The 2nd Sino-Japanese War), and Liberation (The Chinese Civil War)

Each of these chapters included units with different designs and outlooks, as well as completely new units.

For example, in the chapter Resistance, one has to counter the Japanese armored units with mass swarms of Partisan infantry - the trick? Lure the tanks away from the Diaolou and use its superior range to grind it down.

Overall, Bricks and Steel was a remarkable journey to which I learnt much more about Chinese history, as well as game design. For example, I spent alot of time learning about the A* pathfinding algorithm and how to make a smart AI. For example, if an AI unit was surrounded, it can even call reinforcements!