Game designer
on
My tasks
Game Design System Design Documentation Balancing Meta
game design
We were a team of 7 on Swift, and I was the sole Game Designer on the project. Thus, I was heavily involved in every part of the game's concept creation, from high-level to details : Intentions, Game Rules, Main mechanics, Progression, or even the game's Universe and Context. Designing and balancing a multiplayer competitive game without losing sight of our game's intentions, but also target audience was extremely interesting.
Plus, having the possibility to deliver both an high-level vision, and work in-engine to tweak game mechanics was pretty fulfilling to me.
I sure wish I could do that on a lot more projects : But of course, being a Lead on a student project isn't the same at all than on a bigger team, with bigger needs.
Documentation
Throughout the production, I had to keep our Confluence up-to-date, serving as a wiki for the whole team to seek the Intentions, Descriptions and Parameters of every existing feature in our game.
I made the Confluence bearing in mind that anyone could read it, and understand our creative process, as well as being able of prototyping and playing Swift, only with the Wiki's pages.
Overhauling the Confluence was a great way of noting down new ideas, or scrapping incoherent elements, while always keeping a global vision on the project. It's essential to constantly reanalyze my design : Rationality and Cold-Headedness are principal to ensure i'm not blinded by intentions or personal thoughts.
I designed the game for the most player profiles possible, not just for mine.
system design
We reached and settled on our main Game Mode rules (CtF, 3v3, symmetrical map, one Role, one Power), after one or two iterations.
Then, while testing, I noted ideas to correct the lacking point, developped them on paper, selected the best ones after concerting with the team for major elements, tested the ideas on engine when prototyping was possible, and iterated again.
After some time, however, my new mechanics ideas or wanted changes ended up suiting our targeted game experience since the first playtests, even without visual or auditive feedbacks.
I was learning along, and predicted many of the problems to come, generally even since the paper design phase.
Though our main intentions and mechanics were strong enough to stay still during a good part of the project.
Balancing
Nothing needs more balancing than a competitive multiplayer game. We wanted a pure gameplay, with a few parameters (no HP, only one type of input to use Powers...).
However, our controller is still at the center of our game experience. And it has many variables : Run speed, Jump velocity & distance, Dodge distance & cooldown, etc.
The right middle between game feel and multiplayer-proof had to be found. This also applies to the Powers, Interactibles, and every tweakable gameplay element.
We want the player to be the defining element influencing the course of the game, with the broadest tactic & synergies number possible.
Meta
In the same spirit of balancing Power and Roles to support interesting tactics and prevent frustrating situations to ensure retention,
I worked on a Rating system to reward the player both in-game and in-between game, since it'll influence its Ranking.
I also developped a basic economic system, thinking the game as a free-to-play, involving a Currency obtained in fonction of the Player's Rating.
Of course, I also observed many playtests and noted player feedback to ensure my Progression Design was suited for our target audience.
Finally, I worked on an Elo system, to keep an accurate Ranking of our Playtester's performance - which ended being very popular and motivated our players to play even more.
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Jira, Confluence
Task & Sprint Review (Jira), Documentation (Confluence)
Softs used
Unity (C#, Scriptable Objects)
Google Suite
Miro
Balancing (Floats, Animation Curves), Basic prototyping
Drafts (Docs) , Intern & Extern Presentations (Slides)
Assets & Variables Lists (Sheets)
Visual Design, References,
Brainstorming