At AdHoc Studio I worked on prototypes for two opposite sides of the same game.

There was a top down tactics experience which had players making strategic choices about how to respond to requests for help that would appear on their map.

Then, a more AAA-styled mission design, where players moved from camera to camera aiding an NPC exploring/fighting their way through the building.

I worked on both experiences with other game designers, the cinematic director, animators, writers, gameplay programmers, and creative directors. I split these subprojects into their specific concentrations.

Mission Design / Level Design

When I joined I was tasked with working on the design team to solve design problems and build a full mission for this side of the game. I helped: design the specific level mechanics, create and iterate on the mission pacing, block out the level, design the puzzles, design gameplay moments that still allowed animators to weave in real time cutscenes, then playtest / iterate a lot. This whole process was done in a shockingly small amount of time, but I collaborated closely with the designer who had been building out the mission prior to joining. I also worked with the design consultant we had on the team to gather feedback and bounce ideas off of to help hone in on what would be an exciting and engaging mission design.

I was specifically brought onto the team because they knew I could provide a strong gameplay driven backbone to the mission structure. This responsibility came with weight of solving the difficult problem of directing an npc around the map as a sort of surrogate for the player. Since our game was played from the perspective of a “hacker”, like in a heist movie, implicit interaction was a core part of the experience. This kind of interaction style is a less explored design space and also creates a lot of design / animation / narrative restrictions, so building these kinds of missions required a lot of ‘learning by doing’. What we ended up with after our rapid production wasn’t our ideal, but we finally knew what our ideal could be. After we delivered the mission and the strategy portion of the game for review to the publisher, the rest of the team and I focused on the next version of these kinds of missions.

One of the biggest things I learned from the first go around was that we needed more choice in the levels themselves. Since what we had for our first mission was limited to being linear, I designed this space to have two main paths for the player to explore. These paths would have different narrative moments, reward the player with unique information, and require slightly different play approaches. There would be some level of overlap to allow for cutscene overlap, however ‘replayability’ was certainly something I was designing. This leads into the next big thing I learned; the player, even though they were effectively a planner / eyes in the sky character, could only be reactive. We wound up with this due to our reliance on cutscenes to drive the action. This means that it was much harder, near impossible, for us to create interesting choices especially for our implicit interaction style. We needed to allow and encourage the player to scout the level more, open pathways / trigger mechanics for the npc to interact with. Then each level would be now a sort of Rube Goldberg machine setup/planned by the player, then players would react when the plan goes awry.

I was inspired by the way Dishonored’s missions/mechanics are designed to allow, and encourage, the player to scout, plan, enact the plan, then react/slightly change the plan on the fly. So, I also designed the space for patrolling guards, checkpoints, and specific encounter areas. By blocking these more specific areas out we can then populate them with mechanics the player can more explicitly interact with, like short-circuiting a wire box to electrocute a nearby enemy they lured over. These areas also would let players more easily direct the npc to behave in specific and clean ways.

Sadly these changes didn’t make it to production, this part of the game was cut. We deemed that it would take too much time it would need to be fully proven, polished, and vetted. It also took away valuable resources from the other side of the game, which was proven to be fun an engaging while also accomplishing what the creative director wanted.

Strategy / Systems Design

By the time I had joined, the team the top down strategy side of the game had a more defined game loop which was now going through a content design / systems design iteration process. Even though the other side of the game demanded more attention and time, I still worked hard to refine the play experience through a variety of ways.

For the first half of my time, I playtested the game and made balancing improvements based off what the team already had. I gave feedback on UI / UX improvements to give the player more strategic information to help them make more interesting choices and provide a better flow for the player to navigate the map layout. For the content side of things I tweaked the pacing to provide more moments for players to weigh their options, designed reasons for players to manage how they wanted to respond, resulting in creating more emergent narrative moments. I collaborated heavily with the other designers and gameplay engineer for these changes.

This side of the game was building off a style of game which had already existed and we were now putting our own spin on it, thus allowing us to explore exactly what made our game unique. The prototype we ended up with was fun enough, but we agreed it was a more shallow experience which relied a bit too much on our narrative.

Once we had delivered a prototype to the publisher for review, I was focused on creating deeper systems for players to sink their teeth into. I brainstormed with the other designer and engineer to see what the fastest iteration we could do was, while also dieseling towards new core pillars. We focused on the player loop of balancing competing desires from game systems, like in Reigns. I got the team inspired about how our narrative could intersect more fluidly into the game systems, and devised progression structures which allowed for more player driven choices in both aspects. One of my major contributions was creating a comprehensive spreadsheet for the main system in excel for an easier and holistic balancing process for that next prototype.

Changing Direction

As we started to converse more the team quickly came to the consensus that this smaller in scope side of the game would be the path forward. It not only accomplished the creative goals of the team / leadership, but also was easier to design being a proven concept with concrete examples. I applauded this new direction even though I knew it meant my additional expertise / help wasn’t needed any longer. I was given a lovely farewell and then I floated over to ArenaNet!