genre:
Turn-Based Tactics / 4X Strategy
engine:
Unity3D
team size:
9
duration:
6 Months
role:
Game Design Intern
As part of my studies, I completed an internship in game design at KING Art Games. Working with a prototype during pre-production, I helped bring the combat system to an MVP state and created a framework as well as an interactive prototype for the UX and UI of the turn-based combat encounters of the game.
Since the game is yet to be announced, I can only share a small insight into the work I did during my time at KING Art Games but I will update the page once I can do so.
Prototyping
When I joined the project, a combat prototype in Unity already existed. However, my Lead pointed out that playtesters had trouble controlling their units and finding the information necessary to make strategic decisions.
As the turn-based encounters were meant to take up a large portion of the game, my first task was to identify shortcomings with the existing systems' readability, focusing on the onboarding experience.
To do so, I played and analyzed several turn-based-tactics games to see what I could learn from their design as well as where they fell short to avoid possible pitfalls.
As making changes to the digital prototype was quite time-consuming, I opted for analog prototyping which allowed me to rapidly test different scenarios.
Later, it also enabled me to quickly prototype random encounter generation using polyhedral dice.
On the side, I would periodically test my results in the digital prototype to adjust for difference in game feel between digital and analog.
UX Research
Before the internship, I had done encounter design for my Dungeons & Dragons home game and played a handful of games in the tactics and strategy genres, but I had limited experience working on them.
So instead of going in blind, I went through reviews, game store pages, and forums of other turn-based tactics games to find out which games and features where being praised and what pain points and complaints players of those games had.
I also looked at popular mods to see what the playerbase was missing from the base game experience.
Based on the findings of my research, I then constructed a player persona and assigned them a player type based on quantic foundry’s high-level clusters as well as Jason VandenBerghe’s 5 Domains of Play.
My team and I were able to use these resources to accelerate work on the prototype as we could avoid common mistakes without having to implement and test them first.
UI Prototype
During the last two and a half months of the internship, I designed and prototyped the UI and UX for the turn-based combat. I used Illustrator and Blender to create mock-ups and place holder assets which I then used to make a fully interactive Adobe XD document.
Unfortunately, I can't show any assets that I produced, which includes said prototype. Once I can, I will update this page with screenshots and more information.
