Studio 1 - Folio 2 Plan

Rationale

For folio 2 I want to design and articulate detailed game mechanics (focus on character skills, enemy skills, boss encounters) for my game, explore the playtesting and balancing process of game design.

Context

My work will sit in the field of game design and playtesting.

There are a lot of good game mechanics design I have encountered during my gaming experience over many years. A lot of those games have AAA titles and had overall very joyful (known from feedbacks from players on social medias) mechanics.

Method

I will design multiple sets of skills that fit the main theme (which is Zodiacs and anything related) for my game character and define attributes of skills such as damage formula, damage type (direct damage over time (dot) etc.), cast range, area of effect, cooldown, resource cost/gain. These skills should be designed through using a hierarchy of their potency against enemy to formulate their cost and gameplay difficulty to avoid any obvious dominant strategies. Charts or diagrams can be used here to map out the design and visualize it.

Another thing I will to do is to design an epic boss encounter for my game. Boss mechanics will be made with indication of their difficulty level. A sequence of different boss mechanics will be timed to happen (based on real time lapse or boss HP percentage or anything else) and one could have influences to the other to allow emergent gameplay. The boss mechanic difficulty level will be used to determine in which order those mechanics are combined in order to create a player learning curve that is not too abrupt.

These are just some initial guidelines for my mechanics design. With the development and play-testing I will reflect on what goes well or bad.

The work will mostly be done through writing and using diagrams to outline structures or sequences of skills/mechanics. The play-testing process will be done using the similar methods, which can include calculations, game state simulation (using card games or other ways). The play-testing doesn’t have to be very precise, the idea is to do a general balancing test and re-iterate design before any real commitment of code/system development (in this case can cost quite a long time) and I believe this is a important skill for me as a game developer to have when I trying to design a new game.

Production

Week 08

Brainstorm skill concept and game mechanics

Set metrics for skill hierarchy

Review any skill/boss mechanics I found epic through my gaming experience

Week 09

Brainstorm skill concept and game mechanics

Articulate skill/mechanics attributes

Review any skill/boss mechanics I found epic through my gaming experience

Week 09

Skill & mechanics production/iteration

Boss encounter brainstorming

Review any skill/boss mechanics I found epic through my gaming experience

Week 10

Skill & mechanics production/iteration

Boss encounter mechanics and flow design production

Week 11

Skill & mechanics production/iteration

Boss encounter mechanics and flow design production/iteration

Week 12

Focus on playtesting and reflection

Production/iteration of previous work

Week 13

Focus on playtesting and reflection

Production/iteration of previous work