High-Level Design & Proto

Prototyping:
Working with engineering lead (Jim Montgomery), we set out to build a prototype proving out a turn-based character battler with roots in JRPG-style design. Character collecting, team building, color affinity, room-to-room combat and big bosses were all part of the foundations of the gameplay experience.

My scribble-sketches here show some of the early beat-to-beat combat design as well as thoughts around sussing out the game camera and rough proportions. Early look/feel was starting to form but hadn’t quite been locked down. Early on I focused on the chibi style scale of the characters and offset that with some super heroic high-energy combat beats. I was a pretty big fan of Castle Crashers and looking back on early designs some hints of the influence can be seen in the roughs.

Evolution:
We experimented with a recipe-based system (combining characters) and an experience point system that allowed players to invest in their favorite characters and level them up into more powerful tiers. As characters level up they improve stats and unlock new powers becoming more and more effective.

Status Effects:
Status effects were essential in helping to create a vast range of abilities and synergies. This allowed a great deal of options in the strategy of building teams of characters. (stuns, DOT effects, buffs, nerfs…etc.)

Color Affinity:
A color affinity system incentivized players to have a wide collection characters to take on an assortment of color/elements. (ex. red= fire/rage, green = nature/healing...etc.). This was leveraged in production as each character archetype could have a different color affinity associated with it to create new characters (re-skin + new powers).

Big Bosses

Big Beats:
Major milestones in the game were giant boss battles. They were designed to be tied into the theme of a fantasy setting that dominated each chapter in the game (snowy mountains, forest..etc.). The two-headed Yeti design was a favorite of mine for its unique personality. He had a ‘baby tantrum’ head and a ‘raging bully’ head, allowing the creative team a lot of fun moments to play with as we charted out the UX around the battle. We wanted more than just a trope ‘hit point bag’, and Kang Kung was a perfect boss to allow us to do that.

In addition, bosses usually featured a special introduction, a special action camera, unique powers as well as a big visual reward if the player’s team was tough enough to deafeat them.

Being able to visually communicate to the team through rough sketches and documentation allowed me to work closely with the amazing artists that helped bring this ‘baby-bully’ to life!

Look & Feel:
The blocky style was explored as a necessity to help offset content churn that comes with a collectible character game. I drove early tests and found that it not only would be quicker in production but would ultimately solidify the overall look of the franchise.

It started with the three fantasy tropes up top (goblin, knight, wizard). As we pulled more and more fantasy content into the style it just seemed to ‘work’ and was fun to develop. I always wanted to see them in very dynamic poses which drove me to look for something to offset the rigid feel of the blocky style that bothered me. Ultimately a technical animation expert, Mikkel Caiffa, would create the squash and stretch rig that brought the characters to dynamic life and would solidify the highly animated feel we were after. I was lucky to bring him on board. I had worked with him previously and had to find him and recruit him to the cause.

Brand & Franchise

The Poster:
Ultimately my ‘Down the Stairs’ design became the marketing banner for the game. It tested well. For a collectible character game like this, I felt a massive horde of different characters charging into a dungeon environment would help capture that promise of excitement a player would feel about being able to collect and combine an endless line-up and use them in a variety of combinations. It tapped into that feeling of seeing the ultimate collection of action figures that let’s your imagination run wild. A wolf a ninja and a mushroom dude? Hell yes!


Marketing Direction

Final Push:
As the product went live and started to look like a success, I focused for a bit on some final marketing pushes before moving on to next projects.

At this point it felt easy representing the product after building and evolving it for so long. It was fun to collaborate and explore how the world of Dungeon Boss could look outside of the in-game screens.

Dungeon Boss would continue to grow and evolve beyond the core we crafted and new people would continue to work on it and add features as it moved into its live operations life cycle.

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