Jan 26th 2024
Tails of War is a Case Study of Wargroove and other Turn Based Strategy games like Fire Emblem. It was prototyped during the summer of 2023 and was in active development during the fall semester of 2023. I joined WolverineSoft Studio at the start of the fall semester and was a major contributor to the design of Tails of War.
Engine | Unity Duration | 3.5 Months Studio | WolverineSoft Roles | Unit & Champion Designer
Role and Contributions
As the Unit & Champion Designer I had a very important role in determining the main interactions of our combat. I designed units as a system of checks and balances, each unit was stronger or weaker against specific units. I also took inspiration from the critical hit system of Wargroove (since this was a case study of the game) and created unique conditions for each unit that would cause their attacks to critically hit. The Crit system as well as the strengths and weaknesses to other units were to push the idea that each unit had a specific role in the overall composition of the player’s army.
Champions were originally delegated to another designer, so when they left the project I was assigned the role. At the time of their departure from the project the original designer had an initial draft for one champion. I modified that draft and then created two more original champions, all three of them having unique powers to push different playstyles for their army. From a Champion that can act as a unit spawn point, allowing for the front lines to be constantly replenished. To a Champion that can teleport themselves and nearby allies a large distance to apply pressure to their enemy from two sides. And a Champion that is all about being a one man army, able to cut down multiple units within a single turn.
Studio Responsibilities
During my time on Tails of War I had many responsibilities outside of my design work.
Each Sunday we had in person meetings at the University of Michigan, which was an hour away from my residence. I could have attended online, which I did for days I was feeling under the weather, but for the majority of weeks I attended the meetings in person to have face to face conversations with my peers. And during the week I had to report to my design lead to inform him on the progress of development for this weeks tasks, set at each Sunday meeting.
I also had to write Design Documents for Programmers and Artists so they could see what was being conceptualized and then they could properly implement my designs. For more formal / written Design Documentation our studio used Confluence, and when I needed to showcase numbers and stats I used google sheets.
(Below is my google sheet used for unit & champion stats and spacing info)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wOBAMAdbgBscBBqDKUeq5ZiCTmkSwPj3eckNB-82jdI/edit?usp=sharing
Outcome and Reflection
Tails of War was my first experience of developing a game in a studio like setting with multiple people over a long period of time. Outside of design work, the experience of working in that environment was very enlightening. From communicating with different departments like programming and art to have systems and assets implemented. To discussing week by week progress to have a constant update on the state of the project and if things need to be prioritized or cut due to time.
Speaking of which, I did not have enough time to playtest for the balance of the units in champions. This project was extremely complex for the programming department and they ran into bug after bug, and most if not all studio playtests we had were focused on finding and reporting bugs. And even when my units with their correct stats were in the game there were many bugs that messed with unit interactions so there was no opportunity for me to get proper results.
I did all that I could and wrote out some calculations for units attacking each other, but of course there are so many more factors to a strategy game like this.
