Auxilia - Third-Person Arena Strategy Game
Overview:
On the production of Auxilia, I was the Gameplay & Sound Designer who worked with a team of developers to design and implement features through multiple milestones over a five month period for AIE's Major Production.
Platform: PC
Game Engine: Unity
Duration: Five Months
Team Size: 8
Roles: Game & Sound Designer
Game Trailer:
Project Roles:
Game Designer:
Tasked with creating strategy-based combat systems & mechanics that did not come into conflict with the project’s established ideals of the end product being Third-Person & Action Game orientated.
Designed a movement system that complied with the established ideals by retaining a familiar arcade-like third-person controller set up, and a combat system that relied on the use of AI armies of which movement was directed by players with said movement system.
Made several level designs as 2-D diagrams and then as implemented in-engine levels.
Increase the amount of depth in the combat system by designing a formation mechanic that gave players four different ways to set up their soldiers.
Critically analyzed my own work and tweaked the designs of the troop spawning system and formation mechanics as the project progressed in its development. Increasing player flow, ease of use, and better opportunities of strategy without jeopardizing the projects developmental progress.
Recognized and counseled the rest of the development team into deciding the necessary amount of planned features and ideas that needed to be cut and what developmental contingencies needed to be planned in their place due to time constraints, including features and mechanics designed by myself.
Sound Designer:
Heavily edited and repurposed creative commons sound effects and recorded voice lines that had to meet the artistic style of the assets they were paired with.
Any audio asset that didn’t make the set standard of quality or correct feel, was redone or tweaked until that standard was met.
Post-Mortem:
I gained much insight from my experiences from working on the Auxilia project, and had to solve a lot of problems not only as a designer but also as a teammate. The team never had any personal issues between members, but during the beginning of the project there was a decent amount of disagreement on what we were going to make. Many of the artists were wanting to do an action-based game of some-kind whether that was a racing game or an actual third-person action game. I, the designer on the team wanted to try and make something with strategy, that would have allowed me the chance to design elaborate systems and mechanics that were a little more complex then that of a generic racing or action game. The cause of the disagreement really stood from the artists being both unfamiliar with the strategy genres as a whole and or just disliked them. I too had issues with the opposing ideas, but as I was the designer I was able to argue that better for my case that I wanted to be able to show system design. The racing game idea was ditched, but the artists became ever more clear that they didn’t want to work on a conventional Real-Time Strategy or Turn-Based Strategy game at all.
In the end I had to compromise a lot of the game idea that I championed, but outnumbered as I was; I had to give into compromising and allow for the base of the game to be that of a third-person action game but with the strategy features that I had pushed. I didn’t want to be a dictator to the team and agreed thinking that while the game would take on a very different appearance the core mechanics I wanted to design: armies, formations etc. would still be used with the ideas having lost little integrity on my end. After these initial issues were solved the team began production working together quite well and it remained so for the rest of the project. The only problem was that I was wrong, while my mechanics functioned well on a technical level on a fun level I felt as though they always left something to be desired. I learned by the end of the production cycle that a designer needs to tailor system and mechanic designs for a specific genre, basically cutting the whole idea and restarting, or not let the creative vision become corrupted through too much compromise such as that of a complete genre change. Lessons I will forever keep in mind!
Note: All screenshots and the video reflect the work of the entire team (Programming, Art, Design, FX, SFX, etc).