Battleplans is a strategy game for mobile devices where players win matches by controlling more points than their opponent. They defend their territory by leaving commands for troops in the form of a “defense plan” and in turn must overcome plans built by their opponents.
Role: Level Designer/Tester
Tools: Unity, Microsoft Excel
Platform: Android and iOS
Dates Worked: September – December 2016
I worked with C4M’s development team in Montreal on shipping updates for Battleplans, which had launched in the summer in 2016. My responsibilities included building single player campaign levels,and managing testing for new heroes and balance changes.
Campaign Levels
I designed six different campaign levels ranging from medium to high difficulty in the later stages of the campaign. Battleplans’ campaign pitted players against “the Skulls”, NPCs with their own special defense plans. Unlike the symmetrical PvP games, campaign levels could have any number of defending squads, troops or heroes, which gave the design team tremendous creative freedom in what sort of challenges we presented to the player.
This level utilized two different hero abilities to create a “trap” for the player. Taigar is able to summon a stag at a predetermined time and location, and Ozzy can teleport himself and his squad across the map. Players needed to prepare for reinforcements at the “trap” point, or use the sudden redistribution of defending troops to their advantage.
Some campaign levels were set after the main story, and were intended to be as brutally difficult and bizarre as possible. This level used two different heroes’ abilities to force the player to work with nearly a third of their usual troops. Freya creates a wall of ice that freezes anything it touches and Pepper summons a meteor that damages and knocks down units.
Postmortem
Designing so many different campaign layouts for the same few maps was an interesting challenge, refining my ability to use the level space in creative new ways each time. I played and replayed my layouts often upwards of 50 times to make sure they were appropriately difficult for their placement in the game. This gave me a good eye for making small adjustments to allow players the appropriate buffer in their timing. I also learned a lot by working with the talented developers at C4M. I had to study very closely with other designers to get up to speed on the intricacies of Battleplans’ inner workings and subtleties before I could make meaningful contributions myself. Coming onto a project that was already so well established was a great exercise in getting an eye into someone else’s vision and intent, and figuring out how to jump on board and make it even better.