Survive-Ville

Enter the world of Survive-Ville, a town management, Rogue-lite combat game developed by Winged Remnant LLC, the creators of Bifröst: Through the Realms! Delve into the depths of a eldritch possessed woodland to absolve a destitute town of The Harvest—an occult manifestation of a gruesome past….

Role: Systems Designer
Tenure: 16 Months
Team Size: 15
Platform: PC

• Concise documentation and organization of 85% of the entire project, improving asset pipeline workflows

• Responsible for creating, pitching, and updating 10+ design documents to gameplay directors and project leads

• Spearheaded the creation of Combat Design including attribute packages and blueprints for 30 challenging enemies, 20 unique and satisfying weapons, and a dynamic and engaging Vision System

• Designed, pitched, and oversaw engineer implementation of the foundational mechanics surrounding town building and management, as well as the architecture for NPC vendor screens including UI/UX

• Collaborated with cross-functional teams to enhance Sprint deliveries, manage scope, and own solutions for roadblocks

• Performed exhaustive MDA analysis of feature implementation and prototyped core features added to the Sandbox

• Adaptable Producer skills, following up with team members on actionable tasks, task tracking, and managing backlog prioritization

• Scheduled weekly meetings on Miro with 5 key project leads and bi-weekly Sprint meetings across 15 developers

• Setup and coordinated 5 feature-focused strike teams, delegating and facilitating needs between design leaders to improve production efficiency

Implementation of enemy AI and Combat behavior I designed, demonstrated by fellow designer Dylan Anderson.

Weapon Design

Combat in Survive-Ville consisted of an arsenal of weapons, each serving as a unique method of combat approach. Each weapon would default to either a one handed, or two handed weapon, granting the player agency in experimenting and discovering weapons that suit a playstyle, or useful for certain enemy types.

Weapon Design Intent

Weapons in Survive-Ville should, by default behavior, be easy to understand and use. This allows other systems of the game such as enemy design, level design, and systems design to overlap neatly without much baggage to accommodate other niche exceptions or behavior. In short, the simpler the weapons, the easier it will be to create emergent and refreshing gameplay during combat.

That said, each weapon should offer a unique playstyle that demands the player approach combat in a different way. No two weapons should feel the same, and no two weapons should fill the same niche, if possible (ie: multiple ranged weapons are fine, but having them behave functionally the same is not).

Therefore, Weapons in Survive-Ville should be approached cautiously. Mindful of the greater Roguelite systems planned for the game, they should serve to compliment a Night Phase’s stacking difficulty, modifications, and other systems by being fundamentally simple, yet centric to a build and expressive to a player’s preferred playstyle.

Introduction

Survive-Ville was an unfinished game created by Winged Remnant LLC. It was a town builder by day and a grueling rogue-like dungeon crawler at night. As a Systems Designer on the team, I became responsible combat of the game. The documents below showcase my work, detailing what the player is capable of and the tools at their disposal, as well as what they will be fighting in the dark depths of the corrupted forest.

These are detail-heavy design documents written with the intent of providing a springboard for other designers working on parallel systems and direction for artists and programmers. The first 3rd of each document concerns the logistics of constructing the systems required for combat, whereas the rest lists various weapons/enemies, their attributes, and their roles in the sandbox.