Revenge of the Wounded Dragons
Year:
Platform:
Genre:
2009
PlayStation 3
Side Scrolling Beat 'em Up
Role:
Game / Level Designer
Game Overview
A side scrolling beat em up based on the story of two brothers trying to save their kidnapped sister from a bunch of chinese gangsters. Production was extended way beyond the original planning since Wanako Games was acquired during the development. This also meant that no new projects were started and eventually the whole development staff was working on this one game.
Design Objectives
With such a large development team, the decision was made to freeze the initial game design as it had been established during pre-production.
I focused on planning the level layouts, visual effects, building the secret levels and adding what I could to the game design without changing the core.
I also configured various enemies, destructible objects, weapons and traps and did a final pass across all the main levels, fixing issues and improving the fun factor.
Successful Features
The secret levels turned out to be a big hit. They were simple arcadey mini levels that were playable solo or in coop. I had full control over how these were designed so was able to perfect them to my heart's content. I eventually added a few more of each type as well since they proved popular among the team and there was more than enough time to add them. The types were collect the lanterns, catch the chickens and survive the maze.
When adding the achievements, I had a lot of fun and it seems that the players liked them a lot as well. My favourite is the "Golden Smile" achievement where the player has to knock 32 golden teeth out of enemies by hitting them in the mouth to construct a smile of gold... OTT but very in line with the game's sense of fun.
The level design had lots of issues (see below) but turned out well at the end. We had to make some hard decisions and cut a lot of content, but it was the right move to make.
Conclusion
Given the team size, level design content went into overdrive. We ended up with stupidly huge levels with very convoluted navigation. There were sections in the city which had the players going up and down endlessly in elevators. Areas in the caves which dragged on for well beyond they should have.
Eventually, most of these areas were cut from the game. When left in, we simplified the play and made it easier and more fun. For example, I replaced a lot of the elevators with bouncy mattress'.
The original game design, especially the coop fighting features, were great ideas. Unfortunately, the game design feature freeze also applied to the configuration and tweaking of these. This meant that several of these features were underwhelming in the final game - the Dragon Rage mode for example looked great but didn't really do much.
From a business side, freezing the game design was a good move. I could have proposed more tweaking of towards the end of the project however.
Another thing that could have worked well was expanding the minigame levels even further. They were low risk, being self contained and bite size segments of fun. They also proved very popular after release, especially for the secret hunter player type.
