About the Project
Battle Chasers: Nightwar was the first game Airship Syndicate made, based on the hit comic from Joe Madureira, and was funded by Kickstarter (remember Kickstarter?)
A love-letter to our favorite JRPs growing up (Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 3/6, Suikoden)
Worked on Level Design, Events, Quests
Main dev team of ~10 people
Level Design
I was hired as the sole Level Designer for Battle Chasers and by and large I made almost every dungeon room in the game.
Over time, I came up with some general principals when I approached designing a layout.
Circular Layouts - Since this is a randomly generated dungeon and the player can enter a room from any direction, avoid backtracking and picking wrong turns by making every turn a correct one that leads the player where they want to go next.
Funnel Layouts - For bespoke gameplay moments, entrance/exits funnel into a joined area so you have the same perspective and experience no matter what direction the player entered.
Clear Visual Objectives - Nothing will encourage exploration like seeing a treasure chest behind a gate. The next thing on the player’s mind will be looking for that lever to open the gate.
Level Design Mistakes
I thought players would like the option on how to proceed through a room, like giving them the option of choosing between combat or traps. But really, players just want to loot everything, so having that choice didn’t offer much since they’d do everything anyway.
We thought dungeons would be run 5-10 times, but in reality, it was 1-2 times. We spent a lot of effort making random layouts for the same rooms, when in reality, having less options that were more meaningful would’ve been a better use of time. Also, since room exits were turned on and off depending on the dungeon generation, having exits affect a portion of the layout would have a similar effect of making the room feel different. Generally, a room exit would just be replaced with a wall if it were closed instead.
Backtracking is kind of the gamer walk-of-shame. This room contains 2 explorable rooms and a chest at the end, with enemies and traps not shown. Not the best, but since it’s so short, it might be forgivable.
An example of a funnel layout: both entrance/exists lead to the same trap gauntlet regardless of the way you enter the room. The return gate makes the room circular in layout. The treasure chest lures the player to do the content even though they could simply go to the next room, making it feel like they’re choosing to participate rather than being forced to.
Essentially the same room as the one on the left, but it flows better. There is no wrong way go. Exploring leads to more content until it simply returns you to the beginning of the room. Since this room terminates, you’ll need to go back to the room entrance to complete the rest of the dungeon.
This kind of layout was used for story/key moments in the dungeon, or for just general centrally located events. As a choke point, we know what direction you’re coming from and where you’re exiting, but having multiple options for each helps dungeon generation be more flexible, otherwise the same paths to enter/exit those directions would get over-used.
Events
Events are random things that happen in a dungeon. They can be finding an alchemist’s lab and getting to craft your own potion, a mysterious cube that upgrades an item of yours but teleports away for you to elsewhere in the dungeon, or a mysterious creature that reads your fortune and blesses or curses you based on the draw of a card.
The purpose of events are to prevent fatigue from the combat loop inside a dungeon. They give a break from the fighting.
More than that, they give an opportunity to create moments of excitement, curiosity, and wonder.
Because you can re-run a dungeon, you can also find the same event over and over again. This means that design-wise, you have the option to have some events have a fail state.
It doesn’t feel good to fail, and in the interest of not irritating players, we generally stray away from design where you can fail. However, I think in some sense, we’re overcorrecting. There is a benefit to failing, because after you fail, and you learned from it, when you see that event again, you actually will get excited. Because you know what to do now.
It depends on the game, it depends on the project, but every now and then, I think it’s ok to put in when you can.
Answering a riddle correctly opens a gate to a nearby treasure chest
A bonus for bringing specific party members to a dungeon
A text adventure with a book you actually write in the story
Scripted Sequences
Another way to break up dungeons and create some negative space between combat encounters were scripted sequences. These were either narrative related conceits for why you had to explore the rest of the dungeon, or a flashy way of opening a path ahead of you.
In general, players do like the feeling of having done something to change a room permanently. Opening a backtrack, creating a bridge from magical floating rocks, these sorts of things give a sense of progress.
I used a physics equation to determine where the elevator would be at a specific time during the sequence to detonate explosions in the level.
Sound and repurposed FX did all the lifting here.