When you hear the words “Game Designer”, you probably imagine a person who’s responsible for ensuring that disparate mechanics are combined into one fascinating game. That’s right, but what exactly do game designers do and how do they get into the profession? Today at Redboon we talked with our game designer Alex about his profession in general, and about the process of working on our game Knock on the Coffin Lid, in particular.
How long have you been working with the team, where did you start, how did you move into the game designer position?
I’ve been working with the guys for a little over a year. I started part-time, simultaneously working as a test lead in another “non-game dev” company. Working two jobs was very tough; I just got bogged down at a certain moment and worked 18 hours a day. Sometime last August, I decided that I had to choose just one thing. I chose gamedev.
All my life I’d dreamed of becoming a game designer. But it’s not taught anywhere, so I became a programmer, then QA (Quality Assurance, that is, a tester). Then I started working for RedBoon as a tester hoping to grow into the position of game designer.
I had worked as a tester for 3–4 months, and then I asked if there was an option to try myself as a game designer. The guys discussed that and gave me a task — to try and come up with an idea for Bjorn (the second character). I sat for a couple of days and came up with the concept of Bjorn’s gameplay and everyone liked it. So, that’s why Bjorn is the way he is now.
What comprises a game designer’s work in general?
We come up with new mechanics, items, and events, set tasks for their rendering; we communicate with the writer so that everything is within the plotline of the world. We work with Unity to implement everything that we come up with, configure AI of the enemies, fix bugs, and, in general, think about how to make the game better. It ends up being a kind of one-man band. In large companies, game designers are more narrowly focused, but in our case we have to do everything :)
That is, everything from a complete change of the game balance to the auditioning of hundreds of candidates for voicing Persival and Mortis.
The main challenges you faced while working on KOTCL?
Limitations. Unfortunately, boundless imagination sometimes meets insurmountable obstacles. And there can be many of them. Both financial (some things turn out to be too expensive to do) and technical (some things take too much time or effort to do). Therefore, no matter how much you want to do something unimaginably cool when developing something, you have to cut some corners. And even though our team is super-cool, it’s still small compared to big companies. Balance! Balance is needed everywhere, both in gameplay and in work.
How does a game designer’s day start at Redboon?
In the morning, I usually devote a couple of hours to read reviews on Steam and Discord, then I watch a couple of streams. I think the most important part of a game designer’s job is to make sure that players have fun. That’s why, in addition to implementing your own ideas, you pay attention to the elements of the game that players didn’t particularly like or the ones that don’t work the way you wanted, and immediately make a note to yourself: “Think about how to make it better.” After that, I take some of the scheduled tasks and set to work :)
Anything funny come up during development?
Of course, we’ve had some funny cases. It’s worth remembering at least the typical mistakes like when we gave Persival (the starting character in KOTCL) 5000 HP to test a new feature and forgot to remove that, after which Super-Persival got into hands of the players. Or when the character accidentally became half the size of the screen…
Even if these are just errors or mistakes, it’s funny. (Also, players recently found another bug with a companion wolf shouting threats at enemies. The game didn’t know that some companions shouldn’t be able to speak .) Generally, our team has a good sense of humor, it’s comfortable to work in the office — we even have a separate work channel for memes :)
So Bjorn and his mechanics of absorbing health in the elf form and turning into a lycan were entirely invented by you?
Well, he could turn into a lycan even before that. That is, the general concept was there. But otherwise he was just “Persival no 2.” There was a rage mechanic where Bjorn accumulated rage when receiving and dealing damage, and when the counter reached 100, he turned into a lycan and stayed in that form until the end of the battle. And there were no more than 30 cards created for him.
I came up with the Spirit mechanic, and the effects that make players constantly balance between the forms. Because, although Bjorn deals a lot of damage in the form of a lycan, he also gains a curse and loses health. You have to return to his normal form in order not to lose control, but there are other problems for the player here — you have to pay with health for each attack. This ended up as the meaning of the gameplay and the plot — you need to balance and not lose control.
I also had to come up with equipment for him and other things that affect the game.
Blitz poll
Which game, book, or movie universes do you like?
Myths of Cthulhu, Discworld, Dark Souls, World of Darkness (The Masquerade)
Is there any game that has changed your life?
Every game changes it in some way :) But games are still games. I can’t say that they change me dramatically :)
What do you play outside of work?
League Of Legends, as well as various non-online projects. I like to try new products.
What game genre would you like to work on in the future?
I’d like to work on a Horror game :)