Alexander Massart
Systems Designer
On When Wardens Fall, I was a systems/gameplay designer. I was responsible for:
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VR Damage System Design
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Alchemy System
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Loot System
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Player Starting area - The Camp (Level Design and System Design)
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QA Testing
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Running Playtests
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Balancing AI Types
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Balancing Weapon Types
Systems Design For VR - Alchemy System
Virtual Reality is called that for more than just a tag line. When designing for VR you need to pull heavy influence from the real world but gamify it. It isn’t reality it’s Virtual, and as such it must feel real but not cumbersome. We struggled with this fact for months when designing our alchemy system.
The design goal was to create an alchemy system that allowed players to mix and match the effects of all kinds in whatever quantity they wanted and still have a valid recipe in the end. The reason for this was we wanted a deep crafting system that encouraged discovery and experimentation. When they saw a new plant we didn’t want them to say, “I don’t need that for my recipe”, we wanted them to say, “Maybe I could add some of that”.
To do this I designed a very modular system and with the help of my development team, we developed a system that allowed players to make their own potions, poisons, and flasks, through combining different effects. The idea was to have multiple plants each with two effects. Boiling or Grinding down a plant would extract one effect from the given plant. Players could then add either raw, boiled or ground plants into the mixing pot. These effects would add together to create their desire alchemical creation. The last step was to allow the player to select a delivery. Based on the container they picked the effects would be placed into either a potion, poison or flask.
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By adding this system we were able to create a positive feedback loop where players that explored more could become more powerful as they would have the ingredients to create. Through playtesting we later added mechanics to help add more choice to how players build potions. Each effect in an alchemical recipe now had potency. This number determined the power of a given effect based on the effect. Potency could be increased to a maximum of 200% and would default to 100% when added into a recipe. When a recipe was completed potency was adjusted based on the number of effects in the recipe. Meaning if there were two effects the potency of each would be divided by the number of effects.
This change brought us to the end of our alchemy system, one that encouraged discovery and exploration, by allowing players to find and create their own recipes, while still remaining balanced by adding the tradeoff of power for utility. Very focused recipes are stronger but give the player fewer options and vice versa.
This system is the part of When Wardens Fall that I am most proud of and continue to evolve after release. Currently, we are working on a notebook which will populate with information as you experiment with recipes. Meaning that the more you play the more you learn about the system, and if you take a break you will be able to come back and not have to restart your learning process. This is a feature that was requested by our players and we are excited to see what will come next as we get more feedback.