The Project
The Winding Wilds is a small tabletop game prototype where you play a mechanical knight fighting against other mechanical baddies. You equip abilities to use against increasingly challenging encounters. In between encounters you can purchase new abilities from the shop or upgrade your current abilities and stats using Cogs.
What I Did
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Prototyped and analyzed various combat systems.
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Designed 15 abilities and 20 ability upgrades.
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Developed enemy encounters of increasing difficulty.
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Conducted cost-curve analysis and developed balance patches based on the results.
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Created assets for Tabletop Simulator implementation.
Systems Design
The main element was Ability Cards. To make similar abilities more distinct from each other, I added an upgrade system that allowed players to unlock stat boosts and added effects to each ability. I designed the upgrades to create more unique abilities out of simpler ones.
After the system's first pass, I performed a cost-benefit analysis on the abilities, using a design point system with the game's first three abilities as a baseline.
Using the design points, I found abilities that were mathematically unbalanced, and tweaked certain stats to bring them more in line. Certain abilities had unique effects that I had to estimate the design point costs of, using damage and health comparisons as a reference.
I also added some new abilities designed off of the design point system, implementing some new effects as well.
Some abilities stayed slightly balanced in the player's favor. These abilities are meant to have high initial costs but feel strong to use, which is why I left them slightly more unbalanced.
The ability analysis, using design points for comparisons
The balance change and ability additions. Red indicates a negative change in the player's favor, green indicates a positive change