Team Thundersaw: Storm Runners

Unreleased Gameplay Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_rXFpIA-Ks&ab_channel=ThundersawStormRunners

Development Summary:

• Game: Storm Runners

• Engine: Unreal 4

• Development Time: 1 year, 6 months (my time on the project)

• Genre: Rogue-like, Single Stick Mobile Shooter

• Platform: Mobile Devices

• Released: February 2022

Responsibilities:

• Designed hundreds of levels of content for the game over 6 major chapters with variants for each level to insure replayability

• Designed simple, but progressively harder puzzle levels to increase engagement and encourage our players to think

• Developed overarching narrative for entire gameplay experience as well as character driven narratives for each hero using a simple two term system

• Implemented Initial Tutorial to teach players the basics of the gameplay

• Collaborated on enemy and Boss Design to keep challenging players with new and exciting ideas

• Voiced several monsters for our game

• And much more

Level Design:

I was initially brought onto Storm Runners as part of the Content Creation Team. Because we were a Rogue-like, Mobile Title, we knew that at the core of our game, we would need players going through multiple runs over the same content. As such, we inititally wanted to have each level have multiple versions so that players would not grow bored as they went over each level over and over. After getting the hang of our, at the time, complicated method of level implementation and testing, I pushed myself to make at least 4 versions of each level, insuring players would have the ability to play through each chapter multiple times and never have the same run happen back to back.

This eventually included creating puzzle levels as well. As a top-down single-stick shooter, we had little if any options for input controls. As such, we had to keep our puzzles very simple and straight forward as we only had the stick as our input point. As such, we settled on using in level, colored buttons with matching doors to craft simple, but compelling puzzles. Wanting to give rhythm to the game and build out some expectations and slowly build up puzzle difficulty, I created a system where every 5 levels would be broken by alternatingly by a puzzle level, then by a mini-boss level. The puzzle level would always be the same or would only have minor changes, but we wanted to insure that players understood the mechanic. Additionally, these puzzle levels would have a marked decrease in terms of enemies or types of enemies so they were easier. This was done primarily because the player already had plenty to worry about thanks to the puzzle, but we later realized the value of have a less difficult level that players could treat as a breather.

Narrative Design:

I have always been a proponent of narrative in video games. While some people may view it as a secondary aspect, or just something to give the world flavor, narrative and story provide players the purpose for why they are doing what they are doing. If a game has a strong story, they are far more willing to stick with a title for a very long time.

So, when I was given the chance to help infuse Storm Runners with lore, narrative, and story, I happily took up the cause. In no short time, I quickly developed a timeline of events based on parameters given to me by my creative director. I then used these events to build out a lore that could be used as fertile soil to explore interesting narratives and stories that would be worth telling.

After the initial set up was complete, I took a look at each of our heroes, including the ones we had yet to really develop yet, and tried two expand upon them in as many ways as possible. And while many of my ideas were far too big for something like a mobile title to hold, take a look at the relationship matrix and key I developed, I ultimately had to cut my ideas down pretty heavily. The two major constraints I was working with came to my director wanting to keep the narrative moments in, but not having them disrupt gameplay in a significant way and I only had about 160 characters to work with on each dialogue screen, so narrative and character moments had to be short and concise.

I ended up developing a simple two adjective system that would alter the tone and guiding poles for the characters as they progressed through main campaign of Storm Runners. For example, our main character was a plucky and excited pistol-wielder named Malora. Malora’s adjectives for Chapter 01 were Legendary and Fun. At the Core of nearly every dialogue, Malora would bring up or allude to the idea of wanting to carve out her own legend or show how much fun and excitement she was having exploring the strange world of Storm Runners. Around Chapter 05, players were set to encounter a truly difficult challenge, a chapter that was nothing but boss fights, back to back to back. At the end of chapter 05, one of Malora’s adjectives would change, dropping Legendary and gaining Team. This would show her character growth, changing from someone obsessed with being known and being her own hero to someone who recognizes that you cannot be a hero if no one makes it back alive.

Tutorial Design:

As part of a movement to retain players, we discussed the idea of adding a tutorial to the game. Seeing as I already had tutorial design experience from my time on Curse of the Deadwood, I quickly took up the challenge and planned out a simple series of levels, punctuated by character dialogue so players could get a sense of the characters and a handle of the controls all in one simple, short experience. The major topics the tutorial had to cover were:

• Movement with a virtual joystick

• Letting go of the stick to attack enemies

• Melee Enemies and how they navigate

• Ranged enemies

• Using cover to block enemy projectiles

• Shopping and buying mods for your run

• Mini-Boss Monsters

• Melee Heroes

• Hero Swapping

• Unique Hero abilities

• Chapter End Bosses

To the right, you can see my initial design for the tutorial section and the major lesson I wanted to teach players at each level. Eventually, this first draft of the tutorial was deemed too long and not exciting enough, so we ended up changing out many of the levels and developing unique tech just for the tutorial in order to make it more bombastic and exciting to reel players in.

Boss Design:

On Storm Runners, I also had the opportunity to help design our Chapter 04 End chapter boss. This was really my first time to ever tackle a boss design, so I eagerly accepted the challenge alongside my fellow designer, Willem. The major crux of the design was that it had to go along with the major themes of octopus and cactus. After much debate and iteration, I collaborated with my colleagues to design out “The Cactipus”. Below are some sample pictures from my initial design pitch. In brief:

1. The Cactipus starts buried, but once the player starts the fight, it rises up, starting phase one, and attacks by slamming green vine tentacles at the player

2. Players have to shoot the flowers on the tentacles to damage the boss before moving onto the phase two

3. After the player shoots all the flowers on the available tentacles, The Cactipus lays two large tentacles on either side of the arena and fires thorns at predetermined lines along the tentacles

4. Players have to shoot the main head of the Cactipus until it gets to a third of its health before moving onto phase three

5. Phase three is nearly the same as phase one, except we add in the Cactipus firing slowing globs of poisonous sap

6. During phase three, players have to deal with two tentacles at the same time and once all the flowers are dead, we go to phase 4

7. Phase 4 is a retread of phase 2 except with faster firing of thorns and the occasional glob of poison. Once the player deals another third of the Cactipus’s health, player moves onto phase five

8. Phase 5 sees two tentacles at the same time, but at a faster rate, and the cactipus fires two globs at a time. Once all the flowers are gone, players go to the final phase

9. Last phase sees the same two tentacles on either side, firing thorns faster and sending out two globs of poison. The player stays in this phase until the Cactipus is defeated

Upon working presenting the idea to our boss, he loved the design. We did make a few design changes here and there, but for the most part, the design went into the game pretty much as is.

Chapter Map Design:

As the project went on, we wanted to find ways to excite players and give them more choice in what challenges they wanted to take on while also increasing playability. As such, the team settled on what we referred to as Chapter Map. Essentially players would start at the bottom of a chapter map and slowly work their way up choosing a route of nodes. Each node had a collection of levels based around a theme or enemy. So, one route might have more flying enemies, one route might have more melee enemies, and a third might have an equal mix of the two.

Additionally, while our levels were pretty fast to play through, we realized we were still seeing play times per session of upwards, beyond twenty minutes, which is a lot to ask for from a player of a mobile title. As such, we also cut the total number of levels in a chapter in half and we simply made more chapters set in the same biome. The trick with each map was to find unique and exciting ways to give players meaningful choices, but also make it quick to understand so players to could make a decision and move ahead quickly. As part of this core design, we developed a series of rules to guide us that boiled down to: Always make sure there is a short harder route for experienced players, a longer easier route for newer players, and encourage risk taking by placing special shops and healer nodes in rewarding spots.

Working on these chapter maps was a surprisingly fun challenge and we did end up crunching a little to get them all in and online in time for a big update, but it was still a worthwhile addition that saw our players quite excited to continue to play.

Conclusion:

Overall, Storm Runners was one of those projects that I loved working on. We were a live game for a good portion of the time we were in development and we got a lot of positive reviews. One player in Australia only gave us a 4 out of 5 cause he thought there was a glitch with the final boss of chapter 03 as it wouldn’t unlock more content to play. Turns out he’d reached the end of the content in a relatively short amount of time as he was just having so much fun with it. Unfortunately, the project was cancelled before we could really get going and see what kind of audience we could pull in. The project honestly had a lot of love and passion behind it and I hope to one day work on a similar team who is just as passionate and excited to breath life into the game as I had on Storm Runners.