A sci-fi city builder developed at Oxeliz Games Pvt Ltd. It is available on Steam, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series.
Your objective is to build and manage a colony on an alien planet.
Team size: 10+
My Role: Game Designer
Genre: Colony management
Duration: October 2021 – ongoing (console porting)
My role
As the only designer in the multicultural and multidisciplinary team, I was in charge of all aspects related to the design of the game.
I playtested the game to identify bugs and iterate on systems, features and balance, in order to fulfill the intended vision.
I also supported the rest of the team in other areas, such as:
- Handling the feedback from the players
- Writing contents for the store pages
- Assisting with porting the game to PlayStation and Xbox
Initial phase
When I joined the studio the core systems of the game were already established, so my first tasks have been to learn about the game and to update the documentation to make it easier to read.
By testing Quriocity and comparing it to similar games, I have been able to identify some critical aspects and I discussed with the rest of the team about solutions related to the gameplay systems and the overall balance.
Maps and weather
I have designed the 5 maps available in the game, and I gave to the artists visual references for the style and vegetation of each map. After setting up each map, I have iterated on them and I have used the terrain tool embedded in Unity to ensure that each map plays as intended.
The basic layout (made of regions and sectors) and the resources available in each map are fixed by design, so I had to focus on other features to make each map feel distinct. In particular I designed the temperature and the weather logic to make sure that each map provides a different experience.
Initially I have designed a rich and complex system for the temperature, but after discussing it with the team, I have decided to make it simpler and more straightforward without removing the key functionalities of the Heater and Cooler units. After some playtesting it emerged that the simpler system was the best one because the player has a lot of things to manage at the same time, therefore a more complex system would have required too much attention from the player.
I have designed different disasters for each map and I tuned them to feel dangerous, but not too punishing; the player will receive a meaningful penalty for ignoring a disaster, but they can always recover by taking some smart decisions.
Campaigns and objectives
I was in charge of creating around 50 campaigns and the related objectives, ranging from easy to hard.
To make each campaign feel distinct from the others, I took advantage of the various game features and parameters to create many “positive” (do-this) objectives and “negative” (prevent-this) objectives, I created multiple variants of each objective, and then I mixed them with the 5 maps to create the required campaigns.
I have used a spreadsheet to easily visualize all the information, avoid the creation of similar campaigns, keep track of the objectives values across different campaigns, and easily discuss about them with the rest of the team.
Tutorials
I have worked on most of the tutorials, paying particular attention to make them short, clear and interactive. By this way the player can learn gradually how to play the game without being overwhelmed by long texts or by the complex systems.
The tutorial popups are designed to appear only when they are needed to make sure that the player can learn new things at the right time, but in some situations they feel very intrusive because they will interrupt the player and they will force them to focus on something else.
A more “on-demand” approach would have been better, for example in most cases it would have been better to give a small prompt to the player about an available tutorial, instead of showing the popup immediately.
Trade system
I have designed the trade system to be easy to understand and fast to use, as one of the requirements was to keep it fully manual.
I have designed the logic of the dynamic prices to use a combination of ranged random values, by this way they feel realistic but they are also easy to implement and balance.
Players feedback
We did not have a dedicated playtest team inside the studio, so I took advantage of the Early Access period to check gameplay videos, reviews, and comments to collect feedback about the game.
I have used such feedback to identify the relevant problems and design solutions to such problems, and I discussed them with the rest of the team.
Console porting
After the release on Steam, I helped the team porting the game to PlayStation, Xbox, and Epic Games Store.
I cooperated with the programmers to design all the changes required for a smooth controller-based experience and to understand all the integrations for each store.
I assisted the team in creating the store pages, collecting feedback from the players, and setting up promotions to maximize the game visibility.