STAR WARS : Awakening of the Rebellion

Hero Rescue Mission System

The Hero Rescue System is a brand new feature I designed to replace the original game’s hero respawn system. It aims to solve the original game’s problem of heroes respawning on a timer when dead, causing the players to throw them into the fray with reckless abandon. Major story characters have been given an alternate respawn system. As soon as your hero has been killed in either the galactic map or during combat, you will now receive a mission that informs you that your hero has been captured by the enemy.

What I did:

• Crafted the basic outline in a Game Design Document: dialogs, target logic, and a hero list.

• Scripted a “semi-random” location to be chosen based on the enemy you just fought.

• Repurpose the standard story system the game uses to dynamically track hero deaths, generate planet targets, and track when those were liberated to bring the hero back. 

• Wrote out flavor dialog text to task the player in-universe to rescue a hero

• Data drove the target location and hero to be rescued into the dialog system.

You can watch a hero rescue attempt in the video. It will show the general player beats of:

• losing a hero

• getting a mission to rescue them

• executing the rescue

• gaining the hero back

Random Mission System

There’s no secret that random loot is one of the strongest mechanics that drives engagement and increases a game’s replayability. When I thought about what would be the best way to integrate that into AotR, it really was pretty simple. We already had a predetermined story mission system that didn’t change much between playthroughs. I realized that if we could have simple missions that can be reusable and offered different rewards each time, we could come up with a pretty good reason to come back and replay our campaigns. 

What I Did:

• Created a Game Design Document to house all relevant information about Random Missions

• Designed a total of 20+ missions, some missions are shared between factions, while others are specific to a faction.

• Designed the logic and scripts that choose from a list of available missions. Player info that influences this logic is difficulty, amount of currently active missions, and how long since a previous mission was given.

• Designed and scripted the logic to determine a chosen mission’s appropriate targets, a final weighted reward type, and the time limit for completing the mission. Player info that influences this logic includes difficulty, previous success in missions, and the unit’s power.

• Scripted 20+ mission logic for completion and failure.

• Wrote out flavor dialog text to task the player with objectives.

You can check out the “Governor Control” mission being played through. It will show the main player beats of:

• Receiving the mission

• Completing the Mission Successfully

• Failing the mission by letting time run out (the failure for this specific mission being that a building is destroyed)

Secrets of the Jaguar

With Secrets of the Jaguar the production team was missing a compelling feature for their next volatile gambler slot game. I took it upon myself to craft a feature for it that would make it stand out from the other games on the market at the time. What spawned from that creative process was the “Symbol Chain” feature.