Role: Game Designer (Systems & Content)

 

Enlisted entered open-beta on all major platforms in March 2021. I worked on this project from April 2019 till July 2020, largely contributing to the content and systems of the game. I also participated in the live-support of Enlisted when we showcased it to players as part of two big public playtests in April and May 2020.

I played a major role in tuning Enlisted gunplay, which I did through defining a list of new weapons to  be added and fine-tuning all of them in-game, adjusting:
- vertical and horizontal recoil
- rate of fire
- damage and its reduction in relation to the distance flown by bullet
- reload time
- used ammunition and its default amount per weapon
- available modifications (sniper scopes, bayonets, grenade throwers)

The biggest challenge here was to ensure that there will be no two weapons that feel the same and players will have strong sense of progression while unlocking new content, which was a difficult task as by May 2020 we had over 70 weapons in the game and one of our major design goals was realism, so we couldn't just set arbitrary values for them. This task involved a lot of internal playtesting and research of real WW II weapons and their inner workings. I worked closely with artists and animators to ensure realistic feel of weapons in Enlisted, guiding and providing them with feedback during their work on the new weapons.

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On Enlisted I was also responsible for design and tuning of:
- New playable characters: unique soldier classes that composed various squads, offering different gameplay to players. Part of this task was ensuring that new squads added to the game are based on real WW II regiments, retaining their original names, uniforms and background information

- New game mechanics: ability to call artillery strike by using a portable radio station, utilizing mobile mortars to shoot explosive projectiles at high distances and new grenade types like molotov cocktails. I came up with initial concepts of such gameplay features and then worked closely with gameplay programmers and animators on implementation, after which iterative balancing followed.

- Progression systems: various unlockable soldier perks (higher jump height, less vertical recoil, faster crouch movement, etc.), unique squad upgrades that differed from squad to squad (new weapons and soldier classes that could be unlocked by levelling the squad), meta-progression through which players unlocked new squads and in-game shop where players could buy new weapons and soldiers. All these different systems had to synergize well in order to incentivize players to strive for more content and actively engage with the meta-progression.

After the first public playtest of Enlisted in April 2020 I made a short showreel visualizing my contributions to the game based on players' impressions that they put on youtube, which clearly indicated that they were having fun with content and systems for which I was responsible for: 

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I implemented new content and tuned systems by utilizing two Gaijin in-house scripting languages: Quirrel and daScript.

Eventually I decided to leave the project to join Grimlore Games to start Journey Mode development as it offered unprecedented level of creative freedom and I wanted to try working on a hardcore role-playing game.

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