Avangard
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Date: August 2019 - September 2021
Platforms: Mobile
Role: Game Designer and Producer
Genre: Idle Gacha RPG
Avangard was a mobile gacha idle RPG conceptualized as a lighthearted and comedic easy to play game in the vein of AFK Arena and Mobile Legends Adventure. When I had joined the studio, this game had only been greenlit, and I was tasked from the very beginning to help with conceptualization, ideation, and market research.
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As the only designer on the team at the start, I was tasked with creating the combat system, the economy and progression system, the monetization, and narrative content.
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Sample UX document with wireframes.
I had to craft narrative dialogue to be comedic in nature and be simple and easy to read.
For economy design I leveraged monte carlo simulations to simulate how players would progress through the game’s content that involved randomized gacha rewards alongside predictable predetermined rewards.
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Avangard was an economy-heavy and feature-heavy game. It included many interlocking systems, most of which had varying degrees of randomness baked into them. To start off the design, the game’s economy using sources and sinks were mapped out. Some such as the daily market were semi-predictable, while others such as the gacha system were more random. I designed all of the interconnected economic systems and used live data analytics and A/B testing to further refine and fine-tune them for user and KPI optimization. I used statistical tests to validate A/B testing outcomes.
Here's a sample design document from the development.
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After the prior team lead and producer left the studio, I was promoted as the most suitable candidate by the CEO to lead the team and also take on the role of producer. As producer I helped improve team morale and productivity, having raised sprint completion rates by approximately 40%. I achieved this through a combination of better work breakdown, addition of buffers, and a reversal of declining team morale.
As the lead I also was involved in onboarding and mentoring new game designers to join the team.
Example of a Statistical Test I had done
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The level editor
Being an idle RPG, progression through the main PvE mode had to be designed to be roughly gated by time, while accounting for differences in player luck when it came to which heroes they would obtain in the gacha mode. To achieve this, I had to create a numeric power rating for units and then create a power curve to map the game’s levels onto. This allowed for remarkably accurate balancing despite qualitative differences in characters and hidden synergies not taken into account by the rating, well before even playing a level. As part of the level editor that I helped design with the programmers, this power rating was shown to the designers in real time while they designed levels.
A trailer for the game