Role: Design Intern
Release Date: 20 Jul 2012 (open beta)
Developer: Stomp Games (Tencent Boston)
Publisher: Stomp Games (Tencent Boston)
Platform: Facebook
During the summer of 2012, I had the privilege of serving as a design intern with gaming giant Tencent at their Boston branch. As part of the design team at Tencent Boston (later renamed Stomp Games) I crafted the player experience by populating over 500 levels for Facebook dungeon crawler, Robot Rising. I worked as part of a two person team to populate the game world with enemies, pickups, set dresses, traps and loot. Seemingly a simple task, I found that it takes quite a bit of skill to design these encounters. Every aspect of a level must be designed around the player experience and no two players are alike. The player must be given interesting encounters that elicit meaningful choices. To learn more about how I populated each level watch the video below. In it I describe the choices I made while populating a level and how each of them affected the player experience. Unfortunately, soon after I left Tencent Boston, the studio was closed. Robot Rising has since been taken down from Facebook but you can see some of the screenshots and surviving community at http://www.facebook.com/RobotRising.
In a world where robots are tools of war, technology and power fuel generations of conflict. As one of a new species of self-aware Artificial Intelligence, your challenge is to find a way to survive, and even thrive, by gathering resources, building your base, and conquering the vast planetary complexes occupied by the ruthless New Bastion. Evolution or extinction, these are your only choices.
Fast-paced combat is at the heart of this sci-fi role playing experience. Hundreds of different levels hold countless powerful enemies. Unleash a merciless arsenal in non-stop, white-knuckle combat to defeat your mechanical foes, claiming for yourself their treasure and powerful gear. Expand your technology to build even more capable robots, delving ever deeper into the depths of this chaotic world.
