Tomb Rumble

2D MMO Battle Plateformer for explorers and adventurers


Timelapse – Design & construction

— PROJECT NAME

Tomb Rumble


— PLATFORMS

PC, Mac OSX, Linux (Steam)


The project


Tomb Rumble is an indie survival MMO 2D plateformer taking place in an Indiana Jones-inspired setting where explorers are competing in temples and ruins to retrieve lost treasures and escape alive.


Players evolves in fast-paced, 45s-long levels and have to reach the exit while collecting as much coins as they can and trying to get rid of the others.


Pushing others into the lava, activating traps or throwing items are plenty of ways for players to use to survive and get additional rewards.

— ROLE

Level Builder & Designer


— DATE

September 2020 – Current

Level Design


I was in charge of the game's main content production : designing, building, and balancing around 150 levels for the release of the game, ranging from short puzzle jumps to long physic-based arenas, as well as different game modes.


Due to the repetitive and unforgiving nature of the game, I defined 3 main focus to ensure a good playing environment for players.



1) Replayability


The basic gameplay loop is very simple : You hop on an expedition, 3 biomes of 5 maps where you collect as much coin and kill as much players as you can to be on the leaderboard. Rinse and repeat. Against that huge repetitive aspect, I set some rules.



- All maps should be unique. Levels are splits into categories based on their main gameplay style (jumping, fight…). Inside these, each level is made to be a different take on the style, both visually and LD wise, to keep the interest of a random map selection.



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- All playthroughs should be unique. Levels are designed with random elements (physics, items…) and places for players to disrupt each others (space for it and enticing setups) to ensure different outcome each time and keep.


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- Let players complete levels in different way. I kept in mind that players would find clever ways to break the levels' logic after coutnless playthrough. This was a major element of the company's main game, Transformice, which is very similar to this one. On that game, players over the years started making levels mostly based on gameplay abuse, bugs and glitches. While being quite interesting, it makes it overly complex and frustrating for new players, and knowing this playerbase was heavily focused for the new one, I took it into consideration.



I decided to go along with it and instead reward the most experienced/clever players to keep control of it. By expecting the techniques players would come up with, I was able to offer interesting levels with secret ways to be completed, using "unusual means" : using specific skills to take a short-cut or by standing still on specific spots.


This way, players are encouraged to be wild and think out of the box, but rules and limitation are still in place so it is still accessible.


2) Balancing


Because of the gameplay, the game is pretty unforgiving and can be daunting for new players. Considering that they are bound to repeat the same levels and learn them, but that the first impression is the most important, I gave a particular attention at the balance.


I wanted to ensure the game offer challenges in plenty of ways to accomodate for all kind of players, that it always offer room for error and opportunity to learn the mechanics on the go. That way, a new player could compete with an experimented one and not feel behind.



The main means used to do so :

- Monitoring each level regularly using their death ratel and playthrough recordings to adjust levels, globally or on specific spots. [During the early access]


- Planning long-term self-balancing methods:

– Offering "high-risk high-reward" options inside maps.

– Use dynamically adjusted traps and elements that adapt to the average level of players.

– Design a system that temporarily removes levels that are too easy/hard so they can be reworked.



3) Visual rules and Identity


The game takes place in an imaginary world, heavily inspired by Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider, and features hundreds of levels. Thus, it can feel overwhelming getting thrown into a new level every minute, and wanted to address that :



- Clarity and lisibiiity: The game having many levels flowing one after the other, as well as many players running and pushing around everywhere, I deemed it necessary to give a special attention to lisibility.



Levels are designed with :

– Extra space to allow fightings and dodge.

– Exits and key elements (traps, rewards, exits…) that are easily distinguishable (less assets, contrast…).

– Clear paths that doesn't let players questions whether its a way or not.



- 5 secondes rule : At the beginning of each map, players have few secondes where they can't move, to cover loading issues. Using that, I establish the following rule : Players must be able to understand what they have to do, where they have to go (and to not go) in these 5 secondes where people are not moving.



On top of that each biome has its main gameplay style. The world is divided into 4 biomes with each their own visual identity. To give them more weight apart from a different ambience, I also gave each of them a main gameplay idea : the Jungle biome would feature more jump-based levels due to its trees, the Volcano will be more punishing due to the lava pits..


The idea behind this was to handle variety in a rational manner and allow player to prepare their skills and tools according to the upcoming mechanics, rewarding them for paying attention.


OTHER ROLES :

Being in a very small team and being the closest to the game's content and editor, I was in charge of several other domain.


Map Editor Improvement


Tomb Rumble featuring a map editor for players to make their own level or player-house, I contributed to it by :


- Giving feedbacks on how to improve our tools for an easy use, by improving the ergonomy so it, making sure the most advanced stuff is easy to pick.


- Redacting tips, tutorials on how to use the editor, and guidelines for player level making. Similar to a Mario Maker, the game aims to give player content a big place. However, as the gameplay isn't quite as natural and known as the later, we wanted to give players that need them, the resources to exploit it.


Tutorial levels, using written explanation, showcases and “reproduce the example” style exercise

Artist Managing


I was in charge of listing the needs in assets of all sorts; scouting, ordering and managing multiple freelance artist. Knowing the game and using its assets daily, I was able to express precise needs and ensure the comformity of the received assets.


This includes in-game assets, soundtracks, UI elements, character cosmetics.