Level Design & Balancing

Immunity Wars

This week I was tasked with improving existing levels and also creating the final boss level.

I improved the E. Coli level (the first level) by shrinking it to reduce travel times and also cutting off a section of the level that didn't add anything. This made the level play faster and be less overwhelming to new players.

I improved the HIV Level (2nd to last level and the boss for the virus campaign) to make it a good bit harder. I did this by slightly shrinking it so the player would have fewer places to run. I also adjusted the lymph nodes to make it a trade-off between the number of reinforcements and the time to get said reinforcements to add to the number of obvious strategies. And I also added a additional wave of enemies to push any tactic the player came up with to its limits. I may have overcompensated for the difficulty, as one of the people who playtested the level wasn't able to beat it after 4 or 5 tries which was too many, so I'll likely make it easier by reducing the movement speed and maybe the health of the enemy.

I created the cancer level to be both challenging while also being mechanically and thematically unique as it would be the final level in the game. The cancers will self-replicate and after a certain number of turns may upgrade themselves into a stronger unit up to 4 times. The first stage is utterly harmless and is by far the weakest unit in the game; however, a very large number of them spawn at the start and they can quickly replicate themselves. Stage 2 is still fairly weak; however, it gains the ability to attack player cells and has more health. Stage 3 will actively fight the player and will start spawning cancerous masses that will damage player units on the same hex. Stage 4 is the final stage and loses the ability to replicate however it is extremely fast and can hit multiple player units at once while also creating huge amounts of cancerous masses. The level is meant to test the player's ability to come up with a strategy to contain the cancer by observing how it spreads and evolves while also utilizing all of the units in the game, and it was largely successful at it judging by the current playtests we have of the level. It may be slightly too easy but that can be adjusted by adding a few more starting cancers and adding more space for the cancer to grow into.

There are three game arcs that I was trying to enhance and they were as follows:

• The player fights their way through and clears out the cancers' starting area while the cancer grows into the area above and evolves. Then depending on the speed at which the starting area was cleared and the number of t-cells they were able to obtain & keep they will be able to push upwards and win the game, however, if they are too slow or don't have enough t-cells the cancer will win in a battle of attrition as it will evolve to stage 4 and wipe the floor if more than the number of complements the player saves are able to spawn.

• The player makes a spearhead push and brings all their units to the top of the map where there are huge lymph nodes and tons of B-cells. They then have an extremely formidable force, but it takes time and the cancer is able to spread into the player's starting area and will evolve a lot there. This will be a battle of giants as hoards of enraged macrophages and killer T-cells go toe to toe with stage 4s (and likely loss).

• The player employs a mix of the two strategies sending part of their force up to the top to get the t-cells, while the other holds the line and clears the cancer's starting area while preventing the cancer from spreading into the starting area. Then the two forces will sandwich the tumor and win but only if both fronts can survive the onslaught. This is likely the optimal strategy.

I also did a bit of UI/UX work this week by creating the credits, improving the options menu, and improving the auto-select ability function.