During my first year at Palindrome, I worked as a junior game designer but a defacto game director on an unannounced turn-based 4X grand strategy game.
My Responisibilties:
- Game Direction: taking the existing vision from CD into a playable experience in a small team
- Game Design: using the direction to create a immersive experience, designing a fast paced autobattling combat to focus on the “grand strategy” aspect
- World/Lore writing: Setting up a fantasy world, writing lore, researching historical counterparts
- System Design: Designing a economy and world on grand strategy 4x scale
Based on an original IP, this game would’ve taken place in an alternate historical setting, letting players exploit heroes, folklore, and monsters.
As the sole game designer, it became my task to drive the project creatively and create a world in which the game would exist. I would handle planning together with the producer and communicate with our technical engineers and artists. Implementing a scrum-lite approach to each sprint, communication, and direction proceeded smoothly, and the vertical slice of the game had many hours of gameplay in the end.
The final product was to be placed in a somewhat unexplored area of 4X/grand strategy games, drawing inspiration from Total War, Paradox games, and games like Heroes of Might and Magic.
It tried to combine a deeper, more narrative-based overworld without too complicated mechanics with a quick yet deep “auto battler.” This would place it in a unique position on the market, as it would be new player-friendly yet deep enough for genre veterans—a “Casual Grand Strategy” game.
If you want to know more, contact me, and I can send further examples of documentation!
Pics of the world designed by me and concepts for the final game experience
-- Filip Andersson -- Game Director -- 