Back in March, I mentioned we were redesigning the Blighted Mire to better suit our game’s new design and mechanics. I’m proud to announce that we have come up with a new design that we have become quite happy with and will be implemented into the game soon.
Before I move onto the redesign, let’s take a look at the old map and discuss why we needed a change.
As you can see, the X’s are the player start locations which appear directly across from each other. As you approach the middle of the map, the bosses get stronger and you can eventually meet up with the opposing player. There are many reasons why this is bad but my biggest issue with it is its predictability. The map literally funnels you into the middle and there is no other way to go but left or right. The essential strategy is to take out all of your wondering monsters that are close to you and the Bog Slave. The only unpredictable factor is whether or not you will fight the Spawn of Fenris or ignore it since the enemy homunculus is next to you. The next issue is with Victory Points. The very nature of this map makes it so that players will have the same amount of victory points until the very end of the match when one homunculus dies. It only makes sense to claim as many victory points as you can before you meet the opposing player. There are other issues that the map has but I’m not going to go into that.
Now let’s look at the two map ideas we had. (I hope you can excuse the poor quality pictures!)
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Our level designer, Anthony Shine, created two maps in which we would paper prototype and decide which map was most fun. It didn’t take us long to choose map number two for one obvious reason. Map number one is extremely small and even though the Blighted Mire is meant to be small, it is simple to get the board very crowded. We didn’t even have to play a two vs two or three vs three to know that the board would get congested with minions and ambushes. Board number two is large enough to give players enough room to move and place units without feeling too crowded. Another issue with map one was the distance of the Spawn of Fenris. For one vs one matches, it doesn’t make much sense to go after the boss because of how far it is relative to the opposing player.If you can see the numbers near the top of number two, that is where players spawn in the beginning. This map gives players more options when it comes to victory points and overall, winning the match. Players are almost equidistant between the first boss and the opposing player.
This means aggressive players can go after the opposing homunculus right away or play defensively and build up units and dice by going after bosses. It is also easier for players to steal wandering monster victory points because of the distance between players.
I hope you like the redesign when it becomes available to all our alpha players! Remember to join our Facebook Alpha Community if you have or need a key!
Every Saturday night at 8:00pm CST we hold a play night with developers so if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask us!
