IVY ZHAO

ARTIST & DESIGNER



WANDERLOST.



RPG SURVIVAL SIMULATOR



Survive in a post-apocalyptic zombie world! Explore and build a shelter through gathering and crafting a variety of useful items.


Wanderlost is a 2D RPG survival simulator created by Eli Segal/Poppycock Studios and published by Crytivo - currently in Beta testing.


+ Role: Game Content Designer

+ Platform: PC

+ Engine: GameMaker Studio 2


STEAM PAGE >

RESPONSIBILITIES.



  • Designed items to populate and expand the crafting system and biomes
  • Presented solutions for design problems to improve gameplay experience while maintaining game balance
  • Constructed crafting recipes and wrote item descriptions
  • Integrated approved items/changes into Game Maker 2 Studio engine through scripting
  • Created and maintained documentation to catalogue item information (crafting recipes, stats, effects, etc.), enhanced workflow efficiency
  • Worked alongside Design Lead to ensure new content was within scope and incorporate user feedback




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DESIGN CHALLENGE #1 - Why have a base?



The first design challenge I was tasked to help solve was the issue with the current state of base-building. Building and maintaining a base using traps was intended to be a core gameplay loop, however, the incentive for players to do so was lacking. Instead of building a base, you could just scatter your items on the ground near your crafting stations.







Identifying the Problem
There was already incentive to build a base - players need to store all the stuff they've gathered and bag space was extremely limited. Players need to gather and craft a lot of items just to survive so the biggest reason to make a base would be for the storage and crafting stations. The main issue was how easily one could be built.


Crafting the lowest tier base items (fences, walls) were too inaccessible early on. The user experience for obtaining enough materials for a base was overwhelming.


  1. Crafting a basic fence had too many steps and was time consuming.
    1. You had to refine Logs > Heavy Sticks > Sticks but Heavy Sticks also did not stack in inventory. If you didn't have the space, you would have to pick them off the ground one by one.
  2. Low tier walls and flooring needed materials that required significant time and effort to farm.
    1. This made base-building low priority because the player is focused on surviving (finding food and crafting gear) and simply has very little spare time.





SOLUTION - Make early game crafting more accessible.

  1. Streamlining the crafting process by allowing players to break down materials easily.
    1. Allow players to break down 1 Log into 4 Sticks.
    2. Players are now able to make items faster, this saves time to focus on surviving.
  2. Increasing the initial number of walls/floors crafted while keeping the number of required materials the same.
    1. Making it easier to get the harder-to-obtain materials in bulk would require re-balancing all items that used those materials.
  3. Introducing a new lower tier base option (Thatch) that is easier to farm for.
    1. We wanted to avoid making Nails and Adhesive less significant so having a lower tier base material option that doesn't require them is ideal.






Additional proposals included increased spawn rates for animals when traps were laid down to encourage players to utilize them for passive food generation and mechanics to make returning to a base easier.


If you want to read additional proposals for this issue, here is the original pdf!



DESIGN CHALLENGE #2 -
Getting info across without additional UI elements



Another issue I was tasked to solve was the challenge of informing players about their stamina levels while avoiding the use of additional UI elements appearing in the game world (e.g. moving the stamina bar to under the character's feet).


The stamina bar placement was inconvenient as players would mostly focus their attention to the middle of the screen (where the character was).






SOLUTION - Sound and Visual Indicators

  1. Sound effects for low, empty, or regenerating stamina levels would alert the player without them needing to see the bar
  2. A bigger, more noticeable visual indicator like a screen-wide effect
    1. We limited the effect to just the outer borders of the screen to minimize screen obstructions and to prevent player frustration
  3. Slowing down player movement when out of stamina further enforced the "stop moving to regenerate stamina" mechanic but also allowed players to move if they really wanted to
    1. Making them stop moving once out of stamina was jarring and not natural - which led to increased player frustration




CONTENT DESIGN.



I was brought on to help expand the use of current existing items and designing new items/content to populate the crafting tree and game world.





Integrating & Expanding Existing Content

There were a lot of items that were already created but had only 1 or 2 uses. Making them more versatile included:

  1. Incorporating exiting items into recipes as an alternative
  2. Creating new crafting recipes that use existing items

An example is honey and beeswax. I designed items with a focus on realism since the game's inspiration came from bushcraft. Throwing Honey into the Distillery station will make Honeymead and can be eaten for buffs and also be crafted into things like Biofuel.





Designing a New Biome

The game was lacking in different biomes so I had to design some from scratch. Here was the process:

  1. Identify weather and climate conditions
  2. Biome Characteristics
    1. What would items here provide? (unique traits/stats, aesthetics)
    2. Landscape
  3. What unique resources would be found here?
    1. Animals, enemies, hazards
    2. Unique weapons, furniture, building blocks, crafting recipes




Below is an example of unique resources I designed for the desert biome. At first, cactus nodes would drop 4 different parts of a cactus when harvested, however, I decided to cut some of the items due to bloat and some of the parts only having a single use.





Some Content!




Gear Repairing

As an avid player of survival games, I am a big fan of being allowed to repair my gear and tools if they have durability. The loop of constantly having to gather the items to remake tools or having multiples of the same tools in my bag was frustrating.


My initial pitch was to have a crafting station that would refill the durability of your things. To keep the system simple, repairing a tool above 50% durability would cost about 50% of the materials required to craft. If the required materials cannot be divided by 2, then the repair costs would need to be adjusted. An even simpler solution would be to only require one type of material (the most important one in the recipe) to repair. Here is an example of crafting costs:






The final result for the repair feature is the Sewing Kit. Instead of repairing at a station, the player can craft a sewing kit and repair on the go.





Item repair feature in Wanderlost - Use a sewing kit to repair clothing durability. Gif by Eli.