Unsung Story - Developer Blog #1

The first developer blog for Unsung Story is about the level design process.

Our Game Plan

We’re still dong some pre-production, which means the team is engaging in a whole lot of planning and documentation that will let us work more quickly and efficiently as we move forward. This can be a little bit frustrating for both fans and developers, as neither of us get to see the game come together as soon as we’d like, but it always makes for a better game in the long run.

Quite some time has been spent on working out the ideal size that our levels should be. Successful turn-based tactics games tend to keep their maps on the small side, as bigger levels often have a lot of unused space. In early testing we also found this to be the case, and have been slowly reducing our level size until it feels right. Of course, making the maps too small can be just as detrimental. It’s a tricky balance!

The grid system has been a fun challenge to work with and we’ve had to take a notably different approach to designing levels on a triangle grid (as opposed to a square grid). Right-angles, for example, do not flow naturally on the grid system that we're using, but they're such a common aspect of human architecture and we have to allow for them. This requires us to think outside the box (pun intended) in regards to how we design our levels.