Iron Harvest
Game Designer
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Project info
Duration: 4+ years of development My participation: September 2019 - June 2022 Team size: 50+ people Engine: Unity Released on: PC & PS5 & XBOX Achievements: 🏆 Best German Game - Deutsche Entwicklerpreis 2020 🏆 Best Game Design - Deutsche Entwicklerpreis 2020 75 Metacritic score Over 1.5 million players |
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For almost 3 years I worked on Iron Harvest, an RTS set in Jakub Rozalski's 1920+ world. I joined the project one year before release and worked on 2 addons and in liveteam after release. I worked primarily on Balancing, System design & Metagame design.
In addition, I worked on the UI/UX for Iron Harvest on PlayStation and Xbox (click here).
In addition, I worked on the UI/UX for Iron Harvest on PlayStation and Xbox (click here).
My contribution
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Balancing
I worked on game balance for Iron Harvest, from the beta to the last patch. Player feedback and telemetry data were our tools to gain key insights into the state of the game at any given point. Understanding what core elements drive the fairness of the game, which changes could cause instability, and looking at balance from both a context and value perspective became the key ways we could work effectively within our constraints while ensuring fairness. |
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Economy Revamp
During the development of Iron harvest, I investigated the in-game economy. We noticed that many matches seemed to progress very equally until suddenly one player was doing much better than the other. I created an Excel sheet to transfer match data into workable values, which tracked resource income at all points throughout the match. We could then adjust the income values to simulate what kinds of numbers would have led to a different result. By doing this we gained deep insights into the weaknesses and strengths of our in-match economy. I overhauled resource point income and unit costs to address the issues we found. This stabilized the economy, which was a huge improvement. |
Graph showing how resource income differs between two players playing against each other.
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Autobattle
For Iron Harvest’s Worldmap mode, we designed an autobattle feature to allow players to skip fights from which the outcome is very likely. The system is made up of two components, the evaluation of win chance and the generation of the outcome. The AI and player are evaluated differently: the player has an inherent advantage. A key reason for this advantage is that "true" randomness can produce extremely frustrating experiences. The generation of the outcome is based on a complex formula that uses the input to produce a usable result (an overwhelming victory must mean there are few or no casualties for the player). We used a normal distribution for outcomes, to ensure very (un)lucky results happen infrequently. |
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Metagame Progression
A key issue with finding the right values for metagame progression is that the number of players interacting with that system in unique ways vastly outnumbers testing capabilities. I used Excel to create a simulation of how different player profiles would play through the game. A multiplayer-focused player plays differently than a campaign-focused player. The sheet could generate hundreds of playthroughs in seconds, allowing us to see how players with different interests would level up, acquire XP and gain rewards. |
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Porting Iron Harvest to PlayStation and Xbox
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Iron Harvest was always designed with mouse and keyboard as primary input, and controller usability was not a focus at first. I was responsible for making the game as playable with a controller as it was with mouse and keyboard. There were two key challenges: limited reference for controller playable RTS games and old design decisions made without incorporating controller usability. We studied the reference game carefully and adapted what worked, and did a lot of rapid iteration to find good solutions for our most difficult UI/UX problems.
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Cursor
One such challenge was the selection of units. Whenever big fights occurred, it would be nearly impossible to tell what unit you were about to select. Friendly and enemy units would overlap in ways that made selecting anything difficult. We tried multiple cursor modes, such as the magnetic cursor. That variant snaps to the “main entity” within a unit. We iterated many times on the strength of the magnet and how exactly it behaves. As is often the case with UX, to get the most straightforward player experience, the internal logic for a feature can become very complicated. Iterating quickly helped us to get to a great end result which uses a vast ruleset in order to provide the most intuitive player experience. |
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Difficulty
Throughout the frequent playtests concerns about difficulty consistently popped up, which is why I started looking into designing a systemic solution. Adjusting every map was not realistic, instead, we opted for modifier-based difficulty adjustments. These modifiers give the player an advantage by reducing the damage output and HP of enemy units. It affords the player leniency with regard to timing and positioning. This is key for playing Iron Harvest with a controller: more forgiving gameplay to avoid frustration altogether.
Throughout the frequent playtests concerns about difficulty consistently popped up, which is why I started looking into designing a systemic solution. Adjusting every map was not realistic, instead, we opted for modifier-based difficulty adjustments. These modifiers give the player an advantage by reducing the damage output and HP of enemy units. It affords the player leniency with regard to timing and positioning. This is key for playing Iron Harvest with a controller: more forgiving gameplay to avoid frustration altogether.
