BAROQUE DECAY INTERNSHIP
OVERVIEW
- RPG Battle System
- Turn-Based
- Match-3
- Internship Time: 2 Months (Master 1 Internship)
- Game Engine: In-house Game Engine + Godot
- Studio Size: 7 Members
A match-3 RPG battle system designed and prototyped during my Master 1 internship at Baroque Decay Studio as a technical designer and system designer.
IT IS RECOMMENDED TO DOWNLOAD MY CV IN PDF FORMAT
WHAT WERE MY MISSIONS AS AN INTERN?
Testing & feedback
I playtested the studio’s current project Catechesis (in development), and gave feedback regarding game mechanics and systems, UX and UI as well as narrative design.
System designer
Baroque Decay developed their own in-house engine with which they shipped all their games. Maxime, my internship supervisor, is the studio’s lead programmer who entirely programmed this engine. He asked me to design a combat system inspired by turn-based RPG in order to add functionality to their engine.
Benchmarking
I began by benchmarking many turn-based RPG systems. Fortunately, this is a genre I know very well, so I was able to quickly draw up a list of interesting systems to draw inspiration from. My goal was to draw inspiration from the classic turn-based RPG genre, while understanding how to make this system more dynamic and modern.
Turn order manipulation mechanics
What I’ve come to understand from benchmarking these systems is that an interesting way to make a turn-based RPG system more dynamic is to allow the player to manipulate the turn order of the enemies and his party. I decided to design a system with this feature in mind: a turn order manipulation system.
Designing with the constraints of an in-house engine
The combat system I had to design had to meet a set of specifications and respect a certain number of constraints so that it could be integrated by the team into the studio’s in-house game engine. Far from being a source of frustration, these constraints proved useful in channelling my ideas and giving me a sense of direction.
Designing with the studio's audience in mind
One of the most interesting aspects of working for Baroque Decay was taking their target audience into account in the design of my system. The studio has released several successful games, and their audience is made up of fans who are very attached to their universe. They appreciate the systems, but are above all a casual audience. I therefore avoided designing a system that was too complex to meet their expectations.
Prototyping & programming
The main part of my job was to prototype the system. I produced a fifteen-minute playable prototype. The whole team tested the prototype and gave me very encouraging feedback. Overall, it was a great experience!
SYSTEM FEATURES
The combat system I’ve imagined includes a number of key features:
- Player’s skills have mana costs, and there are different types of mana.
- To collect mana, the player need to make match-3s on the grid.
- They can collect more mana by making bigger matches.
- Enemies have weaknesses, represented by a series of mana types.
- If the player hit an enemy with all the mana types of his weaknesses, they knock him out and he skips his next attack turn. In addition, any additional attack will deal x1.5 damage.
- The player can make a limited number of moves on the grid before it’s the enemy’s turn to attack.
PLAYTHROUGH OF THE PROTOTYPE
Here’s a full playthrough of the prototype I designed and coded for Baroque Decay, under the supervision of Maxime, their lead programmer. Thank you for this opportunity!