Kyle Elam
Game Designer
ARPG
Associate Game Designer
Company:
Kooapps
Tenure:
Aug 2021 - Aug 2023
Tools:
Unity, C#, Git, Photoshop
Company:
Tenure:
Tools:
Overview
Early into my career, I was charged with leading the company's largest incubation project to date. As sole designer, I oversaw every system present in the game from loot drops to damage calculations. It was a unique opportunity that allowed me to collaborate with nearly every department here.
My Roles & Ownerships
• Item Systems - stats, modifiers, item drops
• Combat Loops - skills, enemies, behavior trees
• Dungeons - procedural generation, scaling content
• Oversaw tools development initiatives which increased production by 100%+ by allowing designers and artist to immediately import and iterate on system in game.
• Created JSON data ingestion schema with an exporter using spreadsheets so the game could ingest large arrays of data more efficiently saving 3+ weeks of engineering and reducing remote config size by half.
• Directed all character design in the game, both for players and enemies, personally collaborating with artists from concept phases to 3d implementation
​
Enemy Design
Enemy design is focused on having a smaller number of engagements but each being more impactful. Karawlers are the only enemy that appear in swarms like customary ARPG games. Guardians have very unique movement patterns and are the only ranged enemy. Golems, though slow overall, are quick to start and output large amounts of consistent damage
Skill System
Skills are focused on much slower paced combat. The goal is to provide players with agency and ensure they are being intentional with their actions. Skills are highly customizable. Skills are assigned based on the currently equipped weapons to create pseudo-classes. Skills are then expanded by adding and removing tags using currently equipped runes.
Itemization
An expansive character stats system is presented entirely through itemization. I balanced 100+ stats and modifiers since itemization is a of key design pillar I envisioned for the game. The modifiers containing stats are adaptively applied to weapons to change generation weighting based on pre-existing modifiers. Unique items have stat combinations which may not even be found elsewhere.
Combat
I headed combat design for the project. It is a thorough system focused on immersion with how the player blocks or is stunned. The damage calculation formula allows for multiple damage types such as cold or hysterium each with it's own status effect including new ones like charge!
Procedural Generation
All maps in the game minus cities are procedurally generated. There are multiple axis of randomness based on room types and each types various dimension. The main editor for dungeons creates graphs of an expected player path and uses the room selection algorithm to create a dungeon. There is a separate editor used to fill the tiles with props, spawners, and other attributes which helped to bridge collaboration between art and engineering for the first time.
Loot Drops
I designed entire loot drop system for the game and balanced the actual tables. Loot drops are weighted between 2 main groups from the creature and the region to encourage player heuristics when searching for items. The loot drops are heavily tied to the economy with lower rarity being focused on small currency but higher rarity focused on actual items to funnel players back into the market.
.png)
Auction House
I created an auction house system for players to asymetrically trade between one another. The auction house then funnels players into other retention systems such as subscriptions which increase number of listings. I created full UI/UX prototypes and balanced tax rates based on existing systems.