Development Background
Game Summary: Urban gangster 4X with updated features.
User Story: Collect a band of Bosses and command your crew to fight other crews for control over Supreme City.
Product Challenge 1: Though another 4X title, SCR debuted with many unique out-of-the-box features, so our team had to find new ways to onramp the userbase to these new features and optimize the player funnel accordingly. During our limited release, I focused away from the typical 4X tutorial (tap building, build, speedup, repeat) to test or new, map-centric features, AB-testing flows that brought users to the world map and into an alliance earlier, so they could participate in turf warfare, and the other new social features the game had to offer. We found the users who managed to go through a full cycle of turf-related actions to the point of expanding their turf, had a much higher retention rate, not just in the game but with their alliance as well, which in turn promoted higher overall retention and engagement across all alliance members (active members attracted active members).
Product Challenge 2: Part of the emphasis on world map vs player city was also to get players to adopt Bosses (not buildings or research), as the primary sink in the game. I looked at games like Rise of Kingdoms, which had a very prominent Hero focus, for ideas on shifting this emphasis and adding supporting features.
Feature - Bosses
Summary:
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Bosses are the equivalent of 4x “Heroes” but act as actual troops in the deployment, complete with all stats a troop would have.
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Each boss can gain levels, increasing their stats and unlocking skills from a custom skill tree.
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Bosses are ranked by rarity from B > A > S > SS. Higher ranks = better base stats/skills and higher level cap.
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Bosses also fall under a “type” which designates the troop types they tend to pair well with.
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Unlike previous 4x Heroes, players can deploy Bosses in every attack and multiple bosses per deployment with stacking effects, so collection is key.
The focus of SC:R are the Bosses, even the traditional 4x “City” is replaced with a Boss on the world map, lending to the narrative that the entire map is a sprawling city, and the player’s gang of bosses owns turf and develops specific properties within the metropolis. I had the team research various gacha games for the subsystems and features that would make up our Bosses and worked closely with our art team to ensure the various Boss designs fell into a strict visual hierarchy so we could connote things like rarity, type, etc.
Feature - Gacha
Bosses are gained by pulling from gacha using Gold (Premium) or Silver (Free) tickets.
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Gold - Chance to pull SS Tier
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Silver - Chance to pull S Tier
In addition to Bosses, players could pull:
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Boss shards - used to unlock bosses and increase their level
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Resources
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Gear Materials
The first MZ 4X title to add a hero gacha, the release included 20+ bosses of varying rarities, with a content pipeline of 1+ new bosses every month.
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Feature - Crew turf
Summary:
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Players join together to form a Crew.
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Each Crew starts with an HQ granting its initial area of turf on the world map
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As Crews grow, they can place beacons to expand their turf.
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Crew turf cannot overlap existing enemy Crew turf.
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Overall turf area unlocks certain benefits for the Crew and is essential to its growth.
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Crew members inside their turf gain buffs, while enemy crews are debuffed.
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Certain objects on the world map can also only be accessed once inside crew turf.
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Player can attack and destroy opposing Crew beacons to remove the turf granted by it.
Shifting one of the core pillars of attacking bases directly to waring over turf beacons worked well for reducing player churn due to being attacked directly, while also encouraging more players to engage in active combat (sending deployments vs being attacked). I directed our team to extensively overhaul our map UX to make finding objects on the map and sending deployments more streamlined.
Feature - boss slots
Summary:
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In addition to sending Bosses on deployments, players can apply them to various actions inside their city.
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Construction
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Research
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Training
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Resource Production
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When performing one of the above actions, a Boss will be preselected with a preview of they benefit’s effect on the action (such as reducing a construction timer), but other Bosses may be swapped for different effects.
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A Boss’ boosts granted from their skill tree will be applied to any action they are applied to.
Feature - Crew Research
Summary:
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After joining a Crew, members gain access to a unique research tree that grants benefits to the entire Crew.
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The Crew Research Tree promotes having both a large, active Crew and spenders to optimize Crew growth.
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Members donate resources toward a specific research node. Multiple donations are required to complete each node.
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Players are limited in the number of resource donations they can make daily, but can make premium currency donations once they have reached their resource donation limit.
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Crew Research includes key unlocks such as Turf Beacon Limit Increases, Member Limit Increases, and Combat Buffs.
Through iteration on the benefits, donation flow, and progression pacing, Crew Research eventually became a key metric in a player’s engagement.
Full body of work
Pre-Production
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Design Pillars
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Game Design Document
Production
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Feature Specs
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City View
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Main HUD layout
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Construction / Speedups
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Research Trees
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Bosses
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Boss Slots
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Boss Equipment
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Gacha
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Crews
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Crew Turf
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Crew Research
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Multi-Boss Deployments
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Content
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Buildings
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Bosses
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Skill Trees
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Research Trees
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Gear
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Design Manager (5 Designers)
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Production Roadmap
Alpha Release
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Feature Specs
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Tutorials and Narratives
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Sales Page
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VIP
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Daily Login Bonus
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Events
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Content
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Narratives
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Sales
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Events
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Design Manager (5 Designers)
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Alpha Roadmap
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Full Game Economy
Limited Release
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Iteration on user flow based on live data and user feedback
