— PROJECT NAME
Dota Underlords
— ROLE
Puzzle Designer
— Publisher
Valve
I designed all of the puzzles in Dota Underlords. These puzzles were single-player content that provided a change of pace in the PVP-focused autobattler game.
My designs were based on the idea of exploring interesting mechanical interactions between units and abilities, and then providing players multiple avenues to optimize and refine their solutions to the puzzle.
While Underlords is primarily a PVP-focused game, puzzles give players a single-player challenge: to defeat a difficult enemy set-up, using a limited budget of gold, items, and unit options.
There are many ways to solve any given puzzle. A graph displays how your solution stacks up against the global distribution, and against your friends' solutions, pushing players to optimize and refine their solutions.
In this puzzle, you face up against two angry Wildwings, protected by a bunch of Target Buddies, who do not attack, but taunt nearby enemies. The Wildwings also have a strong evasion ability to dodge some direct attacks.
Players can form their teams from any of the Warrior, Warlock, or Assassin units. Each presents a unique way to approach the challenge of the puzzle.
Warriors have lots of stun effects, which prevent the Wildwings from using their evasion. Warlocks have area-of-effect attacks, which make the Target Buddies less of an issue. Assassins can jump to the backline, and ignore many of the Target Buddies up front.
Puzzles are featured in the single-player “City Crawl” campaign, and in the series of weekly “Early Bird” updates.
Each one contains a unique set up that challenges player’s knowledge of game mechanics, and allows multiple approaches to optimize solutions.
Identify unique/interesting game mechanics or interactions Keeper of the Light has a channeled ability, but if the channel is interrupted, the damage is dramatically decreased.
Find a clever counter to the mechanic identified in step 1
Witch Doctor's ability stuns multiple enemies, allowing him to potentially interupt all of the Keepers. While this may not be the strictly optimial solution based on final tuning of the puzzle, it is the conceptual "solve" that drives the puzzle's design
Showcase this unit or mechanic in a board setup
His ability fires in a straight line, so placing four copies of Keeper of the Light on opposite corners introduces interesting positional considerations.
Give players opportunities for smart play, with alternate approaches
Magic Resist from Scaled units provide another route to victory in this puzzle.
Tuning the solution
Open up the puzzle for testing by other team members. Set the requirements to be significantly higher than the average of our tests, to allow for the opportunities for smart or clever solutions from step 4.
Track players' solutions against a global distribution
Players can see how their solutions stack up in Net Worth, Duration, and Unit Count against the global distribution, as well as against their friends list.
