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Hall of Court

HallofCourtMap.png

When me and my friends were younger we used to play a game called Dungeon Defenders, it is a third person action games that is combined with elements of tower defense where you have to defeat waves of enemies by using towers and defensive systems as well as your characters attacks. However, when we got to the 7th map, Hall of Court, we always struggled, going back to it now as a designer I can se why and have thought of some ways to make the level less frustrating for the player.

 

Let me first explain the game more so that everyone is on the same page. Dungeon Defenders is a game where the player gets to pick between 4 different heroes, DLC adds more, that each has their own attacks and types of towers that they can place. The game is about using these towers and the characters attacks to defeat hoards of monsters that are trying to get to a crystal that the player must defend. Each of the towers that the player can place has a cost and the player can get small diamonds in chests placed all around the level to use to buy them.

 

The map is in my opinion to tight, it fells as though you have barley any breathing space and especially when hoards of enemies are trying to make their way towards the diamonds that you are trying to protect. The close placement of the two diamonds you defend could also contribute to this feeling of tightness so that was something I wanted to explore when redesigning the levels.

 

The first version I made I tried to keep the proportions of the level the same but mostly just change the diamond position since they are both so close together. My thought process for this was that since, in the original, they are so close together which makes all the enemies will focus on going that way making it feel more closed. However, while making the sketch, I realized that since the game is a tower defense that might be something that makes it easier since there would be fewer places that the players needed to set up their defense.

 

Next I tried to make a version where all the map was the same but I stretch the map out horizontally so that there would be more space making the hoards become thinner and less compact. This would make it easier to deal with the bigger enemies without always having to worry about the small once immediately making it to the crystal once the player would start to focus their attacks. This is one of the versions that I think would work as a replacement and if I were to make this redesign in an engine I would start with this one.

 

The next two designs I made I wanted to try to make the level into more shapes to experiment and see if it could change the flow of the level to be less tight. The shapes I made were an L variant and a U variant, I also started making a Z variant but scraped it because the side parts didn’t fit in and I wanted to keep the level as close to the original design as possible while only changing what I thought didn’t work.

 

Making these versions I have realized that some of the obvious changes that I came up with while planning for this task wouldn’t have worked. However, I think that some of them would make for great redesigns to counter the lack of playing space while keeping the overall design including the choke points the same.

HallofCourt Redesign 1.png
HallofCourt Redesign 2.png
HallofCourt Redesign 3.png
HallofCourt Redesign 4.png
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