Golf of Fury

Duration: 2 years

Role: Associate Game Designer (Generalist)

Additional Responsibilities: QA and Project Management

Platform: Android & iOS

Engine: Unity

Team Size: 30+ (CA, Boston, China, Philippines, London)

Language: C#

Overview

Golf of Fury is an online synchronous PvP golf game with spectating and betting mechanics. Players challenge each other 1vs1 across 9 holes, trying to finish with the least amount of strokes. Players from around the world can join at anytime to spectate, support, and place wagers on their favorite players.

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The project had 4 game designers in total: the design director, systems designer, level designer, and me. I served as a design generalist who worked closely with the design director to concept high level ideas and then execute final designs with engineering. Because a number of our engineers were based in China, it was incredibly important for me to write detailed specs with large amount of illustrations. Sometimes, it was even necessary to supplement with design videos that provided further clarity for complex features. My biggest design contributions revolved around moment to moment gameplay and tuning systems that helped elevate the game’s overall fun factor.

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Level Design

I worked closely with our level designer, giving feedback and suggesting tweaks to the 50+ golf holes he designed. Our process usually worked as follows:

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1. He would sketch up roughly 20 different golf holes that featured the golf course’s unique level mechanic (sticky surfaces, moving platforms, gravity lifts).

2. We would get together and I would pick out my favorite holes. We would deliberate over the good and bad elements. With each review we were getting more aligned with our philosophy on how to design fun holes.

3. He would build out the best holes in Unity and then it was time to playtest. We spent at least a week iterating a golf course. During this time, we would fine tune the challenge, fun, level pacing, fix up bugs or exploits, and make sure our golf power-ups had opportunities to shine.

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We worked really well together and it showed as each subsequent golf course became better than the last as our criteria for fun and engaging level design became more clearly defined.

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AI System

One of the challenges we faced during development was the low amount of concurrent users, making it difficult to discern how well our game would perform with an optimal player base. As a result, I worked closely with engineering to develop an AI system that reasonably mimicked real player behavior. Using my engineering background, I was able to define the type of features we needed in a way that was both understandable and feasible for our engineering team. We came up with a node system, where the AI would select nodes to hit towards depending on their current location.

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To create believable behavior I asked for parameters like customizable shot strength, weighted node selection, and varied time between hits. NPCs were given a difficulty rating which influenced how likely they were to successfully complete the most efficient shots. If they were behind on their target stroke, there were catch-up mechanics to select more efficient nodes. After it’s completion, we no longer needed to worry about infinite queuing. Our game was always playable, giving the company increased flexibility on when to pour money into user acquisition.

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Project Management and QA

As the team grew in size so did the scope of the game. It became a disappointing trend to miss key features on our milestone deliverables. Furthermore, every PM we hired seemed to get away from us one way or another. As the project matured, it received more eyes around the company. I took the opportunity to fill in the gaps a PM should have.

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I implemented Agile Scrum into our workflow, using Asana as a way to execute it since our team members were scattered across the globe (China, Philippines, Boston, SF). Judicious sprint planning was key to our success as critical features were prioritized and lesser features strategically backlogged or scrapped all together. There was significantly less back and forth between design and engineering as well, since tasks were clear and design specs themselves lived within Asana to be easily accessed. As a result, we mitigated feature creep and delivered all the critical features we promised at every milestone.

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Additionally, when the game added online multiplayer with running servers, daily stability became an important priority. With teams working in different time zones, an unstable build could mean large delays, since engineers weren’t available in the SF office in case designers found bugs.

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Drawing on my technical knowledge, I held meetings every week with the QA team in the Philippines and helped prep them for incoming new features. I provided documents and videos, detailing how new features functioned while also recommending test cases. Over time, I would deliver daily updates on new features to test and the QA team would provide end of day reports on any bugs they found, so the Boston team could get it fixed before designers in SF got to work. This workflow greatly improved team productivity and meant the game’s latest version was available to share with key parties.

Highlights:

• Designed and balanced 15+ golf power-ups and 50+ golf clubs

• Supported the level designer in 50+ golf level designs by providing actionable feedback that improved fun, challenge, and level mechanics.

• Worked closely with engineering to design an AI system that mimicked real players and a wind system for added replay value.

• Implemented Agile Scrum methodology into the team workflow, resulting in 100% completion of all critical features planned for each milestone.

• Wrote up daily reports and held evening meetings with the QA Manager and his team in the Philippines, resulting in alignment on critical test cases and daily product stability.

Gallery

Screenshots throughout various times in the game's development. Golf of Fury was feature rich and challenged me with a large variety of design work.