World Boss Insights: Game Design
Partnering with LazarBeam and Fresh to create World Boss, a lot of thought has gone into the type of game we wanted World Boss to become. We wanted to create something new, something… fresh.
To give you some insight into the game design for World Boss, we spoke with our Senior Game Designer, Sam Jensen:
[h3]OK, how would you describe World Boss?[/h3]
World Boss is a multiplayer FPS with a singular focus on jumping in and having fun. We want you to join us on the ride!
[h3]LazarBeam and Fresh are two creators who a lot of people will know and love from their Battle Royale content – how does World Boss fit into what they already play?[/h3]
We never intended World Boss to compete directly with established Battle Royales, mostly because they already do such a good job in their genre.
World Boss is trying to be something new and different – an accessible FPS that takes the best part of the genre and cuts out the boring bits. Our goal was to draw upon a whole bunch of inspirations, including some of the big games out there, to create a game experience that sits outside those.
We partnered with LazarBeam and Fresh not simply because they’re huge content creators – though that obviously doesn’t hurt – but also because they help us bring current and relevant concepts from shooters. They have an excellent concept for what makes a game “fun” and “feel good”. They’ve been instrumental in shaping it into something that is its own thing entirely, not merely a replacement for something that’s already out there.
Not to mention, we of course want to present something to LazarBeam and Fresh’s audiences with something that they are at least on the surface familiar with, and discover and enjoy the differences World Boss offers when they jump in a server and start blasting away.
[h3]So World Boss is a style of game that’s not your ‘usual’ FPS. What made the team want to buck the trend of Battle Royale-esque or typical FPS games?[/h3]
In our quest to make something both new and familiar, we started with a few points of reference. We wanted to make a multiplayer FPS with high quality gunplay that empowered the player to experiment with new and crazy builds, all while making it simple to jump in and frag out.
From that point, we looked at inspirations from a range of genres.
As a smallish team as part of PlaySide, we were empowered to prototype a range of experiences that brought something new to the table. We ended up looking to never-ending, browser-based .io games for our base “Quickplay” experience as a way of fostering that emergent, always-on experience World Boss is known for.
Being an Early Access game, the design is still ongoing, and the game is ever-evolving, so we’d encourage you to jump over to our Discord to let us know what changes and improvements you’d like to see.
[h3]There’s no moment of actually ‘winning’ that most FPS games have. What makes World Boss a satisfying game to play?[/h3]
World Boss’ base Quickplay mode is unending, which is core to our drop-in/drop-out philosophy.
One of the most important design pillars, in particular for LazarBeam, was to allow the player to feel like they grow in power as they defeat other players. The perk system we designed provides players with the ability to have a new experience every time they play, due to the sheer number of choices available to them, and a chance-based system. This means it’s not just a matter of taking the same perks every single time to get the same old build every single time: players have to decide on the fly from options that are thrown at them in the thick of battle to try and create a build that best suits their playstyle, and the action going on around them. As they do, they’ll become more and more powerful until they can become the World Boss and dominate the server… for a little while!
Next time they play, they'll have a fresh new set of options laid out for them to create and experiment with whole new builds and combos.
But part of what makes World Boss satisfying is its very low barrier to entry, and the ease with which someone can just join in, start blasting away and having fun right from the outset.
You can join for as long as you want without interruption or having to create or wait for new lobbies/games/sessions - World Boss will always be going whenever you want it!
[h3]Tell us about the process of designing World Boss to be what it is today.[/h3]
The process of designing World Boss has been one of intense collaboration from everyone involved. This started with the wonderful input of our partners LazarBeam and Fresh, continuing through everyone on the dev team, and even including a bunch of input and design from the freakin’ CEO! We’re trying to build an entirely new kind of game here, and to do something like that you need as many viewpoints as you can possibly get to genuinely create something new, rather than just a rehash of something that’s already out there.
Internally, we include everyone who wants to throw in their thoughts on any aspect of the design. We take a huge amount of time going through all of the feedback we get from the players as we plan our future mechanics, features, narrative, art, and everything else that goes into this game.
With the team being FPS players themselves, we love playing World Boss. Play testing is a key aspect to our development process. The intense play sessions we get into not just with us devs, but also with LazarBeam and Fresh are where many of our best ideas come from – just ask LazarBeam which dev he hates playing against most!
Beyond that, like most games it’s simply a process of iteration: we design, implement, test and repeat as we determine what works for World Boss and what doesn’t. The great thing about releasing into Early Access is that we get to include players from even this very early stage of development of our game, and use their feedback, feelings, and just general knowledge of games and their mechanics to help inform and validate our decisions as we go along.
Right now is just the beginning!
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If you enjoyed reading about the development of World Boss, let us know what you’d love to hear about next!
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