Game Design Deep Dive is an ongoing Gamasutra series with the goal of shedding light on specific design features or mechanics within a video game, in order to show how seemingly simple, fundamental design decisions aren't really that simple at all.

Check out earlier installments, including the action-based RPG battles in Undertale, using a real human skull for the audio of Inside, and the realistic chat system of Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n. 

Who: Peter Ilves, Game Director of Battlerite

I’m Peter Ilves, one of the co-founders of Stunlock Studios and the Game Director on Battlerite, as well as Stunlock's previous titles Dead Island: Epidemic (Epidemic) and Bloodline Champions (BLC).

I would best describe my role as a wild combination of a producer, game designer, and programmer.
I started my career by studying game design at the University of Skövde in Sweden back in 2006. I eventually made some friends at university and together we created a game as part of a development-course. This project eventually turned into Bloodline Champions (BLC) and me and 13 other students that developed the game founded Stunlock Studios.

What: Creating Battlerite from the core idea of Bloodline Champions

Battlerite is the spiritual successor to Bloodline Champions, a team arena brawler that is best described as a mashup between World of Warcraft Arena and a traditional fighting game.

As I’m writing this, Battlerite has been out for less than 3 weeks in Early Access and have already reached an audience of 250 000+ players.

At its core Battlerite shares a lot of the DNA of BLC. We determined that the lack of success of BLC was partly due to factors outside the game itself and partly due to the game not being approachable enough. These include: 

Stunlock Studio's Battlerite.

Why?

Bloodlines Champions was a passion project. A group of 14 students coming together to create the best possible arena game out there. Our ambitions were sky-high: a PvP Game with a dedicated server network and a focus on eSport long before the eSports scene exploded. With almost no budget, we started developing everything from our own graphics engine to our own network-solutions. Personal loans and people working with “real” jobs on the side funded the project.

Late in the process, we signed a publishing deal with Funcom that enabled us to eventually launch the game. BLC is an extremely hardcore game but it was critically acclaimed and we managed to build a small but dedicated community.

We received our first paychecks and continued to update the game post launch with new content and new features but BLC never really took off. After more than a year of struggling with making the game fly people were starting to lose confidence and eventually we had to move on to stay alive as a studio.

We were able to sign a deal with Deep Silver and started working on zombie-slasher Dead Island: Epidemic. Everyone was super excited and for the years to come there were very little talk about BLC.

Dead Island: Epidemic was eventually canceled. Having a game canceled after 2½ years into production was frustrating but at the same time, I think it was a relief for many. It had been a stressful project and in the end, it was a work for hire. 

Dead Island: Epidemic

I remember how we sat down with the studio, asking everyone what he or she wanted to do next.
I was surprised by the result; we had not talked a lot about BLC during Epidemic but all of a sudden, everyone wanted to do a remake. Everyone still believed in the core values of BLC and what we started back in 2008.

Nothing similar had come up on the market over the years; nothing remotely similar to BLC at least, and we believed there to be a spot on the market for our type of game.

Everyone was aboard, and we were confident that as long as we can make this game on our own conditions we could make it into the best arena PvP game out there. We would not let a publisher hijack this project and thanks to our friends and investors at Coffee Stain Studios, we were able to develop the game on our own terms.

I believe Battlerite’s success is down to the following key points.

1. We knew exactly what we wanted to accomplish

When working on BLC we experimented with different types of gameplay, movement, game modes and so on. We did not really know what game we were making to begin with. For Battlerite we wanted to keep it straightforward, easy and approachable.

We took the core of BLC and decided to stick with that for the entire project. Focus on the Arena and the Champions, nothing else. Instead of investing resources into trying out new game mode ideas or trying to create new types of Champions, we took the best pieces from BLC and iterated, iterated and iterated.

Bloodline Champions

2. Zero Iteration Downtime

As we knew we were going to have an extremely iterative process we set a technical goal from day 1 – Zero Iteration downtime. This was a design goal that permeated every part of our content pipelines.

The toolset we have used to develop Battlerite is built from scratch for this project. We are using Unity as our render-engine while gameplay related elements as collision, network, AI, are all custom-made. We have developed a tool with the fancy name “Game Tool” in which we basically create the entire game.

The Game Tool is used to define objects, constant data, stateful data that change during gameplay, references to graphical assets and scripts as well as relationships between objects. Scripts are attached to objects and can then access the data and state for those objects dynamically, with changes to all of these available instantly without restarting. Scripts are compiled on save, constant & state data is changed in the running gameplay process as they’re made. 

We embed a standalone Unity player process into a Game Tool window that we feed with the game state for rendering. Artists import assets (models, SFX, particles, animations) into a separate Unity editor project where they’re immediately built into bundles and made available for usage in the Game Tool and its embedded Unity process. Artists and coders can add content in an incremental fashion without having to restart, reload or compile unrelated assets or code, which we believe is key to our iteration process. Iterate, save, test, iterate.

Without this toolset, we would never have been able to create the Look and Feel that we aspired to when we set out.

3. Look and Feel

When comparing BLC and Battlerite the difference in visual quality and presentation is obvious. What is not as apparent but maybe even more important is how different the game feels. This has been one of the biggest challenge to us marketing-wise. The game looks like a RTS MOBA but once you get your hands on it you understand the vast differences.

Controlling your Champion with WASD movement is a huge difference and we’ve put a ton of effort into getting the gameplay feel just right. A video cannot sell you on that feeling. We ended up branding it as a Team Arena Brawler (TAB), basically creating our own genre.

This is the biggest improvement when comparing both games. Moving around, striking down your enemy, firing your guns, charging into combat. These are just a few mechanics in the g