Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
When I joined Mimimi Games as an intern, the team was still small. They had no full-time Level Designer. After setting up a quick test scene to get to know the game and tool they had created, I was immediatedly given the responsibility to work on a few official levels, some to be reworked or iterated and some to be built from scratch. During production, I was gradually given the ownership of the majority of the levels in the game including environment blockout, enemy setups, scenario implementation, scripting, narrative flow, objective creation and pacing.
The release of Shadow Tactics immediately established Mimimi Games as the Stealth Strategy Developer who revived the Stealth Strategy genre that had seemingly died out for almost 10 years.
My Contributions:
- Level layout and blocking of most of the levels
- Planning and implementation of all missions, including scripting, pacing and presentation
- Enemy encounter design
- Cutscene design
- Scripting
- Set dressing
- Prototyping 3 additional DLC Missions
- Designging narration for in-world dialogs
Some levels I have worked on:
Project Info
Development: 2013 - 2016
Engine: Unity
Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
Developer: Mimimi Games GmbH
Metascore
Project Overview
Bathhouse City
This was the first Mission I got to work on as an Intern. The inital pitch of this level was to have a city and a japanese bathhouse near a river. The city should be open and support multiple optional paths and objectives. Early blockings showed that having the bathhouse as the central piece would create unnecessarily long walking distances. Early tests also showed that the players would occasionally enter the bathhouse straight away, which conflicted with the nature of the design of the mission.
After a few attempts we made the call to scratch the current blocking and start again. This time the bathhouse should be at the furthest point from which the mission starts. I also pushed for a more structured urban approach, referencing Edo-Japan cities at the time. This way the player could freely explore the city without being drawn to the bathhouse itself right away.
As a last touch we decided to add a visual barrier between city and bathhouse to introduce the bathhouse during a reveal cutscene.
After that, I focussed more on the individual areas and fleshed those out, given each their own distincive flair in terms of gameplay and visuals.
Other Levels
For Shadow Tactics, I was in charge of most of the levels. The ones I fully designed from Blockout to final level were:
- Mission 6 - Hida Village
- Mission 8 - Kanazawa City
- Mission 9 - Kage-sama’s Camp
- Mission 11 - Matsuyama City
DLC Work
During my time as an intern I was also tasked with prototyping potential DLC locations
The seabased location "Black Ship" eventually made it into Shadow Tactics: Aiko's Choice.
Reviews
“Shadow Tactics’ impressive missions, laden toy box and likeable cast make it one of the greatest stealth games of the last decade.”
92 – PC Gamer
“Atmospheric and impossible to rush, Shadow Tactics is a fabulous game – a game I think I prefer to both Commandos 2 and Desperados. I can see myself replaying it regularly.”
Rock Paper Shotgun
“There’s a wonderful toy-like quality to the game’s world, like it’s a giant diorama made by master craftsmen”
Kotaku