Darkfire Heroes | RonnieTallon

Darkfire Heroes is a fantasy rpg game with real time combat and encounter driven level design

My Role - Level Designer

I worked as a level designer on Darkfire Heroes at Rovio Copenhagen for 3 years.

As part of the design team I make levels for all parts of the game; the campaign, the bimonthly events and PvP.

The process of making a level involves developing a concept, constructing the level in unity, playtesting to get feedback to refine gameplay and lastly working with an artist to deliver the art for the final level. Below I show an overview of the types of levels I make for Darkfire Heroes followed by a breakdown of my design process for a set of levels called 'The Lich Queen's Tower'. This is where I was asked to make a new set of levels that would be an exciting and cinematic start to Darkfire Heroes

I believe the skills I have developed on Darkfire Heroes can easily transfer to 3D level design, since my levels are grounded in strategic encounter design and a strong sense of place.

Overview of Levels

Campaign Levels

Darkfire Heroes has a large variety of different game modes but the most important of these is 'The Campaign' mode
The Campaign takes place on a world map with different Campaign Areas, where each Campaign Area is ten levels long
In total the Campaign is 37 Areas long, I came later in the production but I am really proud of the 8 Campaign Areas I contributed to the mode, including being asked to make the beginning and end levels for the Campaign
Below I share some quick reference images of different Campaign Areas I worked on

Bandit Mountain

The Nexus

Event Levels

After Campaign mode, the most of my level design work is on our Bi-Monthly Events
Every two weeks we host a weekend long event with different game modes, I make 'Level Challenges' for these events
Level Challenges are 15 Levels long with special filters and game rules applied to create variation
These are Roguelike levels that are generated from a pool of Encounters and Environments I design
A Loadout filter is a restriction on the types of heroes you can bring into the level for example 'No Healers' means no Healing Heroes
For each Event I would make 2-3 sets of Level Challenges that fit the overall theme, meaning per month I would make 60-90 Levels
Below I show some reference images of different levels I have made for Events

The Graveyard

The Darkfey Forest

PvP Race Levels

When players are not playing Campaign or Events we also have a twp PvP game modes in Darkfire Heroes
The two modes are 'Race Mode' and 'Castle Conquest', I have only made levels for Race Mode
The Rules behind Race Mode are quite straight forward, you and another player race in seperate lanes and the first to destroy the castle at the end of the level wins, you can use spells on your opponents is the opposite lane to slow them down
Below I show some examples of different Race Modes I made for Darkfire Heroes

Snowy Battlements

The Haunted Keep

The Lich Queen's Tower

Making a new exciting cinematic start for Darkfire Heroes

The Design Brief

After Darkfire Heroes had launched we wanted to improve the first time user experience for new players, with that in mind I was given the task to make a new set of levels for the beginning of the game. The levels needed to show off the best parts of the game in four short levels, while also including a new streamlined tutorial. The four levels also needed to hook the players with a clear story arc that had a beginning, middle and end paired with strong fast paced gameplay that could be completed in one short sitting, planned for around ten minutes of gameplay.

Levels 01-04 Playthrough

Concept and Level Structure

The Concept I put forward to the design team for the new starting level was the idea of the 'The Lich Queen's tower'. A short four level story where the premise was that the heroes would pass through a moonlit graveyard in the middle of a lightning storm and come to the base of a ruined tower, there they would be confronted by 'The Lich Queen', she would challenge the heroes before vanishing to the top of her tower where she plans to complete her unholy ritual to open a portal to the 'Dimension of Dread'.

Level 01 - Moonlit Ruined Graveyard that leads to the base of the Lich Queen's Tower
Level 02 - Inside the Halls of the Ruined Tower
Level 03 - External Staircase that wraps the outside of the Tower
Level 04 - Top of the Lich Queen's Tower

Level 01 - The Moonlit Graveyard

Setting and Encounter Design

'Level 01 - The Moonlit Graveyard' was the new first level of Darkfire Heroes, with that in mind it needed to act as the new tutorial level for the game while also setting up the antagonist of the next for the next four levels - The Lich Queen. The Heroes begin their story at the edge of a moonlit graveyard, fighting their way to the mysterious tower they see in the distance. Each encounter was made to introduce how the game works, one mechanic at a time for each encounter.

Below on the left is a design document I made when I was planning out the level path and encounters I would like the players to face. On the right is an image of the finished level with the enemies used for the encounters placed.

Level 02 - Halls of the Tower

Setting and Encounter Design

'Level 02 - Halls of the Tower' shifts the environment to an interior setting to give variation to the overall journey of the levels, this way not all four levels take place outside. The setting for this level is a ruined hall, where the floors and walls have crumbled, so the storm and moonlight from outside come in. The Defining Feature for this level was 'The Exploding Door', a new prop we designed to make the levels encounters memorable, the door can be scripted to explode during an encounter to reveal a hidden path where new enemies can arrive from, I introduce the new mechanic in Encounter 02 and Escalate the Mechanic in the Final Encounter by having three doors where enemies arrive from.

Level 03 - Stairs to the Top

Setting and Encounter Design

'Level 03 - 'Stairs to the Top' is where the heroes return outside to the crumbling external staircase that wraps up the tower. This level starts high up on the staircase, with the graveyard from level 01 far below in the distance, the heroes reach a broken section, where they must now switch path onto a nearby mountain cliff, from there, they pass through a cave before returning to the other side of the staircase and continue to the final encounter of the level. A defining feature for this level was the energy bridges, we wanted the player to have a cool moment when they reached the edge of the broken staircase and think 'Where do I go next?' Only to have lighting strikes a nearby pillar in the next moment and the energy bridge comes alive, meaning they can now cross to the nearby cliff edge and continue the level.

Level 04 - Top of the Tower

Setting and Encounter Design

Level 04 - is the final level, where the heroes reach the Top of the Tower and confront the Lich Queen. This is a Boss Fight Encounter with two stages to the combat, Stage 01 introduces the different moveset of the Lich Queen and in Stage 02 The Lich Queen completes her evil Ritual and opens a portal where supporting enemies arrive from. I wanted the Top of the Tower to be a climatic setting for the end of the new starting levels for Darkfire Heroes and collaborated with an artist on my team to capture the feeling of ascending above the clouds during a storm for an epic final fight. During Stage 02 - I scripted the portal to open to escalated the fight but I also wanted the last few moments of the second stage of the Boss fight to be visually climatic, with that in mind, as you can see in the image to the top right, I also scripted a ring of lighting to surround the players in the last stretch of the combat where two hell hounds arrive from the portal as last minute backup.

Learning Outcomes

Lessons learned from my time working as a Level Designer on Darkfire Heroes

From my time working as a level designer on Darkfire Heroes, I gained a huge amount of experience for process behind conceptualizing and implementing exciting bespoke levels, but I have also I learned about what it takes to work as part of a team and a greater appreciation for the multi-disciplinary collaboration it takes to make a game.

Over my 3 years as part of Rovio Copenhagen, I have been challenged and pushed to always improve my level design skills and now I feel confident in my abilities to make exciting levels. That said, I believe the lessons I have learned and skills I have developed about level design from working on this project can easily be applied and are relevant, when working on other types of levels for games in other genres or mediums.

As you can see from my project above, Darkfire Heroes is built around engaging multi faction combat design and having a strong understanding of how to build meaningful combat is something that I think is universally relevant for many games, where combat is part of the core gameplay. For example building encounters for a 3D stealth game or 3rd person shooter, draw on many of the same level design principles we employ when building combat encounters in Darkfire Heroes. If you would like to see an example of how I a have applied my encounter design knowledge from Darkfire Heroes to a 3rd person Shooter experience, please feel free to look at my other project 'Journey to the Bridge'.