Tomb Raider: Reloaded
Tomb Raider blasts onto mobile. Play as the legendary Lara Croft like you’ve never seen her before!
Inspired by the original Tomb Raider games, wield Lara’s iconic twin-pistols and get ready for a globetrotting adventure!
Travel through the golden arch-shaped doors of the treacherous underground tombs, across hazardous mountain caves, flourishing jungles and lush waterfalls.
On your quest you’ll avoid hidden traps, discover ancient relics, solve a wide variety of puzzles and face off against different enemies and bosses (is that a T-Rex I hear!?) both new and familiar to the Tomb Raider series including bloodthirsty wolves, poisonous snakes, fearsome golems and magical elemental creatures!
Gameplay features roguelike, procedurally generated & hand crafted stages for a new and varied experience with every run. As you progress through each level, you’ll be able to stack abilities and perks such as piercing shots, experience boosts, grenade throws and arch shots for more powerful attacks, quicker character leveling and a wider range of damage.
DETAILS
ROLE
Game Designer
DEVELOPER
Emerald City Games
PUBLISHER
Square Enix
RELEASED
February 14, 2023
PLATFORMS
Mobile (iOS & Android)
Combat Rooms
Combat rooms serve as the fundamental essence of Tomb Raider Reloaded. Typically, these rooms exclusively comprise of Wall, Floor, and Water tiles and are devoid of puzzles or hazards in daily events. The intention behind this design choice was to offer players a diverse range of combat encounters and room layouts. Each room is purposefully crafted to fulfill specific gameplay objectives, ensuring variety and excitement.
Some rooms emphasize melee encounters, while others present challenges for ranged combat. Careful attention was given to the pacing of difficulty levels, room sizes (ranging from small to large), and the inclusion of boss encounters as players progress through the game. This meticulous approach was essential to deliver a thoroughly enjoyable overall player experience.
Here are some instances of Room Layouts implemented in Daily Events. After finalizing the initial walkthrough, I would proceed to incorporate enemies into the layout, making adjustments to their locations, rotations, and spawn timers as needed.
Encounter System
In the example on the far right, enemies are strategically positioned within the room layout. Ranged enemies are situated at a greater distance from the player, while melee and disruptor enemies are placed closer to the players starting position.
Shard Shuffle Daily Event
Puzzle & Hazard Rooms
These rooms aim to offer a unique experience for users during their event playthrough. The goal is to introduce a fresh mechanic to complement combat, ultimately encouraging players to engage their puzzle-solving skills. Puzzle and Hazard rooms can deliberately exclude enemies, allowing players to concentrate on the intended purpose of the room: solving puzzles.
Puzzle rooms feature various elements such as traps, switches, levers, and jump pads. These rooms come with a predetermined reward time limit, providing players with the opportunity to solve the puzzle for an extra reward. It's important to note that completing puzzle rooms is entirely optional; if puzzles aren't your preference, you can simply navigate around them, even if it means taking some damage, and proceed to the next room.
On the other hand, Hazard rooms offer a distinct experience, focusing on survival rather than puzzle-solving. Unlike puzzle rooms, Hazard rooms are not optional and pose a threat to the player, potentially causing severe damage or death. The rolling pin hazard serves as a notable example, as it chases the player through different combinations of wall, floor, and water tiles, offering a significantly different dynamic compared to combat-focused rooms.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Designed, implemented, and iterated on several Campaign Chapters & Live Events
Gathered feedback frequently from playtests; generated and prioritized action items
Collaborated with other disciplines to build the levels to the highest quality
Actively sought to improve development processes during production
Created Greyblock layouts using proprietary level design tools
Worked directly with the encounter system to create meaningful and fun combat, hazard & puzzle encounters.
Onboarded new designers to the feature creation process, bosses, enemies, tools and best practices
Created and updated game design documentation during the products life cycle.
I played a key role in optimizing early retention for Tomb Raider Reloaded by spearheading the game balance efforts. My responsibilities included fine-tuning difficulty levels, pacing, and rewards to ensure an engaging and immersive experience for players right from the start
I had the opportunity to contribute to the development of various Daily Events in Tomb Raider Reloaded. These events are designed to encourage daily player engagement by offering quick, enjoyable, and meaningful gameplay experiences. Upon completion, players are rewarded with exciting in-game benefits. The Daily Events are categorized into three types, each focusing on a specific resource that players can earn through regular chapter runs: Coins, Shards, and Manuals.
My role primarily involved utilizing proprietary level design tools to create the layout of each room & setting up encounters players would experience. The process began by categorizing rooms into four base sizes (Small, Medium, Large, XL), such as 10x20, 15x30, etc. These sizes were standardized in the campaign chapters and remained consistent in daily events.
When setting up each room, I initiated the layout by incorporating fundamental elements such as Floor Tiles, Wall Tiles, and Water Tiles. The goal was to achieve a room shape that met the desired criteria. I ensured the creation of layouts that offered players multiple routes to reach the end, fostering creativity in route selection. This emphasis on providing varied paths was crucial for creating engaging and enjoyable encounters, as the restriction to a linear path was considered less engaging.
Here are several instances of puzzle layouts that were integrated into the "Shard" Daily Event in Tomb Raider. These puzzle rooms vary in size, spanning from small to large layouts, and progressively increase in difficulty as players advance through their playthrough.
NPC Rooms
These rooms are designed to offer players a moment of respite and relaxation. The options available in these rooms encompass a variety of choices, including Health Boosts and Damage Boosts. Players have the freedom to select one Ability per room. Two NPC rooms are strategically placed in each playthrough, occurring at stage 9 and stage 19. These rooms precede the Boss Encounter, granting players the flexibility to choose options based on their current condition.
Players often opt for HP buffs if their defenses are lacking, aiming to bolster their survivability. On the other hand, well-equipped players may choose damage boosts to enhance their clearing speed and efficiency.
Closing notes
NPC Rooms consistently fall within the "Small Room category" and exclude any combat elements. Instead, each room contains a single NPC positioned in the center of the layout, allowing players to interact upon reaching a specified radius. As these rooms lack combat encounters, I had the creative freedom to design interesting room layouts without adhering to specific gameplay benefits or drawbacks.
These rooms were designed to fall into the small room type as we found players didn’t like to spend a long time running, without any combat or puzzle presented to them.
Daily Events Design Overview
In Tomb Raider Reloaded, every Daily Event features pre-existing mobs and bosses from the campaign. However, for these events, I carefully selected specific "Enemy Types" tailored to each unique event theme. This included Humanoids (Bi-Peds) for the Coin Chase Event, Cold-Blooded Enemies (Frogs, Snakes, Crocodiles, etc.) for the Manual Mashup Event, and Warm-Blooded Enemies (Bears, Wolves, Lions, etc.) for the Shard Shuffle Event. The enemies were adjusted to present increasing challenges as players progressed through the daily event.
Despite the challenge of working with a limited subset of enemies in the encounter system, I ensured that each enemy type used in a layout played a specific role in the gameplay encounter. Enemies were categorized into various "roles," such as Melee Damagers, Range Damagers, Melee Disruptors, Range Disruptors, Artillery Damagers, etc. For example, Melee Damagers could only attack through melee means but had higher HP for close-quarters combat, while Ranged Damagers had less HP due to their ability to attack from a distance. Artillery Damagers, like turrets, remained stationary and shot projectiles at the player. There are a lot of enemies in tomb raider that have sub-roles, which allow for even more variation between combat experiences. These are just a few basic examples, but combining these different roles created a cohesive and enjoyable experience within the layout.
Each Daily Event is comprised of 20 rooms, featuring 2 Bosses at stages 10 and 20, 2 NPC rooms at stages 9 and 19 offering Healing or Attack Buffs, and, depending on the event, a chance for 2 Puzzle/Hazard Rooms at stages 5 and 15. Within a daily event, each room had a minimum of 3 different layout and encounter variations. These layouts were organized into a larger "Room Set" then applied to a specific subset of rooms. I had a blast collaborating with the other domains to bring this event to life, and have learnt tons along the way. I am looking forward to continue creating meaningful content for our player base to enjoy.
Coin Chase Daily Event
Manual Mashup Daily Event
On the left are several screenshots depicting Puzzle Rooms in their initial Greybox state. During this phase, as designers, we engaged in trial and error to determine the kind of puzzles that would be enjoyable for players. This involved exploring the appropriate level of complexity for a puzzle and identifying the components that contribute to an engaging and fun puzzle experience.
