Adventure RPG Gacha Game

Jun 21
4 min read

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/9fd538_b96e0e74d4ad468a9d8282536cf49682/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

📖 Game Introduction

Adventure as The Awakener - the new guild leader seeking powerful and reputable adventurers and creatures alike to join their guild.

🔮Key Features

Tactical Combat

Master a semi-automated battling system that rewards strategic preparation and real-time combat skills.

Guild Customization

Design and expand your guild to your heart's content with free-placement housing, and collect furniture sets to unlock exclusive combat buffs.

Narrative-Driven Quests

Embark on 40+ quests filled with intriguing storylines, high-stakes combat, and emotional cutscenes.

A Living World

Recruit and bond with a vibrant cast of ~16 beloved characters and ~35 distinct fantastical creatures.

Expansive Exploration

Traverse 5 distinct regions steeped in history, atmosphere, and environmental storytelling.

🧠 What I bring to the project

As a designer, intention is crucial.

For a live-service gacha game, this meant whether I was scripting quest content, writing a GDD (game design document), or balancing player progression - creative direction and monetization are key considerations that actively shape design choices.

Pipeline Architecture: Owned the end-to-end planning, storyboarding, and implementation for all quest and overworld content, delivering over 40 distinct quests for significant milestones.

Systems & Progression Design: Created GDDs and Excel data sheets for core features such as the Guild Leveling System, Quest Board, and the Guild Housing System (highly interlinked with Combat System).

Pipeline Optimization & Creative Alignment: Established a centralized Quest & Overworld Content Design Guideline and guided three junior designers. Aligning the team under a standardized workflow preserved our core design intentions while bringing clarity to our delivery timelines.

Live-Ops: Mapped out the long-term event and content pipeline to support the project's seasonal release schedule based on projected game progression.

💫 Scalable World-Building - Content Production & Pipeline Optimization

📌 Context & The Beta Retention Goal

During the pre-launch phase of the project, establishing early player retention was our highest priority. In an open-world character gacha game, player retention is directly tied to the velocity and immersive quality of narrative content.

As the owner of the quest and world-content pipelines, my objective was to coordinate the full quest design process from writing to execution, delivering over 40 distinct quests alongside overworld content for our Beta tests. The challenge was to scale content production rapidly without losing design intention, world-building consistency, or our distinct creative vision.

🛠️ Standardizing the Pipeline & Eliminating Guesswork

To scale production, I designed a framework to align our Narrative and Environment-Art teams early in the process through storyboarding. I then formalized this workflow into a centralized Quest & Overworld Content Design Guideline and mentored three junior designers to ensure consistent execution.

To eliminate creative guesswork and streamline our day-to-day work, the guideline standardized the following.

Pacing & Flow: Exact player-journey timings balancing cinematic exposition, traversal, and high-stakes combat encounters.
Spatial Composition: Visual design standards (such as using the rule-of-thirds in open-world geometry) to naturally guide players to points of interest.
Audio and Cinematic Integration: Working directly with the Music and Audio leads to align music, voice-overs, and sound effects for high-impact boss-fight cinematics.

🛠️ Technical Implementation & Blocking Resolution

Speeding up the pipeline required building structural tools to resolve cross-department production bottlenecks:

Master Asset Document: I established a centralized request and tracking sheet that streamlined asset requests across all departments, preventing major delays.
Script-to-Unity Excel Tool: I developed an Excel tool for our narrative designers that automatically converted dialogue scripts into Unity-readable formats, allowing for seamless integration.
Centralized Documentation: I maintained our FigJam boards and LegendKeeper space as the central reference points, organizing lore, game structures, feature unlocks, character introductions, and quest progression.
Gameplay Implementation: Using Unity and Excel-based tools, we implemented gameplay triggers, visual effects, and environmental conditions to bring the world to life.

📈 Live-Ops Iteration & Impact

To test the success of this optimized pipeline, we used ClickUp to manage tasks and statuses across our large team, coordinating Live-Ops testing with our QA team to iterate on player engagement and game balance.

The testing results validated our standardized framework:

Higher Engagement: The first batch of quests built under the new guidelines performed noticeably better in playtests—demonstrating significantly higher completion rates and player retention compared to our legacy quests.
Proven Scalability: With the guidelines and script-to-Unity tools proven, the team successfully delivered all 40+ scheduled quests on time.
Live-Ops Foundation: This pipeline successfully validated our early retention loops and established the structural template we needed for future seasonal events and content updates.

🏡 Balancing the Housing System & Monetization Strategy

📌 Context & The Core Design Friction

A major objective on this project was strengthening the core housing-to-combat loop. The system required placed furniture inside the guild building to grant functional combat buffs. However, because our primary revenue generation relied on external premium purchases and limited-time banners, this introduced a classic live-ops friction point: how to drive monetization for cosmetic items without triggering runaway power creep that would break the game’s combat balance.

To protect the game’s long-term mathematical stability while still providing genuine value to paying players, I shifted the progression paradigm away from raw statistical growth by prioritizing Horizontal Mechanics over Vertical Inflation.

🛠️ The Two-Tier Progression Framework

Using Excel to balance asset stats against charted player combat progression, I structured a two-tier model that balanced furniture statistics like rarity, set bonuses, and elements based on how they were obtained:Base Growth (Vertical / In-Game Tier): Easily craftable furniture elements obtained entirely through in-game rewards grant fundamental static value increases (such as raw HP or DEF pools). This forms a predictable, rising progression floor accessible to all free-to-play (F2P) players.Mechanical Synergy (Horizontal / Premium Tier): Premium banner furniture does not simply add higher raw numbers. Instead, completing premium sets unlocks unique, niche mechanical traits that synergize specifically with current active event characters (such as adding an elemental resonance effect or modifying passive character behaviors).

📈 Iterative Testing & Economic Balance

To ensure this framework functioned correctly in live environments, I worked directly with the QA team to conduct iterative live-ops testing, analyzing player engagement patterns and game balance.

The data validated that focusing premium items on horizontal utility and character synergy—rather than raw statistical inflation—successfully achieved two key results:

It created highly attractive, creative combat team-building options that drove high collection motivation for premium furniture banners.
It completely preserved long-term game stability, ensuring the mathematical balance between F2P players and high-value spenders remained perfectly healthy over time.