GAME TRAILER

PROJECT OVERVIEW

War of the Vikings is the successor to War of the Roses. It's a third person PVP game focusing on close quarter combat in the Viking Age set in Saxon controlled England. developed by Fatshark and published by Paradox for PC. The target audience was the competetive market, the gameplay was therefore fast paced and the maps were objective based with game modes ranging from one to several depending on the layout.

Five game modes:

Conquest: Linear objectives which if achieved drives out the enemy
Team Death Match: The team most prominent at killing is deemed the victor
Pitched Battle: With one life, the last team standing wins
Arena: Pitched battle in a small space
Domination: Non linear Conquest which is all about controlling resource points

MY ROLE

I joined during the production phase until post launch with DLCs and live support.
Designed and built the layout for over ten levels, many per my own initiative
Made two out of the four game modes which were added to most levels
Arted and set up the game logic for the maps I owned from start to finish
Created and modified landscapes using GeoControl and Photoshop
Made the complete ingame tutorial and analysed external playtests on site

LEVEL: Gauntlet

Gauntlet was made as a one day experiment to try out a new game mode called Arena. The pitched battle mode is similar but is only played on large levels, with this I was interested to see what'd happen if we'd initiate players immediately. Playtests were some of the most fun we had internally so it got a greenlight to become a part of the game. The only real difference between the first iteration and the last is the addition of barricades in the middle, providing some protection from the instant barrage of throwing weapons used upon spawning.

Gamemodes

Arena
Team Deathmatch

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SCREENSHOTS

The theme was "backyard brawl" as it's set on the backstreet of two taverns.

The layout is simplistic at heart, the highground can be accessed from three angles, pillars allow for some protection. The lowground was normally used for the rush tactic to surprise players turtling behind the protected center.

LEVEL: Sanctuary

Sanctuary is a completely symmetrical arena level played at the base of a ruined bridge, a place where some nowadays bury their dead.
It quickly came to be one of the most popular levels on release.

Gamemodes

Arena
Team Deathmatch

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SCREENSHOTS

Sanctuary was featured on Autodesk Stingray's homepage for several months to represent the visuals that could be achieved with its tools.

Trenches (visible ingame in the screenshot above) separates the level in an inner and outer area, they meet at specific points in the level. While they can be skipped by jumping, a failed jump leaves the player at a grave disadvantage.

Two Saxons fighting a Viking beneath the ruined bridge.

LEVEL: Stronghold

Stronghold is the first symmetrical Conquest map of War of the Vikings. Symmetry become the norm for later levels as earlier asymmetrical maps proved to be difficult to balance for Conquest. This large Viking settlement is set in Norway where vengeful Saxons have docked, eager to bring back what's theirs by right.

Gamemodes

Conquest
Pitched Battle
Team Deathmatch

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SCREENSHOTS

The mountains in the backdrop were generated using GeoControl and painted white in Photoshop to fake a snow texture, as the editor
at the time did not support an abundance of terrain materials.

Players have the exact same conditions at the start, what decides the battle is the skill, lineup and map knowledge.

Most of the battle in Conquest is centered around the central point, making it the most crucial area. I turned the middle area into a large mess hall with several entrances, some more obvious than others. The "Mess Hall" and its immediate surroundings were later the focus of the one-life game mode "Pitched Battle".

The white particle effect hovering above the capturepoints help players orient themselves.

One of the capturepoints was a blacksmith with a pair of bellows that could be used to light the place on fire in desperate cases.

LEVEL: Village

Village was the first level made for the Domination gamemode. Domination was the second game mode I started making per my own initiative. Eventually involved Code, UI and QA. Most of the base functionality was already there from the original game mode Conquest. We were able to get a prototype up and running after 2-3 days, which immediately became a core gamemode

Gamemodes

Conquest
Pitched Battle
Team Deathmatch

>>Expand to view gameplay

SCREENSHOTS

All capturepoints are crudely fortified, as to not feel intruding yet provide vital protection from ranged attackers.

One of the problems we wanted to adress from Conquest was potential stalemates. The layout features three capturepoints placed symmetrically in a circle, so no matter what situation the players find themselves in, they'll always have options as to which objective to attack or defend.

A stoneship rests in the middle, the place where a man of great importance settled.

LEVEL: Tutorial

The tutorial teaches the basics of fighting, throwing and sprinting, I identified which specific knowledge we wanted players to have before their first game, before starting to work out an appropriate layout. I was later joined by a coder who supported me with custom nodes in Flow (Visual script). After we deemed that the first iteration was done we held focus tests at the Paradox Offices to ensure we hadn't missed anything.

SCREENSHOTS

The NPC teaching the basics was named "Torsten the Tongueless", for he could not move nor talk, one of the limitations of a game without AI. The narrator was a bedridden Shieldmaiden yelling instructions from a nearby window.

The player spawns in an enclosed area with the only way forward being entering the fighting pit. Everything related to combat was kept in one place marked as "Fighting Tutorial". The gate opens after the melee tutorial as playtests suggested that not all players were interested in the ranged aspect of the game.