Trevor Beedie

Archer: Danger Phone! is an East Side Games narrative driven idle game where players upgrade generators and agents in Krieger's simulations to determine the perfect strategy for propagating his own cryptocurrency, the Kreigerrand to become the worlds primary currency.

​

While I learned many things during my time working on Archer: Danger Phone!, one of my favorite moments when I was assigned a Design Test that would gauge my capabilities as a designer, and how it became a published variant for Archer's player base to enjoy.

​

Before working on Archer as a Designer, I worked on the project as a Quality Assurance specialist. After I showed interest in transitioning to a design position, I was given the opportunity to balance a limited time event.

​

Events are special stages where players are given a limited amount of time to play them. If players progress far enough into the progression of the stage and are able to achieve predetermined milestones in currency generation, they will receive rewards for their permanent game progression. This theme of limited time rewards also applies to a leaderboard system where players will compete to gain high rankings on a leaderboard that tracks their total income as compared to other players for more limited time rewards.

​

During my Design Test, I was given the opportunity to make a variant for the event type known as Arctic Analysis. I was given a spreadsheet to input the values that were to be translated in-game. ​The goal was to make a variant, not an entirely new balance where the themes of the Arctic Analysis that were consistent in two other variants were similar to this third one that I would be making, but make it different enough from the other two so that they are comparable and different to allow for players to get different experiences every week.

​

Before I started making the event balance and it's design, I first started by playing Arctic Analysis' other two balances to get a feel for what an Arctic Analysis balance needs to be, and do a SWOT analysis. The main points of my SWOT were as follows:

​

Strengths: Arctic Analysis focus on Character upgrades as a means of gaining currency is inherently engaging.

Weaknesses: The focus on character upgrades as being inherently more powerful and useful then generator upgrades was not clear.

Opportunities: By bringing the player's attention to the fact that upgrading agents is very powerful, I will be able to encourage players to behave in the way that helps them succeed the most, which would improve engagement.

Threats: If I focus too much on the gimmick of this event type, I will end up losing the depth of decision making when it comes to upgrading other elements like generators. 

​

After Identifying the areas I wanted to tackle in the design, I started plotting out my changes to the spreadsheet. Thankfully the tools provided to me were very intuitive and allowed for quick iteration. However since I did not have access to create the builds and test the balance for myself on my own terms, I had to wait for another designer to implement it for me before I could test it in earnest.

​

After my first test, I did another pass on my design, noting down where there was too large of walls of difficulty that were not fun to attempt to overcome with timed upgrades to agents and generators. I also found that I needed to diversify the goals more to provide players more of an incentive to upgrade generators despite their lack of efficiency compared to agents.

​

After my second pass, I submitted my design for review. My design test then became implemented in game where it became the most profitable variants of all 3 Arctic Analysis types. If you want to play my variant, check in on Archer Danger Phone from Monday - Wednesday. If Arctic analysis is the type, and the third track has a "Upgrade Agent x1" on the third goal track, that's mine!

​

I am very grateful for my time working on Archer: Danger Phone! I was able to do so much more from that point as I was given different tasks including cutscene development and mechanic proposal documentation.