Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Storm Ground

Released: 2021

Platforms: PC / Console

An overview of Storm Ground.

Notable Achievements

  • Delivered 200+ hand-authored levels from Paper to Final

  • Delivered hundreds of Unit Designs, Abilities & Passive Abilities

  • Pivotal in delivering the Campaign Rewards System

  • 1st Warhammer IP title Shipped

  • 1st Cross-Platform & Cross Play title Shipped

  • 1st Unreal Engine 4 title Shipped

  • 1st Rogue-like & Tactics game Shipped

  • Developed a Passion and knowledge for Systemic Design and Procedural Generation

Unit & Enemy Gameplay

One of the primary goals of the project was to honour the Warhammer IP by maintaining a consistency from the Lore and Board Game interpretations, but still provide a unique twist upon Units and their in-game abilities.

While I contributed to Units from all 3 Warhammer Factions;

  • Stormcast

  • Nighthaunt

  • Nurgle of Maggotkin

Nighthaunt was the Faction which I had the biggest hand in designing Unit roles, Unit behaviour and battlefield Abilities (Consisting of Active & Passive Abilities).

It was vital that while the gameplay and feel of each Faction was unique. I strived to strike a balance throughout development between these vastly unique Factions, their Units and the Abilities within.

A closer look at the Nighaunt Faction.

Campaign Reward Progression

One of my biggest challenges on Stormground was delivering a huge number of Campaign Rewards and balancing them to support Rogue-like campaign runs.

This Rogue-like gameplay element demanded a Reward Progression System that provided players with fresh and unique drops in each new run, while still rewarding the player proportionately for their battlefield successes.

The inherent selling point of the Rogue-like Campaign runs was that players get rewarded when they fail, and rewarded enough that they have an increased chance of advancing further through a Realm’s Campaign in subsequent runs.

Additionally, this had the added complications of:

  • Players have branching Mission paths to choose from the Campaign Map.

  • Randomized Level Features which meant difficulty within a range instead of an outright absolute.

The Campaign Reward System contained a variety of Rewards I had to implement and balance:

  • Units

  • Weapons

  • Armour

  • Divine Acts (Magic Spells)

  • Miracles (Used for Reviving Units during a Campaign Run)

A no commentary playthrough from a Storm Ground player.

Campaign Level Design

One of the biggest demands on time was managing and maintaining the huge variety of Levels throughout the Campaigns. Across all 3 Factions I successfully delivered hundreds of Levels, utilizing unique sets of props to slightly change level flow and feel.
The initial goal was to make each new run for this Rogue-like Tactics game feel different to the last, as such, I randomized (sometimes, weighted randomization, sometimes not) in order to mix each level even if players had played it before.
Not only did this come in the form of using different battflefield Props, it also included randomizing some of the Units, and the Wargear (i.e. Weapons & Armour) that players would face.

UI/UX Wireframing

Being 1 of the few designers with a strong background in UI/UX from previous projects, I stepped up to contribute to pre-pro and early phase development of Stormground’s UI/UX.

I lead efforts to build wireframes and UI flow by building interactive prototypes. This helped the team visualize early on how the game’s Front End was structured and flowed.

My responsibilities were Pitching, Tuning, and Authoring UE4 Widget layouts for:

  • Campaign Map screens

  • The ‘Card’ Reward system

  • Unit Weapon & Armour screens

  • Reward screens

Also lead efforts advocating for forward-facing UI/UX standards in the project such as Rich Text, localization, and FTUE design.