Sweet Surrender is a roguelite VR shooter in a dystopian megatower. It was the first commercial game I worked on. It was released in September 2021 and was supported with additional content in form of free DLCs for almost two years.
The game received overall an exceptional rating with more than 4.5 stars on the Quest Store.
My tasks in this project were Game Design, Level Design, Balancing, Storytelling and supported Project Management, especially for the later released DLCs. I also had close contact to the community, collecting and evaluating their feedback to then pass it on to the team.
Game Design
For Game Design I was responsible to create a fun and engaging gameplay loop which included satisfying and rewarding gunplay. To give the gameplay more space I came up with the idea of an upgrade chip system where you could insert chips into your gloves and get special abilities, like exploding or ricochet bullets.
The classes were my answer for a meta progression system so that the players can work on unlocking new classes and abilities through multiple runs.
Level Design
Most of the time I was the only one building levels. Since Sweet Surrender was a roguelite at its core, this meant that the whole level was randomly generated each time. Because of that I decided to make multiple rooms that can be put together to make one full level. To make best use of the limited time we had I also randomized each single room so that it wouldn't be recognizable. I was also strongly involved with finding the look for all the different areas in the game. In the base game there were four different areas available that you reached one after another.
Mines ➔ Slums ➔ Industrial Zone ➔ Modern City.
Balancing
I was responsible for balancing the game - keeping the game fair and challenging at the same time, rewarding the player every so often with loot to keep them engaged and that each weapon has its strength and weaknesses so that each weapon serves its role in the game. It was also strongly intertwined with the Level Design the balancing of the enemies also depended on how many spawned inside a level and at what part of the playthrough.
Project Management + Released DLCs
Since I was in charge of keeping an eye on the community wishes and I had an idea of what the players had liked to see in the game. That's why I didn't only work on the topics related to my field of work but I also decided which features were needed the most and what kind of DLC would make the most sense.
Excerpts from the best rated DLCs
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Update 3 expanded the meta progression and added the class system
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Update 5 added a completely new optional area with new mechanics, items and enemies
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Update 6 explored the options for Melee combat and included three completely different melee weapons and items
