QUEST & MISSION DESIGN
My goal with quest design is always to introduce the most engaging gameplay elements to the most exciting story moments, so that each may elevate the other.
While creating meaningful player experiences is always paramount, mission design must also align with the project’s product goals, encouraging players to participate in the core engagement loop to maintain a healthy and vibrant game ecosystem.
Voice-First Missions
Game: The Big House
Quest Design Diagram
The Big House is a detective mystery in VR that uses interactive conversation as its primary mechanic. The design challenge was found in merging the investigative dialogue moments with engaging voice-first gameplay mechanics. To meet this task, every quest was designed be active and intuitive:
Active conversation: Voice interactions that kept the player actively interrogating, accusing, deceiving, pretending, roleplaying, etc.
Gameplay tutorial: NPC seamlessly informs the player how to negotiate the conversational game or puzzle.
Voice-first game: Performance-based gameplay that aligns with quest narrative.
Game progression: The game escalates difficulty and/or complexity to test player skill level.
Collecting & Trading
Game: Momoguro • Legends of Uno
Mission Design Elements
The development goals for Legends of Uno were to lean into the strengths of collecting, trading, storytelling, and characters. I was confident the story design and worldbuilding would take care of the last two, but I put a lot of thought into how the game’s quest design could drive collecting and trading Momo cards among players.
I designed a quest system that rewarded players for equipping Momos with a specific class, level, or species with:
Quest dialog branches that gave players agency within their own story.
Momo lore unlocks, building out the lore of each Momo that attached to the player’s unique digital token.
Momo alliance points that strengthened the players relationship with that Momo species within the narrative.