Project ZR
Project ZR is my first project at Probably Monsters and what we call a “competitive adventure game,” a genre bending, hero-based PvEvP roguelike with extraction elements. Eight teams of four players wander a procedurally generated city as they clear dungeons, solve puzzles, visit merchants, and grow powerful. They’d better keep their eyes peeled, however, as an enemy team tends to show up when you least expect it.
It’s an exciting concept both to play and to develop with our small team. As the principal game/level designer, I’ve contributed all of the level and encounter design currently in the game, as well as additions to the core mode.
A Short Introduction to the World of ZR
How it Plays
This is a quick introductory video we made to introduce folks to the basics of the game for a pre-alpha playtest. The visual state is early and much rougher than it is now, but it’s a good primer for the concept!
An Ever Changing City
Project ZR’s Bay City is located in the Anomaly, a parallel dimension of shifting geometry and infinite possibilities. A core pillar of ZR is that exploration should always be fun and full of surprises - regardless of how many times you’ve played - so we’ve designed for modularity from the ground up. A new version of the city is generated for each playthrough, and each layer of generation has its own levers for variation.
Regions and Zones
At the highest level we start with a Region, which determines the overall shape and size of particular version of Bay City we want to spawn for that round. Maybe you want a smaller version of the city shaped like a cube, or a huge city with cross pathing through the 4 cardinal directions. Regions are how we determine that. They’re simply arrangements of Zone sockets, which are like our city blocks. A wide variety of Zone content can spawn into each of these blocks.
Here’s an example of what one Region could look like:
We break our zones down into a few different core types, such as Traversal, Activity, and Overworld. They break down as follows:
Traversal Zones: the arterial pathways through our world. These are city streets where you find POIs like merchants and special events. They’re also the place you return to again and again when looking for new things to do.
Overworld Zones: parks and festival areas off the beaten path where players can expect to find more intense encounters
Activity Zones: the “dungeons” of Project ZR, where players can expect to find the greatest rewards and the most difficult encounters. These are places like office spaces, warehouses, and construction zones, each with unique gameplay elements such as security systems and moving crane hazards.
Our goal with this approach was to give players something like Disneyland where you wander the thoroughfare until you see something cool in the distance (i.e. “Let’s go to Space Mountain!”), do that thing, and return to the thoroughfare for churros and more adventures. The road should always lead you to something good.
And because the Zone content that spawns into a Region is dynamic, the same Region can look radically different between playthroughs while maintaining the same size and flow. Here are three examples of the same Region.
Example: The same region with different zone content spawned across multiple playthroughs
Dynamic POIs
Another way we keep the city feeling fresh and unpredictable between playthroughs is the dynamic placement of POIs (Points of Interest), such as a merchant’s shop, upgrade shrine, resurrection point, etc. We carve out empty sections in each of our Traversal zones where POIs can go, and then choose what to spawn there at instantiation. We’ve intentionally given our POIs varying silhouettes so that as the content changes, so do the sightlines and pathing options. In one playthrough you may jump between three tall rooftops, while in another playthrough that area might be more flat and open to accommodate a hero’s memorial site.
Example: Here’s an area with a POI slot, empty and populated with different POI content.
Dynamic Events
Yet another layer below regions, zones, and POI slots in our procedural nesting doll, we have dynamic events. These are smaller scale overrides of normal level geometry (such as a food truck or garden) with thematic encounters. We created a system that chooses X number of such locations to spawn events into during city instantiation.
Example: Dynamic Event location with standard geometry and with special “miniboss encampment” geometry
Randomized Activity Zone Layouts
Activity Zones are the “dungeons” of Project ZR, themed with modern palettes such as office buildings, warehouses, construction zones, etc. They always contain at least one climactic encounter, as well as the potential for awesome loot and secret vendors, so players want to explore them thoroughly. Because ZR is a game designed for replayability, I wanted to avoid the feeling players sometimes get when they’re on autopilot completing PvE content they’ve seen a dozen times.
To this end, each Activity Zone to has many different versions (via bundled dynamic sublevels) with different cover placements, encounter locations, world objects, and pathing options. For example, in one version of a warehouse, players find a lot of cover on the first floor and a powered elevator to the top floor, where they must carefully navigate broken catwalk bridges while avoiding moving cargo containers. In another playthrough of that same warehouse, they may find less cover on the first floor and a broken elevator that must be repaired before they can proceed to the top floor, where in-tact catwalks make their life a little easier. In an office building, you may find different doors are locked and security beams are activated in different places with varying patterns.
Example: Warehouse Activity Zone with different layouts. This zone has 18 different potential layouts.
Night and Day
I created a time of day system to drive the appearance of different content in the game as well as give players an understandable frame of reference for how much time they have left to extract. Players have three days and four nights to either complete their objective or make it out alive with the treasure in their possession. Days are relatively safe, with players choosing whether or not to engage with difficult content. They can visit merchants and move at their own pace. At night, things get spicier. Enemy AI hordes sometimes come at night, preceded by an escalating soundscape and the moon turning red. The train to extract also comes once a day - at midnight - so a rush to the train platform while being pursued by monsters is a real possibility.
Encounters also grow more difficult with each passing day, so players must decide if they are prepared to survive another day or if they need to catch a train before it’s too late.