Wonderbox: The Adventure Maker
Lead Game Designer
Developer Aquiris
Publisher Apple
Released Mar 2021
Platforms Apple Arcade
Wonderbox: The Adventure Maker is an action-adventure game set in beautiful dioramas, in which players can play endless adventures and create their own. It comes packed with a fun and accessible Creator mode, where by choosing from a myriad of blocks, characters and items, you can build all sorts of stories.
Wonderbox is my biggest achievement so far, and the game I'm most proud of. I started by pitching an idea internally at Aquiris, and ended up co-directing a game with more than 60 people working on it, and leading a team of 6 game designers. It made me learn what it means to be a leader, and level up my game in order to be a good example for my colleagues.
Responsibilities
During the development of Wonderbox, I was responsible for:
• Creating the high concept and designing the pitch that would ultimately ensure the game's successful funding and publishing;
• Defining the initial product strategy, as a live-operated game based on seasonal content expansions;
• Designing and documenting all the core systems before we entered full production, then assisting in the development of all of them;
• Co-directing all aspects of the game along with the Creative Director and the area leads, from art and UI/X to sound and music;
• Designing and aiding my team in designing over 250 game pieces spread over 5 large content packs, and 5 story campaigns;
• Writing character bios, dialogue and item descriptions for 4 large content packs and a few minor releases, then enabling my team to follow through;
• Writing content guidelines and fantasy guidelines for design, art, narrative and marketing;
• Designing complex features post-launch and assisting closely in their development;
• Coordinating the effort of producing Official Adventures and Curated Collections on a weekly basis for close to a year;
• Hiring and guiding a team of up to 6 game and level designers, from the start of production until after the first year of live ops;
• Designing collaborative, thorough processes for my team for level and campaign design, content design, systems design and documentation.
• Defining the initial product strategy, as a live-operated game based on seasonal content expansions;
• Designing and documenting all the core systems before we entered full production, then assisting in the development of all of them;
• Co-directing all aspects of the game along with the Creative Director and the area leads, from art and UI/X to sound and music;
• Designing and aiding my team in designing over 250 game pieces spread over 5 large content packs, and 5 story campaigns;
• Writing character bios, dialogue and item descriptions for 4 large content packs and a few minor releases, then enabling my team to follow through;
• Writing content guidelines and fantasy guidelines for design, art, narrative and marketing;
• Designing complex features post-launch and assisting closely in their development;
• Coordinating the effort of producing Official Adventures and Curated Collections on a weekly basis for close to a year;
• Hiring and guiding a team of up to 6 game and level designers, from the start of production until after the first year of live ops;
• Designing collaborative, thorough processes for my team for level and campaign design, content design, systems design and documentation.
The following section offers a detailed post-mortem of my journey through Wonderbox as the game's Lead Game Designer.
A new adventure
Wonderbox was born from a period of creative idleness following the release of Horizon Chase Turbo. I had been doing a few internal pitches at Aquiris, trying to find what would be our next project alongside other designers.
When a business opportunity arrived in the latter half of 2018, my recent research into japanese box gardens (hakoniwa), a refreshed interest in LEGO among the team and a technique we’d recently discovered for melding 3D shapes into each other coalesced into the final pitch: an endlessly-expansible action-adventure game, in which players would be able to create their own adventures by putting together pieces from varied thematic sets.
Play, Create and Share were the three pillars upon which we planned to build Wonderbox.
With Play, we promised a cheerful, accessible action-adventure platformer heavily inspired by Nintendo games, that would work as a mix of the agility and physicality of Mario, the combat, exploration and problem-solving of Zelda, and the presentation of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, making players traverse worlds distributed in screen-sized dioramas.
For Create, we’d have a solid building system that would expand in themed content packs, inspired by products like LEGO, Dungeons & Dragons and The Sims. Any world in Wonderbox would be made from 3 types of pieces, all self-sufficient and ready to use:
• Blocks are the terrains, buildings, decoration and anything that makes up the scenery, be they static or interactive, like chests and doors.
• Characters are the enemies, NPCs and animals that give life to a world — opposing the player, giving out quests or just chit-chatting about the weather.
• And Items are the things that the player carries with them and allow them agency over the world: weapons, equipment, consumables, tradeables, keys, treasure, etc.
• Blocks are the terrains, buildings, decoration and anything that makes up the scenery, be they static or interactive, like chests and doors.
• Characters are the enemies, NPCs and animals that give life to a world — opposing the player, giving out quests or just chit-chatting about the weather.
• And Items are the things that the player carries with them and allow them agency over the world: weapons, equipment, consumables, tradeables, keys, treasure, etc.
Finally, Share would have players uploading their own adventures online and playing those made by others. The adventure gallery would make all creations available, but we would also offer sustained curation of the best adventures out there, picking from the ones most played and liked, and the ones highlighted by the community.
As the initial vision holder, I started working on the game’s design a few months ahead of the majority of the team, in order to flesh it out on paper before getting started on production. By the time we started officially, we already had the base gameplay and creator systems sorted out from the design side, and were able to plan every new feature with a good head start. This initiative worked out great: not only we released a game that was 100% faithful to the original pitch made to our partners, but we also had minimal rework on core features until launch.
Progress on the design of our first vertical slice, built to validate how an adventure should play out. From the start of my exploration on paper, to a mockup I did in Photoshop, and the final visualization done by our first Concept Artist, Pedro Marcolla.
Avenues of creation
Following the initial conception and the project’s kickoff, I had the pleasure of co-directing Wonderbox in the position of Lead Game Designer. Amilton Diesel, one of Aquiris’s founders and titular Creative Director for the game, realized early that this was shaping up to be a big project, and allowed me plenty of space to help direct the game, as he was knee-deep in the technical aspects of our magic blocks, as well as modeling and technical art direction, and the multiple challenges that came with those.
This made it so that I had a say in every aspect of Wonderbox’s development from the get-go, helping every area come together to bring to shape the idea of a fun, joyful, charismatic action-adventure platformer with easy-to-use creation. To highlight a few core tenets I developed along with area leads, which informed the final product:
Art
Our main goals with art were diversity and familiarity. In Wonderbox, players would create worlds inspired by the media they've seen as children and dreamed of reproducing. That meant their ability to build a world their way was more important than our own unique style showing. So we aimed for familiar palettes and a visual direction that resembled the innocent times of NES and Game Boy games, but reimagined for 3D: we called it pocket epic. We had to avoid the tempting route of super flashy visuals, god-slaying heroism and one-of-a-kind buildings in bold shapes. The world of Wonderbox is a world that, at least at the start, should invoke all the whimsy of playing early RPGs, and leave the brash attitude and giant shoulder pads at the door.
I also designed the 3-part avatar system that is at the core of player progression. Splitting playable characters in head, torso and legs, and allowing players to mix and match as they seemed fit, we made sure there were enough customization options to allow players to express themselves, while preserving the collectible aspect in progression and expansion, due to each piece being chunky enough to be a valuable aspirational item. I also pushed forward the idea of characters being all of the same size and having the same base template, instead of each one being completely unique — both to make expansion viable, as well as to boost the sense of collection through standardization and constrained variability.
Animation
The same art tenets were applied to animation. Characters here couldn't be MOBA-esque assassins running towards their prey. They should look like regular people who stepped out of their village one day and found themselves living an adventure. Not experienced videogame heroes, also not wacky cartoon characters, but people. That meant a certain innocence and clumsiness was welcome, while still keeping things grounded in reality and making it all look fun. A modular design for animations made sure any combination of character parts could use any of the many equippable items.
The same art tenets were applied to animation. Characters here couldn't be MOBA-esque assassins running towards their prey. They should look like regular people who stepped out of their village one day and found themselves living an adventure. Not experienced videogame heroes, also not wacky cartoon characters, but people. That meant a certain innocence and clumsiness was welcome, while still keeping things grounded in reality and making it all look fun. A modular design for animations made sure any combination of character parts could use any of the many equippable items.
UI/X
Ease of use and toy-like wonder were central pillars of the Creator experience we were trying to offer, so the UI Lead and I had to goalkeep against seemingly obvious ideas that could, notwithstanding, make Wonderbox be perceived as more of a game engine — such as an advanced configuration panel for pieces, visual links for doors and contraptions, or a catalog that displayed all creator pieces sorted by category and functionality, with filters and a search. We managed to turn those around into accessible, toy-like dynamics that were a success amongst creators of all ages.
In gameplay, this idea of accessibility and ludicity directly impacted the interface. We designed an interaction system in which, in addition to the equipped items that allow agency over the world, the player has access to two global actions: talking to an NPC and using a scenery element (e.g., opening a chest, pushing a lever, picking up an item, unlocking a door). One of our core premises was to never interrupt gameplay with overlays such as an inventory screen, trade windows and talking portraits: everything happens in the world. So both talking and using happen through contextual speech bubbles, which indicate the opportunity for action along with a button prompt.
While aiming for ease of use, we also ended up discovering that we don’t always want functionalities to be readily accessible — sometimes a feature's rightful place is to be tucked away in a corner. This is particularly noticeable in the Adventure Gallery, in which the path from first to last page takes the player from the certified fun of human curation, through the exciting lands of trending player-made adventures, all the way through the latest uploads and the Search panel, for users who already know what they're doing. This concept of "access layers" ended up permeating the entire game, ensuring the UX has a smooth learning curve, while still maintaining advanced options available when absolutely needed.
Sound
Following the ideas established in art and animation, sound also had to work within the constraints of “pocket epic”. Any SFX or voice had to be gentle, bouncy and charismatic, which proved to be a challenge in effects such as sword slashes and hurt VOs. A well thought-out mix of different sources for each effect, as well as the careful direction of voice acting, by the Sound Lead and Art Director, made sure the task was successful.
Following the ideas established in art and animation, sound also had to work within the constraints of “pocket epic”. Any SFX or voice had to be gentle, bouncy and charismatic, which proved to be a challenge in effects such as sword slashes and hurt VOs. A well thought-out mix of different sources for each effect, as well as the careful direction of voice acting, by the Sound Lead and Art Director, made sure the task was successful.
Music
After a few tests, Amilton had the great idea of calling Eric Chevalier, of Rayman fame, to compose the music for Wonderbox. His compositions are at once whimsical, joyful and dense with activity — the perfect fit for the game. My role here was to find the right fit for how it would appear in a game that had players building their own adventures: would the music happen outside of the creator’s control? Should the creator choose a soundtrack for their adventure when publishing?
I spearheaded the idea of tying the music to the Mood Block chosen by the creator in each scene: Sunny plains? A tune that conveyed the start of an adventure. Foggy woods? Something that made the player both curious and cautious. Sunset? Accomplishment and longing. Each of the compositions branches out into three gameplay variants, depending on the pieces present in the scene: the regular tune plays in most scenarios; a “danger” variant adds tenser elements if the scene has anything dangerous in it; and a “combat” variant kicks in as soon as the player enters a fight.
I designed and detailed this system, and also briefed which feelings each mood and song should evoke, then Mr. Chevalier, along with the Sound Leads, made it happen to a masterful result.
Engineering
Inspired by LEGO’s premise of making new pieces only sparsely and using the most out of existing molds, and by Epic’s idea of empowering designers through the use of design blueprints, we aimed for a system that would eventually allow for designers to expand on gameplay content on their own. We tried to modularize the core functional elements such that, when mixed and matched, it would allow us to create new blocks, items and characters without extra programming costs
This was put in effect to a certain extent for programmers, but our inexperience with Unreal Engine at the start of the project, as well as our choices of team focus when starting development, and the lack of design work on how to build such a modular system, made it so that it didn’t work out as far as empowering designers to implement new pieces.
Live-ops
The main idea I promoted was “novelty within the familiar”, like a new cafe that opens right down the street. Players should see Wonderbox as a comfortable live space, with new player adventures being highlighted daily and weekly (via curated selections and events), and new creator pieces launching seasonally — either individually or through content sets, more expensive to make but refreshing the entire game over both for players and creators. In due time, we could leave the green plains of “pocket epic” behind and start delving into more creative territory.
Sharing the work
For a while, I was involved in absolutely everything being implemented in Wonderbox, gameplay or otherwise. The surge of the global Covid-19 pandemic, with the move to home office, as well as the growing pains of a team that started with a little over ten people and was rapidly approaching 50, prompted an evolution in the way I worked.
I have always had design writing and design drawing at the center of my practice. I believe putting pen to paper and spreading my thoughts on a canvas has multiple benefits, from allowing me to slow down and explore each idea carefully (more so than when typing), to freeing up memory bandwidth in order to find multiple viable alternatives, to being able to visualize and compare all that afterwards. A couple hours of systemic thinking here can save up dozens of programming hours further down the line — specially useful if you're a studio in the developing world strained for manpower.
I had been training my first game design hire, Joarez Santini, on this method, with us having successfully designed up to the third content set, the Scorching Frontier, using post-its and notebooks by the point the pandemic hit. But the move to home office turned this part of the work invisible to the team at large.
Little by little, we started using Miro as a replacement for our post-its and paper. While it's digital and collaborative, it still retains that analogic feel of an open canvas, able to be molded in any shape the design takes us via annotations, drawings, diagrams and post-its. We also started producing more illustrated decks in order to align with colleagues, and iterating quicker on our documentation practices based on feedback, eventually replacing game design documents entirely for Miro boards and user story maps.
As new necessities arose and the design team grew bigger, our Studio Head and the Executive Producer noticed I was all but working double shifts, accumulating functions as area lead, co-director in constant touch with all other teams, and getting down to the nitty gritty of designing and documenting new systems, content and lore. I had too often been tasking my designers with cookie-cutter chores, afraid to delegate, and received mixed results when I delegated bigger issues and left them unattended.
This prompted a change. From this point forward, I understood that my responsibility in Wonderbox was not to design content and systems anymore, but to design good processes that would enable everyone in my team to deliver good content and systems themselves.
We started doing weekly syncs in which I'd act as a mentor and mediator, offering guidance on how each designer could approach their challenges, bringing external references to the table, and inciting discussions when we'd benefit from the whole group's eyes on an issue.
As my team members faced challenges they hadn't seen before, we started laying out concrete processes for each type of task. Each Miro board would more or less start by identifying and understanding the problem we had to solve, would expand into a panel of references from other games and media, as well as from Wonderbox itself, then spread out in a horizontal exploration of alternatives for solutions, and culminate in a vertical exploration of the risks and opportunities in each possible solution. Along with me and the Product Owner, designers would then settle on a final decision and write precise documentation, including detailed story maps and schematics, before kicking their feature off with a presentation to the other teams.
The boards would act as a collaborative medium, a virtual space for syncs, and a register of their work beyond having ideas and documenting. We also took each opportunity to write down mental models, heuristics and guidelines for levels, content, features and text, which acted as design anchors for the whole team afterwards, and starting point for new hires.
A few examples of processes and documentation conducted by my team members in 2021.
By the end of 2021, my team consisted of one content designer, one system designer, two level designers, a technical game designer and a content curator, all delivering complex designs, prototypes and illustrated documentation, and presenting their own achievements weekly for the entire team in sprint reviews. It was a year in which we all grew a lot together, and had now more confidence than ever in our individual and collective deliveries.
In January 2022, I was called to help finish Horizon Chase 2, and could leave Wonderbox certain that the design team would keep doing good work regardless of what challenges came their way.
