Junior game designer at Envision Entertainment, co-dev with Ubisoft Düsseldorf, Mar 2019 – Dec 2020
This new entry in the 30 years old Settlers® series combines detailed simulated economy, logistics, building chains, and real-time battles. Players choose one of three factions to hoard resources, expand territory, and defeat their opponent through superior economy management and tactics.
| Team size | Engine | Genre | Platform | Release |
| ~100 | Snowdrop | Build-up strategy | PC, Nintentdo Switch, Xbox One, Playstation 4, Amazon Luna | February 17th, 2023 |
- Acted as the feature owner of military combat, simulated wildlife, and UI notifications
- Created new and revised existing game design elements independently following specifications by the creative director Volker Wertich
- Developed and documented solutions for design issues in collaboration with the creative director, programmers, artists, and QA
- Verified implemented design elements including qualitative assessment and bug reporting
- Balanced and revised various parameters relating to economy, combat, and map generation
Players are notified about opportunities, but also threats and story events
I spearheaded the UI notification feature just two weeks into my internship. I improved the feature documentation, converting a list of desired notifications into an organized framework of trigger types and messages.
As feature owner, I efficiently incorporated feedback from the kick-off and resolved edge cases during implementation. This streamlined design facilitated my design colleagues’ seamless integration of new notifications throughout game mechanics and the campaign narrative.
I optimized the wildlife, consisting of hundreds of individually simulated animals. Balancing evolved into a complex process of calculations, bug-hunting, and in-game tests to meet performance requirements.
I ensured stable animal populations within the chance-based breeding system with a logistic growth function toward the desired density. In a mechanic rework, I proposed an area-based spawn manager to further reduce the performance overhead, which was later adopted.
Soldiers of the three factions engaging in battle and guarding fortifications
Screenshots from thesettlers.com
As the military combat feature owner, I enhanced the automated battle choreography with an improved unit targeting system. I rebalanced all 20 army units and thoroughly tested various unit compositions.
To deter rush tactics, I strengthened defensive structures and introduced a mutual support system. This was further enhanced by a resource-driven advantage favoring decisive late-game attacks over early aggression.
Moritz Renzikowski 