Space Engineers is a multiplayer space sandbox game where you build your ship / base the way you want to with voxel based asteroids and planets.
My work on it at Keen Software House was a big milestone for my career both in game design and UX.
My responsibilities
As a game designer I was focusing on implementing the planets in the game (the biggest update to the game yet), balancing, UX/UI rework and other various quality of life changes to keep our players happy and entertained.
Rethinking the UI/UX of the game
Analyzing the game's UI/UX and deciding what should the player see and when brought me to my career as a UX Designer, because it made me realize how much I enjoy doing it and it made me realise how much of an impact a good / bad UX has in terms of the game's success.
My focus was on not only coming up with my own ideas, but to also communicate with my colleagues to gather their feedback and ideas to come up with proposals that would push the game to another level. Now combining that with feedback from the players made it much easier for me to understand where are the biggest hurdles of the game and where I should put most of my attention.
My main focus was on the complete rework of the HUD and inventory screens. Even minor changes that contribute to the overall experience add up and the game sells better years after its initial release.
Things like pressing the same button closes inventory, adding toggle functions to sprint and so on made our players very happy that we are paying attention.
These changes made a big difference in the end.
Implementing planets into Space Engineers
I worked with my colleagues to find a good visual style of the planets, their ore distribution (required resource to build ships and buildings with), sound design…, basically, the whole experience.
I also created a steam guide how to mod the planets, suggested animation and balancing changes to how some of the main tools work and some visual changes to both how the voxels behaved – talking about ideas and discussing them with the team was a big part of my daily work routine, as I was trying to make the game fun, understandable, but also so it would run decently well.
Another thing is, that Space Engineers is built around the idea, that anything implemented in the game should be moddable by the community, so I've created a modding guide to help players create their own planets.
Sound is also important
One part of the project was also sound and music to create an authentic and immersive experience tied to each of the planets.
I have cooperated with our sound engineers to create sounds that both fit the art style of the game while keeping game design and communication in mind.
For example if an enemy can be heard further away, the player has more time to prepare and we can avoid unnecessary frustration that someone has died in game because they just didn't expect to see that enemy so close without hearing it.
Watch the trailer for planets below
Screenshots from earlier versions
A lot of work also went into creating a smooth transition from space to a planet through the atmosphere. We created custom clouds that realisticaly move around the planet. More features are planned to add life to planets.
Link to my Steam guide for planets:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=566387835
I worked on definitions on planets that affected material and foliage placement on voxels, the aim was a realistic landscape with interesting horizon, but the gameplay in mind (player movement, implementation of vehicles and so on.)
The Earth
A screenshot of our Alien planet. Here I worked on the definitions to blend the voxel materials realisticaly into each other.
Here you can see Earth from Titan’s surface. This is not how close the planets are in real life.
My job was to design all three moons (gather images, decide how to show the moons in game to make them fun but also to resemble the real ones).
Surface of the Moon. I also worked on Heightmap creation for Space Engieers moons (Europa, Titan, Earth’s Moon)
I also worked closely with our sound engineers to create a believable, high quality and interesting ambient sounds for each planet. I also implemented these sounds in game.