Cosmosis
Overview​
Cosmosis is a cooperative action RPG where you play as two wizards that harness the power of the stars in order to defeat an impending eldritch evil​
Year
2025
Duration
4 Weeks
Role
Team Size
System/Tech Designer, Project Manager
9
Genres
RPG
COOP
Magic
Ability System
The goal was to create a unique combat system that does not overload the player in terms of options while still having mastery curve.
I ended up deciding a system where the player slots in elements in different slots in their HUD. Based on the slot the element has a different ability. The player can rotate their element clockwise to shift the slot the elements are in, giving them access to new abilities. At the beginning of development I created 3 different slots:
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Primary: Low Mana Cost Attacks, Apply Elemental Affixes
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Secondary: High Mana Costs That Provide Larger Attacks
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Dash: A Trail Left Behind in the Dash Location
Ability System Iterations
Spells
Over the many iterations of the ability system I removed the dash from part of the main ability system for the following Reasons:
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Players having to track three "mana bars" was too difficult.
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Dashing is a very common action in games, our implementation forced the player to rewire how they use it which caused frustration.
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We need a method to restore mana that was better integrated into the ability system and the third slot felt great when testing as the mana restoration method.
Spells
Fire Primary
​Primaries stayed mostly the same throughout the development. The biggest change was making them slightly different in terms of behavior from each other to keep the different elements interesting and create new dynamics.
Fire Secondary
Secondaries were changed from just stronger damaging abilities to abilities with different utility.
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An example of this is the fire secondary acting as an aoe ground effect that the player can move around to constantly apply fire to the enemy.
More
Spell Implementation
I worked with data assets to create different parameters that we could control to balance and change spells easily.
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One of the technical problems I had was not clearing references to enemies that have already died from AOE attacks. I fixed this by reworking how I handle logic and adding an array for the units pending removal.
Script
Reflection
I was given a lot of responsibility this project as I was both the Product Owner and Lead Designer. I learned a lot about leadership and the importance of setting Design Pillars to help guide discussions.
I enjoyed working on the puzzle genre again, it's a genre I have a lot of experience in but this time I had to make sure I keep the challenges simple and intuitive. This meant having to playtest early and make quick and informed changes. It taught me a lot about the difficulties of designing the on-boarding of the game, learnings I will take into future projects.