Goin' Haywire: Terminal

Overview

Goin' Haywire: Terminal is a fast-paced action shooter where every second counts and every misplaced bullet is a setback. A Christmas market in Red Rock's famous Hyper Terminal has been overrun by masked gang members. Shoot your way out and clear out the bad guys.

This was the third Goin' Haywire game, built in six weeks for the Christmas update by a team of two level designers. I led the project, choosing the location and reviewing the logic, in parallel with leading a second team on So You Think You Can Fly, a drone sky race.

My Role

• Chose the Hyper Terminal as the setting. It is one of the most striking places on the map, but MindsEye only uses it for its opening scenes.
• Directed the level design
  • Placed gates to control pacing. Each gate either extends the player's combo or swaps their weapon.
  • Positioned AI so enemies always approach head on, in a steady flow that never becomes repetitive.
  • Matched each weapon to the space, so its range suits the enemies as the level opens up and narrows.
  • Built hard boundaries from advertising boards and market stalls, so the walls look like part of the market.
  • Left soft boundaries, such as hedges to jump and staircases to run behind, so players can leave the main track while the correct route stays highlighted.
• Worked with the art team to create a festive but deadly feel, adding hats, masks, stalls and presents.

What I Built

• Started from the existing Goin Haywire template and carried out a major refactor of its logic to bring it up to a new standard, with small tweaks to improve the gameplay.
• Scoring rewards momentum and precision. Every kill or gate raises the multiplier, the combo is always draining, and overall accuracy is applied to the final score.
• Ended the level with a set-piece shoot-out against elves and a Santa. A drone crashes into the middle of the map and a wave of AI descends on the player for a final crescendo.

Challenge

The Hyper Terminal was never built for a shoot-out. To give players a fair chance of seeing the AI shooting at them, we retrofitted the space with cover, using plant pots filled with gifts and advertising boards. The cover was placed so players could keep closing in on enemies and flow through the level.

Result

Terminal was the best piece of content in the Christmas update. With the highest player count of that seasonal update.

Lessons

Knowledge, terminology and expectations should not be expected to be shared throughout the whole company or even your own department. In this project even with having a clear brief, jumping in calls with the art team and staying that 10 extra minutes really helped us save time in the long term. When discussing where and why boundaries should be placed as well as getting into demonstration of gameplay, and exposing how cover and line of sight was required within the flow of gameplay we were able to find better solutions than initially proposed.