Wild Guardians is a game with quite some tricky features to design, due to the asymmetrical competitive multiplayer and genre. Some aspects that are always designed by developers on traditional Tower Defense games had to be simplified to allow players to edit them easily without removing the depth and strategy of the genre.

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An editor that allowed the player to customize the waves and path the enemy player would play against was an important feature, as the game needed to maintain all key mechanics from the genre.

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The editor had to be simple enough so the player could change all the strategy within a few minutes, but deep enough so that many strategies could emerge from it.

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Wave Editor

Every Tower Defense game depends on big groups of enemies that attack the player. As the editor had to be simple, the most obvious choice was to group enemies on packs of the same kind (troops), all with the same relative strength. This way, each one of the 3 waves of the player was formed with 4 troops of different units, each one spawning after the previous one.

(To maintain the relative strength of all troops and balance the game towards the 2nd and 3rd wave, the minions on this waves received a bonus of Health Points to face the stronger towers after the early game)

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Although, the mix between different minions is what expands the potential strategy of a tower defense, and the premise of the system only allowed the mix of minions with very different speed values (faster minions would catch slower ones while walking the path), and it would be difficult for minions with similar values to mix. The system required another way to mix troops that could be controlled just by moving different kind of troops next to each other considering their values:

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Base Stats (Shown to the player): Speed, Health points, Attack*, and Minion Number.

Spawn Stats (Invisible to the player): Time between Minions, Time after Squads** and Minions per Squad.

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*Attack: Damage dealt to the Player's HPs when reaching the end of the level.

**Squad: Each Troop is divided equitably in Squads to separate the troop when encountering bifurcations on the path.

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Additionally, to better define troops, each one is classified with a species and a class. The species defines the base stats of the troop, while the class defines the passive ability that determines its role on the formation.

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Having troops of the same species with same spawn values and Minions per Squad allowed them to be mixed easily, only the Minions per Squad value had to be divided by the number of adjacent troops of the same species, intercalating divided Squads to create Squads formed by minions with different roles and similar speed values.

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With this, the system allowed the creation of waves with thousands of possibilities just by dragging troops to the specific spots on the formation, even combining different types of minions to generate interesting challenges to the enemy while keeping all combinations playable.

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Path Editor

The other big aspect of a tower defense game is the path where the game is played. Different players need to have different paths in order to grant diversity to the game, as every new path generates a series of interesting choices on the enemy player's tower placement crucial for the Tower Defense genre.

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The risk here is that being the player the one that edits the path, the most shorter and frustrating path will always be the better choice, as the objective becomes disturbing the enemy player and giving the troops the best means to get to the end of the path alive.

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On the final version of the game, paths are unique items that can be purchased. Every path also has specific tower spots, and it cannot be edited except for additional traps or power ups that don't modify the path. Each one is designed to make games interesting and the player only has to choose the best one for his strategy among the 65 available maps and their respective upgrades. (Using tillable maps allowed for a fast design and iteration on the level design)

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Although, an alternative for user created paths had to be presented, a system used by players to draw their own paths that avoid repetition and frustration while remaining playable.

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With a minimum tiles value, every path created by the user could be long enough for the enemy player to defeat the player's minions, but the main challenge here was placing the tower spots, finding a way to avoid players designing paths that avoid tower spots or prevented their placement in case of being automatically placed in adjacent tiles to the path.

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Using this grid and a minimum tile length, the player would've been able to draw a map with the enough turns to be playable, automatically placing guardian spots on the X tiles adjacent to the path and avoiding the player from drawing the path on top of the guardian spots tiles before they are placed.

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Although this option could've been possible, the pre-designed paths still granted the player with multiple decisions to make and new interesting shapes through the progression of the game that kept it fresh for a longer time, along with a better control over the theme and prop distribution.

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The combination of this two systems provided Wild Guardians with an infinite amount of levels to play and strategies to emerge, while keeping the essence of the tower defense genre and avoiding player frustration and complexity.

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