Roblox Experience
All Star Tower Defense
Role
Lead Game Designer
CCU Growth
45k 80k
Team
4
Visits
7.5B
The Ask
A content update, and two hidden problems
Design an original-IP world: This comes with new characters, levels, bosses, numbers, RBX shop, and a storyline to tie it all together.
But I was new to this game and team-- Where do I start?
I started by playing with the very players who loved the game in the most difficult mode-- Endless mode with High Level Players
It was during these sessions, talking with the players, I uncovered
two interesting things
Finding 1:
The Numbers Were The Strategy, And They Were Elsewhere
Problem
I came on not long after launch, so a lot of the game's supporting UI hadn't been built yet. Unit stats weren't shown in the client, which meant anyone who wanted to min-max had to leave the game and open a wiki — and in a tower defense game, the numbers are the strategy.
Game Plan/Solution
Bring the data in. The unit card is where the decision actually happens, so that's where the numbers belong.
Show what each stat goes to on upgrade-- in and out of round
Show what the traits give.. up front not only on the back end
From FIGMA to Live
Result
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Concurrents roughly doubled across that period, from about 45,000 to about 80,000 — that was the whole update, not one change. What the cards did on their own is more specific: the stats are still in the client today, and players don't need a wiki to min-max.
Finding 2:
Bigger numbers are power. Options are strength.
Problem
Endgame here isn't only a damage problem. Crowd control and economy are real strategies, and both were short on units. The easy answer to "make me stronger" is another zero — but that's lazy design, and it's a one-way street. Once you've added a zero, the only move left is another zero.
Game Plan/Solution
The player hadn't run out of damage, they'd run out of ways to play. So build into the two strategies already in the game and underfed: economy and crowd control. Mock the characters up, put them in a match, and test before committing art to any of them. Power becomes options instead of digits.
Economy units built on RNG, so the payout is a moment instead of a tick. The Fisherman pulls something out of the water at the end of every round — usually a boot worth nothing, occasionally the Golden Chest, the biggest payout in the game. You're not watching a number climb, you're waiting to see what he's got.
Crowd control took the same approach from the other side: power you feel as tempo rather than as a figure.
Echastia's Siren Song would CC enemies allowing other towers to do tons of damage.
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Result
The units are still in the game, and a few became meta economy picks — the ones players build around rather than the ones they collect. And nothing that came before them had to be invalidated to make room.
World
The World Breaks As You Get Closer
The levels tell the story. Each stage is more wrecked than the last as you close on the source of it, until you're standing at the thing causing the damage. Elemental runs through all of it — the bosses, the enemies, and the AllStars built to counter them.
In a tower defense game every turn you add is time you're handing or taking away from the player, so the shape of a level is a balance decision as much as a story one.
Lessons & Learnings
What Allstar Taught Me
Listen First, Design After
Both of this update's real wins came out of playing alongside the people who knew the game best — stats stranded on a wiki, and a request for more damage that was really a request for more ways to play.
It's still how I start anything: learn as much as you can before the first approach, and you throw away less after it.