Marko Sohrakoff • Game Design

Magic Legends

Content Designer focused on mission pacing, story beats, encounter placement, and modular gameplay. I owned content across instanced missions and open world activities, covering more than a quarter of the game’s instanced content.

Role and Responsibilities

  • Conceptualized and implemented narrative and gameplay driven missions with attention to pacing, beat structure, and encounter placement.
  • Built modular gameplay pieces that could be placed and proliferated quickly across instanced and open world content.
  • Used an AI director to tune intensity, pacing, and peaks and valleys by controlling procedural enemy spawns throughout missions.
  • Developed Finite State Machines in a proprietary scripting language for narrative vignettes and gameplay. Examples include a random monster selector, a tug of war objective controller, and multi-scene narrative beat runners.
  • Created and used Behavior Trees to script story vignettes for openings, mid-combat moments, and outros.

Systems I Used and Extended

AI Director

Tuned encounter pressure by adjusting spawn composition, delay windows, and patrol redirects. Escalation tables create readable beats without exhausting the player.

Finite State Machines

Authored mission logic and vignette sequencing. Libraries included a random selector for monsters, a lane control script for tug of war, and a mission progress/UI hooks.

Behavior Trees

Built NPC performances for intros, mid-mission interjections, and finishes that react to player state and encounter outcomes.

Walkthrough: “In Chains” (PAX Demo)

Video: PAX demo “In Chains”.

  1. Setup and On-Ramp. Player enters the mission with no combat and instead mission framing vignettes.
  2. First Spike. A narative driven combat takes place using hand placed encounters. This is an intentional beat where we wanted consistent combat instead of relying on the AI director.
  3. Arc end and breadcrumb. Players are given instructions to continue on, the AI director begins for this traversal beat.
  4. Mid Mission Intensity. A scripted event begins happening midway through the travels, a giant dragon straffing run for mid mission tension spikes. There are volumes established throughout the playspace to trigger on player enter and begin the straffing run.
  5. Build to the Boss. As players approach the boss battle there is a mini wave event where players must destroy Wards blocking their way. During this beat players are swarmed by enemies.
  6. Boss Resolution and Outro. The final beat mixes behavior tree vignettes and narrative staging leading towards the missions boss battle and outro.