Age of Wonders: Planetfall is a 4X turn-based strategy video game set in a post-collapse sci-fi universe, where players lead one of six distinct factions to rebuild civilization, explore planets, wage tactical combat, and conduct diplomacy in a bid to establish a new galactic empire. The game features two interconnected layers of gameplay: a strategic overworld for managing colonies and researching technology, and tactical, grid-based turn-based combat for engaging enemies. The game was released on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in August 2019 by Triumph Studios, with three expansions shipped after launch.
I joined this project halfway through production as part of my internship. The user interface for this game was developed with Iggy Game UI, which is based on Flash and ActionScript 3. Triumph needed extra hands in the UI department, and since I had prior experience with Flash and ActionScript 3, I began working the summer before my internship officially started. During this time, my main focus was developing user interfaces for the game and maintaining the UI codebase. As Flash was no longer supported and new licenses were unavailable, my colleague and I wrote the entire user interface to shippable quality. After my internship, I was hired to help polish and finalize the game.
It was the first time that Triumph wanted to ship their Age of Wonders title to the consoles, and at that time, there were hardly any other 4X strategy games released on console, let alone with controller support. So a big chunk of my time was spent collaborating with the QA team to figure out a working controller scheme and making sure the experience of the game would not be diminished in comparison to keyboard and mouse. Since Iggy and Flash did not support controllers natively, I played a key role in developing a working controller system as well.
