Hero Squad
OVERVIEW
Hero Squad! is a mobile hybrid-casual action game where players build and upgrade a squad to survive waves of enemies. The game combines army progression, unit collection, battlefield exploration, skill upgrades, rewards, and long-term meta progression.
My work focused on level design, balancing, progression, QA, and data-driven iteration.
MY ROLE
Level Design & Balancing
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Designed and iterated combat layouts, world progression, enemy waves, and reward pacing.
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Balanced difficulty curves across worlds, waves, units, skills, and rewards.
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Worked on systems such as unit unlock order, skill tree progression, lootboxes, shop rewards, and rewarded video placements.
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Used player data to identify friction points, improve retention, and adjust progression.
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Tested builds regularly, reported issues, and collaborated with programmers& artists to improve the player experience.
Design & Iteration Process
For Hero Squad!, I worked on both the player-facing experience and the underlying balancing.
I created and adjusted level layouts, tested enemy placement, tuned wave difficulty, and reviewed progression data to understand where players were progressing, struggling, or dropping off.
Some iterations focused on improving early-game clarity, while others focused on deeper systems such as rewards, unit unlocks, shop behavior, and long-term progression.
Example of unit balancing for Hero Squad!
Data & Balancing
During development, I analyzed player behavior to guide design decisions.
For example, in one 3-day data review, we tracked unit usage, perk usage, rewarded video distribution, shop behavior, briefcase openings, and hero upgrades. The data showed that players were more attracted to the FBI shop than the normal perk shop, that rewarded videos were strongly used for some rewards, and that 72% of users visited the Hero tab.
Slide from the data document I created for Hero Squad!
This helped us identify what players actually used, what they ignored, and where the progression or reward systems needed to be adjusted.