Skull and Bones

Skull and Bones

Skull and Bones (2023-2025)

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-sg/game/skull-and-bones

Skull and Bones is a naval, online action RPG developed at Ubisoft Singapore that released in February 2024, available on PC (Ubisoft Store, Epic Games, and Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Amazon Luna. At its core, it’s a game about being a pirate in the Indian Ocean in the 1700s, about roaming the seas, and about blasting other ships out of the ocean using assorted powerful weapons on one’s pirate ship.

Players can craft their own pirate ships and equipment for those ships, or loot them from boarded opponent ships.

I joined this project in October 2023 as a Senior Game Designer on the 3Cs combat team, where I played an integral part in orchestrating the design and development of new ships, equipment (weapons, armor, furniture, mods), 3Cs features and playstyle metas for each of the game’s 3-month long seasons, as well as driving balance changes and bugfixes in coordination with the other designers on the 3Cs team.

Below you’ll find some highlights of the work I’ve done on this project, as well as some screenshots (at the bottom).

Game Design

  • Designed and defined evolving playstyle metas and roles and perks of new player ships introduced every season.
  • Provided high-level direction for design of weapons and armor for player ships across ~6 seasons, and designed and implemented many of these myself.
  • Designed, implemented and balanced 80+ ship furniture for player ships across ~6 seasons. These are items that can be equipped on ships to boost stats like damage, reload time, elemental resists or even change up gameplay mechanics in major ways. Overall, they help players define their own playstyle and push that playstyle to the extreme.
  • Designed and implemented Armor Mods available to players in Armor Ascension.
  • Defined and balanced combat ruleset and ship presets for Death Tides PvP mode as part of PvP Strike Team to optimize for action-heavy fun.
  • Defined ship and equipment Tier Rewards for Death Tides progression.
  • Redesigned and rebalanced power progression for player ships and equipment from start to end-game for Y2S1 as ship rank (level) cap increased from 13 to 15.
  • Designed the Arsenal Loadout quality-of-life feature that allows players to save and load ship loadouts and quickly switch between them on the fly.
  • Used player data to identify balance weaknesses, gaps and outliers for player ships and equipment for ~6 seasons.
  • Liaised with NPC AI designers to ensure combat mechanics and equipment available to players could play an integral role vs AI opponents like bosses.
  • Liaised with scriptwriters to define player-facing names and descriptions for new ship equipment.

Other

  • Onboarded and provided guidance for game designer in partner studio in India, ensuring a smooth transition for them taking over as owner of the design for Seasonal equipment from Season ~6 onwards.

Screenshots