Valiants: Arena

About

Valiants: Arena is a competitive turn-based card battle game. Choose your Valiants, form a 2v2 team, and battle in dynamic elemental arenas. Each Valiant has a unique move set you can customize — master your loadout, manage your Tamer, and dominate the ranked ladder.

My Role

I joined Valiants: Arena after the alpha version as a Sr. Game Developer — the project’s core architecture and early systems were already in place when I came on. The Unity programming team was small (me plus 1–2 other developers), embedded in a broader cross-discipline team of 20+ (game design, producers, ownership, 2D and 3D artists, animators, QA).

After the original Tech Lead stepped down, I assumed the Tech Lead role for the remainder of the development cycle. As Tech Lead I took on more meetings, implementation decisions, and direct coordination across all the disciplines above — while continuing to ship features, tools, and infrastructure hands-on.

My very first task post-alpha was making the application core reusable for future projects (the first bullet below); from there the work expanded into tooling, in-game features, build distribution, and live operations.

Here are my contributions on this game:

Feature & Tool Development

• Improved and separated application core logic into multiple packages, reusable in the company’s future projects
• Helped design the GameData system that translates Google Sheets to JSON following a set of rules
• Helped design the internal system that consumes the game data JSON into gameplay logic, simplifying how game designers create new game elements
• Implemented multiple features using the game data structure and system
• Designed and implemented a queue system to send requests to multiple destinations
• Designed Logs and Analytics sender systems that allow the user to define multiple service destinations, configurable and toggleable remotely, working with the requests system
• Implemented PaperTrail, Loggly and New Relic as custom packages
• Implemented an internal Analytics service as a custom package
• Implemented multiple game features, including Team Management and Training Center
• Implemented Google Play and App Store In-App Purchases
• Designed and implemented import and setup asset tools to help artists integrate new content in the game
• Designed and implemented an editor debug menu to simplify the use of developer endpoints, internal testing tools, and internal information display
• Designed and implemented a grid system using Fancy ScrollView that works with any type of internal objects
• Designed and implemented a stats system to be used as a daily mission and possibly as an achievement system
• Designed and implemented a gacha system with video support

Gameplay & Other Systems

• Implemented new gameplay elements like monster traits
• Improved the turn state machine to better surface it in the UI
• Improved a skill order system that works with the turn state machine
• Designed and implemented the game stats system in the server-side Quantum plugin
• Implemented a skin system for monsters and tamers
• Introduced UniWebView to speed up webview integration on mobile devices

DevOps & Build Pipeline

• Improved build scripts to report on GitHub Actions annotations
• Automated how the plugin was uploaded to Quantum servers, with reports to Discord channels
• Helped with bug fixing to fast-release patches whenever a new live build had a major bug
• Designed the internal build distribution workflow on top of the existing CI: branch structure, naming conventions, tagging, and the rules governing when and how a build is triggered and the process it follows through to upload
• Upgraded all packages and the Unity engine version
• Mobile store management:
  • Created and configured Google Play and App Store applications for development and production builds
  • Created and maintained internal and external test tracks and TestFlight builds
  • Helped with the creation of necessary Apple certificates
• Configured and distributed closed testing, alpha, open beta, and soft launch builds in the mobile stores

GitHub & Version Control

• Designed and implemented branch structure and naming rules
• Designed and implemented pull request and merging rules
• Implemented and configured Git LFS
• Implemented useful actions to bump version config files and export DLLs and assets between the Unity and Quantum projects

Debugging Improvements

• Introduced and extended SRDebugger and Proxima Inspector to simplify testing on dev builds
• Introduced dev-mode logic based on build type to enable/disable dev endpoints, commands, and debug options in builds

Collaboration, Communication & Cross-Discipline Support

• Provided extensive support to designers and artists, including fixing UI, Spine 2D, VFX, and Timeline issues
• Reviewed and documented plugins, identifying ones that needed updates or removal
• As Tech Lead: took ownership of planning meetings and implementation decisions, coordinating directly with game designers, producers, ownership, 2D artists, animators, 3D artists, and QA
• Defined the team’s work pipeline — how a task is created, reviewed, worked on, and handed off between disciplines
• Helped create and organize the team’s Jira — board structures, fields, filters, dashboards, and release configuration
• Helped with documentation structure across the team

Links

• Play Valiants
• Steam
• Epic Games
• Google Play

Contact

Feel free to contact me if you want to know more about my role in this or other projects.