Dofus Arena

DOFUS-Arena is a MOBA F2P game I worked on while @Ankama. Interestingly enough, it’s turn based combat!

As I started forking on the Wakfu MMO, we decided as a team to use the engine we were developing in the revamp of a side project the company had, DOFUS-Arena.
Arena was a small game, in extended beta, that got released “as-is” without any real plan on what to do with it. We saw this as a perfect opportunity to both use it as a case study of our new engine (but with a smaller, more manageable project) and to revitalize the game.

So I went back to the drawing board and we pulled off a combination of turn-based fight goodness and card game collection mechanics. I more or less redesigned everything from scratch mechanics-wise while preserving the original feel of the gameplay while making the game revolve around the player himself, with a persistent metagame, competitive ladder matches, clan fights, team tournaments, and so on.

We deployed new server technology, a new client in Java (compared to the old Flash 5 one, yikes), and eventually, thanks to the manpower borrowed from the Wakfu team, the game ended up gorgeous.

Arena can be seen a tactical MOBA were fights are resolved in turn-by-turn, and there are in-app purchases to allow the player to access to more play opportunities (new powers, etc)…

Fact is, I like this game: the fights are relatively short and stylish, the community is so great it’s showing off in conventions with tournaments and such.