From MOBAs to Roguelites: The Design Journey of Evercore Heroes: Ascension
Hi there,
Volibar from the Vela Games team, game director on Evercore Ascension: Heroes.
Evercore Heroes: Ascension represents a culmination of my 20-year journey in game development, blending lessons learned from action games, MMORPGs, and MOBAs into a cooperative roguelite experience that we hope breaks new ground for the genre.
As we approach our early access launch, I wanted to share some insights into our design philosophy, the challenges we’ve overcome, and the unique elements that make Evercore Heroes: Ascension special.
Finding My Way to Cooperative Design
My journey in game development began at Activision, where I cut my teeth on action games and learned the fundamentals of level and combat design. But a pivotal moment came when I joined the World of Warcraft beta and discovered the joy of playing with others. That experience fundamentally changed my career trajectory.
I, unsurprisingly in hindsight, found that playing with other people was super fun! I think it’s easy now to forget the real joy that playing with other players can bring, whether they be friends or friends that you make online.
After working on an MMORPG I had the opportunity to move to Riot Games, where I was one of the first 15 team members on League of Legends. Those nine years at Riot taught me invaluable lessons about hero design, player engagement, and community building. By 2017, after nearly a decade at Riot and having moved to Ireland, I felt the pull to build something new again.
That’s when my co-founders and I established Vela Games with a clear mission: create games that let people have fun together. Evercore Heroes: Ascension is our second title, and while it shares a universe with our first game, it represents an entirely different experience and way to play.
The Roguelite Conundrum: Heroes vs. Variety
One of our biggest challenges was reconciling the hero-based gameplay we loved with roguelite conventions. Traditional roguelites typically start with a “paper doll” character that transforms through items and upgrades, while hero-based games rely on distinct identities and playstyles.
How do you adapt a hero kit with distinct visual identity, gameplay feel, and specific abilities to a roguelike or roguelite genre? This was one of the big challenges we’d have to overcome. But, if we could successfully merge these approaches, we would be able to offer a wider range of playstyles for teams to enjoy, where every player could feel they had a distinct and meaningful role.
The solution wasn’t immediately obvious. We experimented extensively, trying to retain enough of each hero’s identity while introducing the run-to-run variation that makes roguelites compelling. This is a balance we continue to refine, but the payoff has been worth the effort.
Designing the Perfect Co-op Playground
Another critical question was determining the right format for a cooperative roguelike environment. Should we create an open-world exploration experience or stick with more classic room-by-room encounters?
After extensive testing, we landed on a classic “roguelike island format” that keeps players naturally grouped together. This design choice was deliberate – we wanted to ensure players couldn’t get massively separated from their teammates, encouraging constant cooperation and allowing us to design encounters around team play.
This approach lets us create moments where teamwork genuinely matters, not as an afterthought but as the core gameplay experience. When every player is roughly in the same place at the same time, we can craft challenges that require coordination, communication, and complementary abilities.
Heroes That Truly Complement Each Other
What truly sets Evercore Heroes: Ascension apart is our approach to hero design and cooperative mechanics. Each hero isn’t just statistically different – they embody completely distinct playstyles even within the same class.
On the hero side, we want to be able to offer people a wide range of playstyles. We have three archetypes (support, damage dealer and tank), but even inside each of those archetypes, each hero plays dramatically differently.
Take our support heroes as an example: Lotus is a melee support who heals allies by engaging in combat – a paladin-type archetype that thrives in the midst of battle. In stark contrast, Beko has no offensive abilities whatsoever, functioning as a pure healer focused entirely on keeping the team alive.
This diversity serves multiple purposes. It creates distinct gameplay experiences, offers entry points for players with different preferences, and enables unique team compositions and synergies. We don’t restrict what heroes you can bring into a run – while a balanced team of tank, support, and damage dealer might be optimal, players are free to experiment with any combination.
The Liberation of Player Freedom
One of our most significant “aha” moments came when we decided to remove as many constraints as possible from the player experience. Early in development, we were caught up in trying to make the game fair and balanced, but eventually realized we were missing the essence of roguelite gameplay - it was a little too RPG-ish still.
This philosophy shift now extends to our reward system. In Evercore Heroes: Ascension, 95% of the time, all players see the same rewards and can make coordinated decisions about their builds. You can all pursue the same build path or diversify based on your roles – the choice belongs to the players.
This freedom creates fascinating dynamics. The same upgrade that grants fire damage has dramatically different implications for a tank, a damage dealer, or a support. Players can discover emergent synergies, like one player setting enemies on fire and another detonating them with a separate ability.
Balance Through Imbalance
Our approach to balance might seem counterintuitive: we’re not trying to perfectly balance everything. Instead, we embrace the roguelite convention of having good runs and bad runs, encouraging players to adapt to what’s in front of them rather than executing the same strategy every time or chasing the same build.
If you attempt one particular build on one particular strategy every time, you’re likely to be disappointed. Instead, use what makes sense as you seek the potential to open up new interesting ways to play.
When balancing hero abilities with team synergy, we pushed individual hero abilities as far as possible, establishing them as the baseline for standard variables in the environment. From there, we invite players to discover team synergies, not just between individual abilities but through the builds they assemble during each run.
This approach enables truly cooperative gameplay that transcends what’s possible in single-player roguelites, and even in many co-op ones.
Learning From you, our Players
Player feedback has been instrumental throughout our development process. We’ve playtested extensively, both internally and with outside players, incorporating their insights to refine the experience.
This approach hasn’t been without its blind spots. In some cases, we were so focused on understanding the depth and replayability of our systems that we missed feedback about fundamental aspects of the experience, like input controls. But, when we get really clear feedback about something we’ve missed, we immediately listen and the game is better for it every time.
This iterative process has helped us build a stronger foundation for the game while maintaining our vision for cooperative roguelite gameplay.
Looking to the Future
As we continue to develop Evercore Heroes: Ascension, we’re excited about the possibilities ahead. We currently have six heroes in the game – two tanks, two damage dealers, and two supports – but production is already underway for more than double that number.
Each new hero introduces fresh playstyles and potential synergies, expanding the game’s depth and replayability. We’re also constantly researching and developing new effects and mechanics that enhance the cooperative experience, including abilities that specifically require multiple players working together – something that simply isn’t possible in games where co-op is an “option”.
Beyond Evercore: A New Approach to Cooperative Play
I believe that cooperative play has tremendous untapped potential across the gaming industry. While there are countless excellent single-player roguelites spanning various genres, cooperative play with roguelite elements adds another layer of thinking and variation that creates uniquely engaging experiences.
My hope is that Evercore Heroes: Ascension can demonstrate the promise of this approach, delivering a compelling cooperative roguelite experience that inspires other developers to explore similar directions in their own projects.
Closing thoughts
Creating Evercore Heroes: Ascension has been a journey of discovery, experimentation, and occasional reinvention. By embracing the tension between hero identity and roguelite variety, prioritizing player freedom, and placing cooperative play at the center of our design, we’ve crafted an experience that feels both familiar and fresh.
As we move into early access, we’re excited to continue this journey with you, our community! We can’t wait to continue refining our systems based on your feedback and expanding the game with new heroes, abilities, and challenges. The road ahead is full of possibilities, and I can’t wait to see how you respond to what we’ve built together.
See you in Ascension!
~Volibar
