Highguard was released in January of 2026 on PC, Xbox Series S/X and Playstation 5.
It's sadly no longer available to play. As Design Director, I was heavily involved in discovering the design of our maps along with the level designers. While I had built many prototypes to figure out our flavor of gameplay throughout our 4 year development cycle, I was luckily able to contribute one Base to the shipping game.
Every level shown is a product
of the whole team, with many assets being designed and
implemented by other departments such as art, fx, audio.
SMUGGLER'S DEN
Base
Once a bustling haven for pirates, thieves, and criminals, this multi-level hideout has now been repurposed by the Iron Vigil as a base for Wardens to use in the field.
In Highguard, a Base is a fortification that each team gets to select. Each base has different strengths and weaknesses that players would ideally learn in order to Raid or defend successfully.
DESIGN
BREAKDOWN
Bases were very fun to design, but they were also a nesting doll of design requirements.
They had to be fun to attack AND defend, with a designed way to "crack" it (with ziplines, abilities, destruction, or sneaky routes via Domesplitters, etc.), all depending on which direction the Raid started from.
Throw in the bomb objectives, vendors, destruction, respawns and directionality, and you have a small deathmatch map that was typically quick and fun to make, but time consuming to playtest and tune.
For Smugglers, the tiered exterior gave defenders lots of platforms to shoot from, and the multi-layered interiors allowed attackers to break in to rooms defenders couldn't get into (without destroying their own walls) to hold and prepare for the next push to the generator.
The open terrain surrounding the base was peppered with explodable barrels, which mostly just helped set the pirate beach theme. Though, I was able to get a few kills with them while defending which was always fun.
The base area was split by cliff rocks, so if attackers raided from the back the base played very differently. There was less height advantage for defenders in this direction, and the B generator site was pretty easy to take. However, from there they had to push through a tight underground hallway to get to the A generator, which was very easy to defend. It was often better to reset and raid from the other direction.
