A resource mode that quietly forces team variety.
Smuggling Zones
- Role
- Game UI/UX Designer
- Client
- RPG gacha mobile game
- Year
- 2024
Design
- Figma
- Photoshop
AI
- Midjourney
Smuggling Zones is a feature I designed for an RPG gacha mobile game, a resource mode that feeds the gacha grind. Clear a scenario and a zone unlocks: Dark Harbor, Secret Lair, Old Warehouse. Send a team in, wait out the timer, collect a chest of loot graded by rarity up to Legendary that you spend on building heroes. The hook I leaned into: rewards scale with team strength, so one maxed squad cannot farm it all, you have to build several. I designed the whole flow and the wireframes under it, in the game's gold-and-blackletter fantasy skin.
The product
This is an RPG gacha mobile game, the kind where you pull heroes and grind to level them. I designed one slice of it: Smuggling Zones, a mode that hands out the resources the grind runs on. Fantasy setting, gold and blackletter, played in landscape.
What the zones are for
A zone opens once you clear a scenario, and there are several. Each holds a chest of resources on a timer. The real job was not the loot, it was the pressure: rewards are tiered by team strength, so one strong squad hits a ceiling fast. To keep farming, you have to build more teams with different setups. The zone quietly pushes you to play the whole roster.
Brand
I designed inside the game's look: a gold-and-black fantasy skin, blackletter display (Tutbury) over a steadier serif (Benguiat), and a rarity palette doing real work, each tier a colour the player learns to read at a glance.
Colour tokens
From wireframe to screen
Structure first. I greyboxed each screen, the zones list, the zone detail, the team select, then dressed them in the fantasy skin. Same skeleton underneath.
Into the zone
Pick or swap a team, send them in, and the payoff is a gacha chest with the loot revealed by rarity. The loop that keeps the roster growing.
zones, team select and rewards, wireframe to UI
Ordinary, Mystic, Rare and Legendary
tiered rewards push you to run several teams
What I learned
- 01
The design problem was not the loot screen, it was the incentive: tiering rewards by strength varies how people play more than any tutorial.
- 02
Greyboxing every screen first kept the fantasy skin honest. The structure had to hold before the gold went on.
- 03
A clear rarity-colour system keeps a busy gacha screen readable. Players sort by colour before they read a word.
- Game UI/UX
- Ivan Legchilov
- Feature
- Smuggling Zones
- Year
- 2024