After Anno 1404 was finished work on the addon started right ahead. The addon was meant to introduce some new gameplay features like espionage, political action via the Doges and other things like the Key to the City or hostile takeover and some new goods and monuments. All these features were bound to the new venetian faction, which was not a playable faction but something like the oriental merchants, the king or the other neutral powers.
Level design created a completely new style of islands for the venetians including a mediterranean setting, houses and lighting.
Besides that level design created 15 special scenario levels which are meant to show already established gameplay elements in a totally different light or to simply surprise the players, tell a funny story or challenge the pro players. The scenarios ranged from things like become the pirat king (Geissel der Meere) to a strange labyrinth treasure hunt (Istars Labyrith) with time constraints to the action paced ship race (Hart am Wind).
Defining and creating the venetian islands was quite a lot of fun, especially as you can go in detail so much for such islands. But to come up with lots of ideas for the scenario levels, evaluate them and finally create them, test them and polish them, was extraordinary fun. And knowing by fan comments, the pleople liked them as well. That's the kind of satisfaction you get, if everything works out fine.
Once again I was responsible for planning and supervision of every work involved including other departments. I defined the look and layout of the venetian islands together with the other level designers and was responsible for the concepts and ideas for most of the scenario levels, the creation, testing and polishing of them.
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