Dark Souls - Reprise

I've gone back to Dark Souls.  This isn't really a surprise.  Ever since I bought it the game has been a constant distraction.  It's seen off plenty of honest-to-goodness blockbusters during that time; including Skyrim, Battlefield 3, something that I think had Batman in it and most recently Dragon's Dogma.  These other, inferior, games have occupied my spare time for short bursts here and there - but Dark Souls has always been waiting in the background for me to come to my senses and return to its unforgiving arms.

I've got some idea as to why that is and I've already detailed what makes the game different to so many other things on the market.  Even so, this is quite something here.  For a game to occupy that space for 9 months is unheard of.  I'm beginning to worry that this is a sign of a creeping problem, that I'm going to end up unable to leave the house - sitting here endlessly doing the run through Undead Burg until I finish it without getting hit and parrying every single opponent.  Because the game is just so deep.  There is so much to it.  It's hard to stop.

My current project is to go through the entire game without advancing in level.  This is a response, really, an attempt to re-capture that crushing difficulty which made the first play through so amazing.  It reminds me of eating chilli or something - there's a reaction to the pain.  Maybe endorphins are released, God knows what it is, but it's making me try to make this hard game even harder.  To be honest, I'd kind of forgotten how difficult it really is.  And the brilliant thing about it is that it's made me start thinking again about how I can maximise every advantage.

Because once you've finished the game once it gets (kind of) easy.  You know where stuff is and you know how the weapon improvement thing works and you can use this knowledge to make things a lot more manageable.  And not only do you know this, but so do most other people - so when you summon them they're also totally tooled up supermen and off you go merrily laying waste to enemies that were once the bane of your very lives.  Now this is fun, sure, but it's not quite the same as it was way back when.  So I started trying to recapture how it was the first time.  When I did NG+ I decided to do it only using Black Knight equipment.  Now, to be entirely honest, this is hardly a massive hindrance.  Black Knights have good armour and very big, hurty, stabby axes and swords and things; so it's all good.  The only problem I had was in the catacombs.  Down there you need Divine weapons - and I couldn't use them.  So I spent a lot of time kicking skeletons off bridges and making suicide attacks on fellas with lanterns in their beards.

Anyway, that was then.  This is now.  As a starting level character I have a pitiful amount of health.  I also (stupidly) picked a character with 9 strength.  This means I can't use any straight sword, and only one metal shield.  I am an idiot.  If any of you are thinking of following in my footsteps then DON'T PICK THE THIEF, that's all I'm going to say.  But!  This has made me think about how to overcome the (huge, slobbering) obstacles in my path and has inspired me to give the following tips to anybody who might fancy doing the same....

1.  I said this just now but... DON'T PICK THE BLOODY THIEF!!!  Pick the Knight or, even better, pick a weapon you might want to use and pick the character that can use it.
2.  Poison.  Poison.  Poison.  Lovely, useful poison.  This is your greatest friend and companion.  Three arrows will take down a Royal Sentinel (the big guys in the hall in Anor Londo.)  Two arrows will kill most other things.  Poisoned throwing knives, dung pies - whatever.  Use them and use them often.
3.  Pyromancy doesn't have any statistic requirements.  I'm just going to say that.
4.  Pick your weapons.  There is no point using anything other than fire, chaos fire or lightning.  And divine, obviously, for the catacombs.
5.  Pick your equipment carefully.  Most armour can be improved to +10, special stuff to +5 and things like the gold-hemmed set, not at all.  Bear in mind that some items can look bad to start with, but really reward you if you max them out.
6. Your maximum equip load will only ever be increased by items, so stick to light armour if you want to be mobile.
7.   A heater shield, available from the Male Undead Merchant, has the lowest strength requirement for any shield which stops 100% of physical damage. 
8.  Practice your technique.  Going toe to toe is not advisable.  Dodge.  A lot.  Parry.  Not only does it mean you don't have to spend ages dancing about, it is also monumentally cool.  You will feel like some kind of Dark Souls god.
9. Don't feel like you have to do everything.  Your aim is to beat the game.  You don't have to kill everyone to do so.
10. You will not be able to summon anybody, or be summoned, much past Undead Parish.  Save your humanity so that you can summon Solaire for Ornstein and Smough - you'll need him.

Finally, there will be times when you wonder why you are doing this.  You are doing this for the same reason that Edmund Hillary conquered Everest; so that, like him, you can say  "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off."  Assuming, of course, that you know someone called George.

Torchlight 2 Preview

This is turning out to be a good year for fans of clicky, killy, looty, dungeon crawling games.  Diablo III was released a few weeks ago (to equal parts acclaim and gnashing of teeth), Path of Exile is coming along nicely, and Runic Games are releasing the follow up to their surprise 2009 hit Torchlight “this summer.”  Recently Runic invited people to take part in a beta testing weekend and we jumped at the chance to get our hands on the game and put it through its paces.

In action RPGs like this the player explores a series of randomly generated dungeons (or outdoor areas), battling monsters and collecting loot.  There is usually a story about some great evil or other but the important bits are fighting, levelling up and collecting the lovely, shiny valuables that litter the ground.  Action plays out in real time and the player is controlled with a click of the mouse to make them move or attack enemies and hotkeys to select which skills to use, potions to drink etc.  The plentiful treasure is mostly randomly generated and weapons and armour can be common, magical, rare or unique - with each category denoted by a different colour.

Loot, glorious loot

The temptation here is to compare Torchlight II to Diablo III - not only because they are being released so close together but also because the Runic team includes people who worked on the first two Diablo games.  However, I don’t really want to do that as I think that this game deserves to be treated on its own merits and, probably more pertinently, I wouldn’t be able to anyway as my experience of Diablo only extends as far as the recent beta.  All I will say is that it will be possible to play Torchlight II in single player mode without any internet connection, you can choose different difficulty settings from the start, there will be no real money auction house, it will cost £15 / $20 to buy and I had no problems logging in at any point in the whole process.  

The boys are back in town

So, that said, what’s Torchlight II actually like?  Well, it takes everything from the first Torchlight game and does what a sequel should do.  It makes it bigger and better.  To start with there are now more, completely different, classes.  Players can take their pick from Embermage, Outlander, Engineer or Berserker – all with differing skills and options.  I didn’t have time to complete the beta with all four classes but I did with the Engineer, and the class can take a number of different paths, from tank to summoner to melee specialist.  By the end of my playthrough I had a small robot army following me about, with a healing bot, a gunbot and some extremely useful suicidal spider mines which threw themselves at any visible enemy before exploding.  Great stuff.

Ah, look at his little face!

And, of course, you have a man’s (or woman’s) best friend - your pet.  You can choose your companion from lots of different animal types, ranging from a mundane cat or dog to a quite odd velociraptor / cassowary mix, called a chakawary; and with panthers, wolves, hawks and ferrets also available there really is a pet to suit everybody.  You will soon come to rely completely on them.  They are good in a scrap - often better than your main character and you can give them special pet equipment to protect them and enhance their abilities even further.  They can cast spells for you (there is no finer sight in the world than a dog summoning some zombies to lend a decaying hand) or carry all your excess goodies and take them back to town to sell them - which enables you to stay out in the field for longer.  You can even give them a shopping list of items to buy in town.  Run out of identify scrolls or healing potions?  Tell Fido to stop off at the shop and get you some!  “What’s that Lassie?  They’re stuck down a mine and they need four... no, five healing potions?” “Woof!”

Ah yes, my favourite holiday destination

Players are also no longer confined to Torchlight itself.  The action is much more expansive and takes place over a much wider area - including (gasp) the outdoors.  This makes a nice change from the original game’s often quite claustrophobic tunnels and gives a much greater sense of exploring and travelling to specific destinations, rather than just getting to the next set of stairs going down. The beta offered a number of different, and quite distinct, areas to explore, from steppes to mountain passes, and the full game will offer many more.  Some of the areas are really quite large and contain a number of sub-quests and side missions which you can complete before getting on with your main task.  They can also include some special randomised locations, such as abandoned altars, which provide rewards when conquered.

Multiplayer has also been added, and this is the mode that was being tested during the beta weekend.  It works in pretty standard fashion, with players able to join games that others have set up or set up their own.  You can protect them with passwords and set it so that only your friends can join, or you can join in with a bunch of strangers and run around killing things together.  Loot is discrete, in that each player will receive their own stash, and enemy difficulty scales according to how many players are in the area.  This all ran very smoothly during the test, with little lag or other problems.  As other games have shown, this may change when the game is actually released - but so far, so good.

Great.  Spiders.

Ultimately what Torchlight II does is boil gaming down to its essence.  It provides you with an endless, relentless stream of enemies to kill and rewards to gather – all just by clicking the mouse.  There is something almost primeval about it, it appeals to that bit of the brain we share with lizards.  Every few seconds you progress in some way - whether it’s a new weapon, another level or just some gold, and everything increases exponentially the further you get.  Your damage goes up, your level goes up, you get more powerful, the monsters get harder, the weapons get better and it keeps going up and up and up in an unending addictive spiral of death, destruction and cute (but vicious) animals.  The great achievement here is that, despite it being simple, Runic manage to make this so much fun that you forget what it is you’re actually doing and instead become focused on getting to the next skill, the next level or the next weapon.  Torchlight II is a blast to play.  Runic have another hit on their hands.

Xenonauts - Kickstarter

We recently said that you should keep a beady little eye on X-Com re-make Xenonauts.  Well, we have some good news for you - it’s now on Kickstarter  and there’s a demo.


Xenonauts is a re-make of the 1993 classic X-Com: UFO Defense (known here as UFO: Enemy Unknown), in which players take charge of an elite anti-alien force and defend the world from invasion.  Despite being almost 20 years old X-Com is regularly voted as one of the greatest games ever made and it has spawned a number of imitators - none of which have managed to capture that certain something which made the original so brilliant.  

Xenonauts is the latest game to attempt to do this and it has been in production for a couple of years. The developers, Goldhawk Interactive, have decided to use fashionable funding source Kickstarter to get the money necessary to finish the game properly.  They have already raised $75,000 and have released a demo to help convince people to support them.


Kickstarter is becoming an increasingly crowded marketplace, with lots of projects all vying for your attention, so what’s the game actually like?  Well... I have played it and my considered opinion is as follows.

Firstly, let me say that I don’t love Xenonauts.  I am IN LOVE with Xenonauts.  I want to take it home and do unspeakable things to it.  I want to hold it and tell it that everything will be OK.  I want it to have my children.  I want to cherish it and keep it safe for all time.  Am I making myself quite clear?  Ever since UFO: Enemy Unknown was first released I have yearned for and dreamed of a proper re-make.  Something that does full justice to the brilliance of the original.  I am pleased to tell you that this is it.  Finally.  All those years of heartache, all those pretenders to the throne, all those false dawns - they’re over.  That longed for day has finally arrived.

Because Xenonauts doesn’t just slavishly copy what has gone before - it takes it, gives it a slap around the chops and drags it kicking and screaming into the 21st century.  Not only have the graphics had a complete rework (and the hand drawn interface screens in particular look lovely), but everything has been re-designed and streamlined.  A lot of the micro-management has been removed.  There’s no more ordering missiles or running out of rifle ammo - you have an infinite supply, which arrives automatically.  You can rename your troops and view them in order of strength, accuracy or any statistic you like.  You give them their guns in base, with their attributes clearly visible on the same screen.  When you move your troops in battle it tells you how many action points will be left.  Your landing craft even have more than one door!  Goldhawk have obviously gone through X-Com and fixed every single minor irritation that it contained - and that bodes very well for the finished game.

And, as well as the small things, a number of more crucial aspects have also been changed.  For example, the interception process has been completely revamped.  You now control individual fighters, with different characteristics and weaponry - and you can even combine them into a squadron to take down the more difficult enemies.  You direct these fighters on a two-dimensional screen to outflank their targets, and gain missile lock whilst avoiding return fire.  Even within the confines of the demo it is clear that different UFOs will pose different levels of challenge - with fighters proving more difficult to destroy than scouts and the whole experience is much more interactive than in the original game.


So Xenonauts has kept what is great, tweaked what is out of date and completely changed what it thinks needs to be changed.  And the important thing is that all of these choices and decisions have, so far, been spot on.  It really is looking like this is finally the game that we’ve all been waiting for.

But don’t take my word for it.  Please don’t.  Go and play the demo.  It’s a bit buggy, yes, it is an alpha after all - but if you liked X-Com or if you have any kind of beautiful soul burning bright within you then play this game.  It is quite simply wonderful and I can’t wait for it to be finished.

Warlock: Master of the Arcane

Warlock: Master of the Arcane is a new grand strategy game from those lovely people at Paradox Interactive.  And, as you can see from the screenshots, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Civilization V - is it just the same game with a different skin?  Or is there more to it than that?

Well, without spoiling the rest of the review, Warlock does share many, many characteristics with Civilization V (and most other 4X games.)  You control cities and armies, spending turns building up your empire and trying to defeat your opponents or working towards one of the victory conditions.  Warlock’s combat is also very similar to Civilization’s - with the controversial “one unit per tile” rule firmly in place and archers able to fire for about 5 miles without handicap.  In fact, as time and space are essentially finite, it’s probably better for me to tell you which bits of Warlock differ from the norm - so that you can decide whether you want to buy it.

Ratmen.  More games need ratmen.

To start with, and pretty obviously with a name like Warlock: Master of the Arcane, this is a game with a fantasy setting.  You can play as one of three different races (humans, monsters or undead) - each with different buildings and different units.  One of the best bits about Warlock is the sheer number of potential troop types available to you.  From goblin archers to rogues, imps, ghost wolves, zombies, earth elementals, rats, strong rats and ratmen - the roster reads like a who’s who of every fantasy game of the past thirty years.  What’s more, as your minions fight they gain experience and you can pick perks to enhance their lethality (lethalness?).  There is something very exciting about creating and commanding your own fantasy army and letting it loose to lay waste to the surrounding countryside - and this provides one of the main reasons to play Warlock.  

This is certainly helped by the fact that the world that you live in (and lay waste to) is full to the brim with monsters.  You can’t move three hexes without bumping into the mangy little beggars.  This makes your surroundings much more of a living, breathing environment than would otherwise be the case.  The monsters are a source of experience for your troops, and their lairs provide loot for your budding kingdom - but they also make you feel like you are exploring, rather than just trying to work towards your victory goal. There is a real sense with this game that there are secrets and wonders hidden away behind the fog of war that surrounds you.  A good example of this are the sea monsters.  A Leviathan, or a sea serpent, will quickly kill your caravel or equivalent in a way that is reminiscent of old maps with “here be dragons” fearfully scrawled across them.  The world is full of dangers for your troops,especially at the beginning of the game, and this can lend some genuine tension to moving units before you have gained access to the more powerful armies.

Welcome to the new world, same as the old world

This sense of exploration is enhanced by another addition to Warlock - alternate planes.  There are portals on the world map which lead to locations in dimensions other than your own.  Your troops can go through these and explore these worlds, which often contain great perils and great rewards.  It’s a good idea, but unfortunately the execution leaves a lot to be desired.  The new dimensions don’t actually appear to be too different to your own.  They use the same tileset and the rewards are the standard gold or mana - there are just a lot of powerful monsters living there.  It would have been great if these worlds were truly different and your troops were transported to a hell, or a heaven - or something truly remarkable.  As it is, they provide a nice distraction and a challenge but it could have been so much more.

Another difference between Warlock and other strategy games is that, well, you are a warlock.  This may sound obvious but, as an archmage, you are able to research spells.  This takes the place of the more normal technology research that appears in (cough) other games and provides another strategic dimension to the goings on.  Spells can have many and varied effects - teleportation, summoning, buffs for your troops or the more direct fireball and its ilk which deal damage straight to your enemies.  These can often turn the tide of a battle, but beware because your enemies also possess them and will use them often and to great effect.

So this all sounds great - it’s a grand strategy game with a fantasy setting, alternate dimensions, loads of cool troops to command and some decent spells with which to destroy large portions of the countryside.  What’s not to love?  Well, unfortunately it’s not all rosy and  there are some problems that we probably need to talk about.

It might look like butter wouldn’t melt but she’s evil, EVIL I TELL YOU!

Let’s start with diplomacy.  It is present but it is very limited.  You can ally or trade with other mages, you can declare war or you can demand tribute and that’s about it.  If another mage contacts you to ask for gold or mana then the only options available are  “yes, take all my stuff” or “no, have at you sir, this is war”.  There are no subtleties, no negotiations, nothing except “yes” or “no”.  It’s all very basic, and this is a shame because it turns the other leaders, who actually look quite interesting and varied, into mere pictures because they all act the same.  For example, in a recent game I bumped into “Anna the Benign”.  I reasoned that she’d probably be a pacifist, especially as my leader was also a human good type.  Before long, however, she was gleefully breaking stereotypes, demanding gold and threatening war.  The leaders don’t seem to have any personalities of their own, they all give the same responses to the same situations as their peers.

Another probem area is religion.  This is present in Warlock but it is, again, undefined and very basic.  There are eight gods in Ardania and your relationship with them varies according to whether you complete their quests or not.  If you annoy a god sufficiently he will send an avatar to smite you, and defeating this is one of the ways to win the game.  On the other hand, cultivate a decent working relationship with a god and you can access extra units and different spells.  This all sounds good, but there are no backgrounds to any of them.  They’re just names.  You can work out a bit about them from the spells they control but it would have been so much better to know who it is exactly that you’re worshipping.  If you’re playing the Lich King you don’t want to be following some namby pamby nature god, do you?

Hang on... you’re an ELF?!?

And both of these issues reflect a more general problem with Warlock.  It lacks polish.  For example when you have finished giving orders to a unit you have to press the “Assign Orders” button to move on to the next, the game doesn’t do that automatically.  You can feel sometimes that you are fighting the interface and it makes moving a large number of troops a real chore.  Similarly the spell research screen doesn’t seem to follow any system.  You would expect that all fire spells, or all healing spells, or all summon spells or however you want to classify them would follow on from each other but they don’t.  The selection appears to be completely random.  It means that you can’t follow a particular path for your mage, because you don’t know which path to follow or even if there is a path at all.

So where does this leave us?  It would be easy to dismiss Warlock as just a Civ V mod.  It isn’t, and I think that this is lazy and unfair.  It’s true that it does share a lot of similarities with its “inspiration” but it also introduces and uses a number of other really interesting ideas.  However, the main problem is that a lot of these ideas aren’t implemented fully, or with enough polish.  As it stands the game should be commended for creating a very good strategy / exploration mix, and allowing the player to assemble a motley fantasy army with which to wreak havoc - but it could have been so much more. It falls just short of greatness, and that is a real shame.

NEO Scavenger Developer Q&A - Part 2

Welcome back to our chat with NEO Scavenger developer Daniel Fedor.  This is Part 2 (you can see Part 1 here) and we discuss the game itself, and the plans for its future.


Your first project is NEO Scavenger - which is a turn-based, quite traditional, RPG with an emphasis on crafting and survival.  Tell us about that.

Turn-based play was actually a big consideration for me when I set out to make the game. I enjoy having the time to really consider my next action, to enjoy the problem solving, and not be pressured by time constraints nor other players. I enjoy twitch games too, but sometimes, I just want to sit down and leisurely enjoy a rich, challenging game.

The crafting and survival aspects of the game are largely borne of my love for post apocalyptic settings. In a post apocalyptic world, one has to look at items with new eyes, and imagine creative ways of using limited resources. It reminds me of my childhood days of scavenging junk to make forts, and rummaging through piles of Lego, trying to find a serviceable part for my creation. Post apocalyptic settings also offer the ability to tell two stories simultaneously: that of the world gone by, as well as those who live among its ruins.

RPGs also played a big role in my childhood. My friends and I would spend hours in elaborate campaigns, and even more time researching and designing settings, adventures, and characters between sessions. I wanted to capture the creative problem solving aspects I enjoyed so much from those games. Players will quickly notice that encounters in NEO Scavenger have multiple solutions, and I try to encourage these creative approaches.


The game is quite "hardcore" - with (perma) death coming easily and often. Is this something that will be true of the final version, and what made you decide to take this approach?

As much as possible, yes, it will be a part of the final version. Knowing that everything is on the line makes decisions more interesting, and the game more compelling. There's this one quest, after the player has spent quite a while struggling to just stay alive, where they're presented with a foreboding building they must enter. I've had three separate people tell me that when they saw that house, they thought about all the times they nearly died trying to just stay fed and sheltered, and decided "nope, I'm not going in there."

That's exactly the kind of role-playing I was hoping for. If the player could just save their game before entering the house, and reload at any time later, they'd do just that. The mystery of the house wouldn't be a reward for the brave anymore, just more content to consume.

There are still some bugs to work out, though. Many things in the game can kill a player regardless of the player's preparedness, and that's not cool. Like in traditional RPGs, I want death to be something of a joint failure between the player and I. Either the player took an unnecessary risk, was lazy, or I didn't provide the necessary in-game tools. That'll take some work to sort out, but that's the goal.

There's also the question of how to handle death once the game's plot gets longer. I plan to extend the plot beyond what's currently in the demo and beta, and the longer that plot becomes, the more annoying death becomes. For now, death is a minor setback, and a chance to try a different approach. But if the plot gets long enough, death may be more frustrating than fun. There are ways to address that, and I'll have to see what works best. But I definitely want to maintain the "hardcore" feel that's there now. It's part of what sets NEO Scavenger apart from the "can't fail" games that exist.

There are lots of items in the game which give the player pieces of the back story.  Is the plot and background of the game already all worked out? Or is that still being developed?

A good deal of work has been done creating the setting and overall plot structure, but details still need working out. Ultimately, NEO Scavenger takes place in a world in which I'd like to tell many stories. NEO Scavenger is meant to be a sort of introductory episode in a series of games in the same universe. So it'll reveal a pretty wide-but-shallow collection of setting and plot info, and leave further detail to future games in the setting.


You seem keen to involve your players in helping you develop the game, through the forum and by voting on features.  Is this something which you think is important?  

I definitely want players to feel like they have a voice. Part of the reason I started this whole enterprise was because I wanted more creative input into games, and this is a way to share that experience with customers.

The feature voting was an experiment with letting paying customers help drive the development priorities. Most studios will engage their customers in forums, and this can be a great way to get feedback. However, forums can often be misleading, as the volume of discussion may not accurately reflect the number of customers who care about it. Offering paying customers the ability to vote means that I'm seeing an accurate representation of what paying customers want, in proportion to the amount of money they think it's worth.

How many of the proposed features do you hope to be able to implement?

Everything! Seriously, though, the features up for voting are all ones that I'd like to see added, finances permitting. I have a vision for what I think the game should be, and the voting is meant to help with prioritizing that vision, rather than changing it.

If I had to choose only a few from that list, it actually wouldn't be too different than the current voting ranks. The game needs at least a little more plot work before I'd be satisfied. And combat is still really rough. I'd like to work out a richer system for that, allowing the same sort of creative latitude as the rest of the encounters in the game. I see the value in a larger resolution, though I could technically live without it. And the rest are mostly for variety more than anything.


How important is it for you that people support the game now, while it is still in development?  Would you be able to finish the game if people didn't do this?

If nobody had supported the game, I probably would've worked on a bit more plot, wrapped it up, and moved on to a new game. Having people support the game early has allowed me to do a huge amount of refinement to NEO Scavenger, including adding some new features. In particular, the new day/night, visibility, AI, and camp additions were mechanics which probably would've been skipped without outside support and feedback. So having people participate in both the funding and design of the game was a big deal.

I'm not sure how much more I can afford to work on before I need to move on, but extending the plot is still an obligation I'm imposing on myself. Even if I had to go get a job at the supermarket to pay the bills tomorrow, customers at least deserve some more plot.

So, with all this in mind, when do you think you’ll be able to release the game?

A final version? It's hard to say. Probably no sooner than June 2012, if I were to start wrapping up plot work tomorrow. I estimate it'd take at least that long to create and test the content. However, if pre-sales pick up again, it might be enough to fund a new feature or two, so that would protract the schedule.

Ideally, I'd have enough funds to flesh out the plot some more, fix up combat and wounding, and add some extra variety to the game's collection of items and creatures. I could then start selling a downloadable copy from my own site, as well as shop it around other channels, such as Steam and Desura. And hopefully it would be enough to start work on future installments, probably with a continuation of the plot. I could see this option taking more like 3-4 months to complete.

So sometime in the summer, perhaps? Of course, my original estimation was 4 months all-told, for a September 2011 release. We can see how accurate that was!


So, there you have it.  We’re very excited about this game.  Hopefully some of you are too and will want to support it, and enable Daniel to put in all the features that he has planned.  Don’t forget that you can do that, and much more, on the website.

We would like to say thanks to Daniel for answering all of our questions.  Don’t forget to check back here once the game is finished for a full review!

NEO Scavenger Developer Q&A - Part 1

If you’re a reader of the Indie Review (and if not, why not?) then you may remember that we recently flagged up NEO Scavenger as “One to Watch”.  For those of you who don’t know, NEO Scavenger is a post-apocalyptic, turn-based, survival RPG currently in development by Blue Bottle Games.  There is a playable demo available on their site, and you can support them with actual money in return for access to the current beta build (and the full game when available.)

We recently got the chance to talk to Blue Bottle head honcho Daniel Fedor about, well everything really - from career choices to the game itself.  This, here, is Part 1 of that chat and we cover Daniel’s background and his inspirations.  Tomorrow we’ll give you Part 2 - in which we talk more specifically about NEO Scavenger, how it’s got to where it is now and what the plans are for the future.


So, what made you want to leave a big company, like Bioware, and take the leap into the relative insecurity of being an indie games developer?

I think it was creative freedom, more than anything else. At a company like BioWare, you've got 800 employees spread across maybe half a dozen projects, and most of them want creative input. Even in the most democratic situations, that doesn't amount to a lot of creative input per person.

What's more, the roles I was hired into aren't ideal for someone who wants to design games and make them reality. As a tech artist, I was mostly in charge of tools and art pipelines. And as an associate producer, it was more facilitation and administrivia. Rarely did I get a chance to design a game system, write code for it, draw art for it, or tinker in writing, audio, or business analysis. I longed for an opportunity to really let loose and try some ideas out.

I did have the pleasure of working on two small research projects there, however. In each, I was part of a small team, and we got to experiment with gameplay and systems. Given the team size, we all had a lot of input, and had to wear many hats. They were some of the greatest moments in my career. They were brief, though, and years apart. I wanted more of that.

How is that decision going?  Any regrets?

I love it! So far, it's been a steady trip to the poor house, but every dollar spent has been worth it. I get an enormous amount of satisfaction out of my job each day, and I feel it has really catapulted my skill development. One could say it was an investment in myself. It still may pay off, if I can manage to make something salesworthy and get enough exposure. However, even if it doesn't, I've got a game that I love, a company I'm proud of, and a few hundred fans who like my work. And if I ever want to go back to working for someone else, perhaps I can get into a role with more creative input now. That's a pretty good worst-case!

Do you have any advice for other people thinking of doing the same thing?

Yes, a ton of it! Part of my goal in going indie was to document the process and share it with others. That documentation is in the form of my blog: “game dev gone rogue”

In it, I share learned wisdom from my successes and failures, including finances, motivation, public relations, creativity, and more. Blogs like mine were what helped me prepare for my journey, so I hope to do the same for others.

If I had to choose a few of the more important lessons, one would definitely be to give yourself enough financial breathing room to make a serious go of it. You'll need at least a year to find your footing and release a game. Maybe more. I just crossed the 1-year anniversary of my resignation from BioWare this month, and I'm still not profitable.

Which segues nicely into another important lesson: start small. I failed to limit the scope of my first game, and instead of having a few games done by now, I have one game partially done. That's bad for business, as it puts all my eggs in one basket. If NEO Scavenger fails to be profitable, I'm broke and looking for a job. If I had done a few smaller games, I'd have more chances at one of them being profitable enough to sustain me.

Finally, I'll borrow some wisdom from John Romero: stop waiting for permission. I think I was one of the people he described, who thought that if I just go through the motions long enough, someone will walk up to me and say, "now it's your turn. What game do you want to make?" Well, there's only one person in the universe who's ever going to say that to you: you.


You describe yourself as a "huge RPG nerd". Which games have inspired you?

As kids, we played a ton of AD&D. Pretty much all of the campaign settings. We also played quite a bit of Rifts and Shadowrun. Outside of those, we dipped our toes in Car Wars, Traveller, Twilight 2000, Mage: The Ascension, and GURPS, and I bought at least half a dozen RPGs just to enjoy reading the rules and settings.

In the realm of video games, I was big into CRPGs like Fallout, Shadowrun (Sega Genesis), Baldur's Gate, Arcanum, Nethack...man, this could be a long list. Looking over the stuff on my shelf, I think there are definitely some front-runners in the list of direct inspiration.

Rifts is a big one, for sure. I really enjoyed the mix of sci-fi and supernatural horror in a post apocalyptic setting. It went a bit bonkers, true, but the core concept was really cool to me. Arcanum had a similar tech/magic mixture, and offered a cozy paradise for the scavenging type.

GURPS's mechanics were always fascinating to me (and therefore Fallout's). The idea that one chooses a balance of advantages and disadvantages really grew on me later in life, as it forced more interesting role-playing and problem solving. You'll find that direct influence in NEO Scavenger right from the start, when choosing skills and traits.

The GDW games like Traveller and T:2000 were awesome because of their attention to detail and realism. I like my science fiction moderately hard, and most of the tech in NEO Scavenger is meant to be plausibly grounded.

Finally, the way magic is handled in Mage: The Ascension is really attractive to me. That it works in various and mysterious ways, and cannot be fully understood nor explained, is really cool to me. I'm annoyed by games where magic is formulaic to the point where a spell is just a +/- stat and one of the four Greek elements. Old D&D had some cool magic: the kind that was so idiosyncratic and full of contradictions that it felt like a forbidden art. If I can capture the mystery and power of magic like they did, I'll be happy.

There are a ton of other games that inspired NEO Scavenger, which itself is really just a collection of things I like from gaming. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, Deus Ex, Civilization, Silent Storm, Nethack...there are just so many games I've been influenced by, it'd be hard to list them all.


Why do you think classic CRPGs like this stopped getting made?  

It's just capitalism at work. Market pressures and development costs drive much of what we see in the games market. Most studios try to find the intersection of games they want to make with games they can afford to make. If more people throw down cash for games like Call of Duty, more games like Call of Duty get made.

Once in a while, a studio decides to take a risk and make something different. Most of the time, it's a failure, and that behaviour is punished by bankruptcy. Very occasionally, it's a hit, and then there's a new gold rush to that genre.

Do you think they're coming back into fashion?

The hand-painted, turn-based, isometric CRPGs many of us fell in love with faded away because other genres were a better bet, financially. They just evolved out of the market. The reason we're starting to see them crop up again is because the cost of making and publishing them has gone down. I can write a game using off the shelf tools for a fraction of the cost and effort it took a decade ago, and then sell it through an increasing number of channels, including my own website.

When the barriers drop like that, we see more games with more variety. It enables people like me to afford taking the risk.


Your website says that you want to "try to leverage piracy as a tool".  What does that mean?

Ultimately, I want people to play my game, and I want to keep making games. As long as those two things are true, I'm happy. Piracy means more people are playing my game, so the only real question is whether piracy diminishes my chances of continuing to make games.

I think that sites like Good Old Games have realized that people who are going to buy the game will do so even if it's available to pirate. I tend to agree. Customers will be customers, and pirates be pirates. If you believe that, then piracy doesn't negatively impact sales. It just means more people play the game, talk about it, and maybe that reaches the ears of additional customers. Piracy can actually be a valuable advertising tool for a cash-strapped indie with no marketing budget.

Besides, DRM takes time to make, which could otherwise be spent adding value to the game. And since adding DRM risks annoying customers and, at best, only delays piracy, it seems like a really bad investment.

And that ends the first part of our interview... be sure to check back tomorrow  - when we’ll be talking about the game itself.  (You can see Part 2 here)