Archaelund Interview
Hello David, thanks for agreeing to do this interview.
Hello! I’ve been following the RPGWatch forum and news for over a decade, so it’s my pleasure.
As an Indie developer, you’re probably not overly well known, so could you please give us some background on just who you are and why you’ve decided on a career of Indie game development?
I was born in Madrid (Spain) 49 years ago and have spent my life as a self-taught software developer and IT entrepreneur. RPGs have been my passion since I discovered pen-and-paper games and CRPGs in the 80s and 90s, but my career as developer and manager was centered on “boring” sectors such as trademarking or e-commerce.
It has been a long journey until I released my first game, Exiled Kingdoms, in 2015. Since I was eight years old and got my hands on my new ZX Spectrum+, my first thought was that I wanted to make video games. I was too young to produce anything back then, of course, but in the process I took my first steps in programming, and I never stopped learning new programming languages and techniques. Over the years I started new game projects as a “hobby”, but my business and family took all my time and energy, and I never completed them. Yet the dream never left me.
Finally in 2014 I realized I didn’t just want to make games, I needed to. So I made a serious commitment to try one last time, with the full support of my family. It wasn’t easy, but thankfully, Exiled Kingdoms was a success and since 2016, I’ve been fully dedicated to creating games, and that’s what I intend to keep doing with Archaelund, and beyond.
For those who aren’t yet familiar with Archaelund, could you give us a brief outline of the game?
Archaelund follows the tradition of the good old classic RPGs, where you create a party of adventurers and explore a vast world at your leisure, fighting many battles, meeting friends and enemies, solving mysteries and finding treasure.
But at the same time, it has many innovative and unique features. It is the only game offering dual-view perspective, so the player can explore the world in immersive first person, but when turn-based combat begins, the view switches seamlessly to tactical third person.
The RPG system has taken years to develop, and even in the current Early Access version, it offers a huge variety of options to create your party. You start out with characters with a “basic career”, such as Labourer, Burglar, Squire, or Apprentice. Later on, advanced careers will be unlocked and those characters can turn into more ‘heroic’ knights, arcanists or assassins… or maybe pick other basic careers to combine more varied skills.
Another distinguishing feature would be the truly open world design, in which you really choose what to do or where to go, or how to resolve quests.
The setting is very rich, being the same as in my first game. A declining humanity that barely survived a magical cataclysm, finally returns from exile to explore and settle again in their ancestral homeland.
How big is your team and how do you work together to produce the final product?
I work with several talented 3D artists that at different stages of development have created the game's visual assets. But other than that, I work alone. I do all the coding, game design, writing, and I also design most dungeons and scenarios, using the modular elements created by the artists.
There’s two permanent collaborators that deserve a special mention. Nacho Corva, the amazing 2D artist that has produced all the game’s portraits and loading screens, has also worked endlessly with me to create hundreds of concept drawings, so they could be passed on to 3D artists. Also Laura Ballestrino, the composer and producer, has created the original soundtrack. In a game in which so many hours are spent exploring or fighting, music plays an essential role and it was key for me from the beginning.
What is your development timeline?
The public roadmap currently estimates the release of version 1.0 by Q3 of 2026. My priority, however, is not meeting any deadlines, but being faithful to my vision of the game, so I can’t make promises on exact dates. I’m more focused on the present and the immediate future.
Your previous game, ‘Exiled Kingdoms’ was primarily a solo game with only one possible companion at a time. Why did you decide to change this game to a party system?
It’s not really a ‘change’ from one game to another, both games are very different and can’t really be compared in their mechanics or scope.
Archaelund is a PC game, and it takes advantage of all the desktop capabilities; Exiled Kingdoms was conceived as a mobile game, even if it was later ported to PC. As such, it needed to be simpler than the traditional RPGs that I typically play myself, which are almost always turn-based and party-based. In real time, you can’t control a party without constantly pausing. And in a phone screen, there’s a limit to the complexity you can handle.
Exiled Kingdoms was quite a popular and successful game (well, I enjoyed it). What lessons did you learn from it that you have been able to apply to Archaelund?
I’m glad to hear you liked EK! The biggest lesson I learned is that a complex game needs a lot of player interaction and feedback during development. EK was developed “in installments” released through four years, very much like what we call Early Access today. A lot of the game’s success is owed to the help of thousands of testers and an active community.
Of course I have also learned much as a writer and quest designer; you only need to compare the first quests in Exiled Kingdoms to the last ones I added in 2020 (companion quests) or in 2021 when I released update 1.3. And I look forward to learning more and keep improving.
What games or even books have inspired your development of this game? What things have inspired you?
The single most important influence is tabletop roleplaying games, no doubt. As for cRPGs, there’s not a direct inspiration as such from one single title, but certainly I wanted to offer my own take on what my favorite classic RPGs did so well.
For instance, Pool of Radiance, which is probably my favorite RPG of all time, motivated me to create the dual-perspective that no other game has done (in 3D at least). Of course there’s the Might & Magic exploration, which I find sublime, the greatness of Wizardry 6-8, and games like Arcanum or Fallout with its amazing quest design, or Morrowind with its slow-paced way to weave a unique world around the player. Games such as these, and many more, have shaped my own way to enjoy and design games, even if I never tried to replicate them.
Besides the cRPGs, of course fantasy and sci-fi literature has always inspired me: Tolkien, Asimov, Prattchet, LeGuin and many others.
What do you see as the benefits of doing a chapter by chapter EA development of a game?
There is one big benefit I already mentioned above: the invaluable player feedback can make a game much better. Even large studios that can afford a large internal testing team, are resorting to EA more often because of this.
Also, maturing ideas is always beneficial. There’s many things I thought would be cool, and actually felt clunky when combined with other mechanics… It's good to have some time and perspective and periodically revise design choices.
There’s also benefits for EA players of Archaelund. For one thing it’s cheaper; price will go up as the game gets completed, and even on sale it’ll not go below current price. It’s my way to say “thanks” to people supporting the game from the beginning. Besides that, it’s satisfying to watch something grow and evolve, isn’t it? From the feedback I get, EA players seem to be having a good time.
Is there anything you regret about deciding to take this approach? Didn’t it pose challenges to development and marketing?
No, not at all. And even beyond its convenience, I have to say I enjoy it. Development can be pretty lonely, and I am having a lot of fun interacting with players, even when it’s about bug reports. It’s very satisfying to me to know what people think of my latest update, be it good or bad. Developing a game by yourself and without any feedback, for many years, is a sure way to go insane.
As for marketing… I don’t do any of it, beyond my frequent presence in communities, and keeping people updated on development. At this stage my first priority is making the game as good as it can get, and my second priority is doing it quickly. Of course I want the game to reach many people, but I’m in no particular hurry for it, as the game is still in EA and there will be plenty of time to reach the general public.
What has been the response so far to this game? Are you surprised?
It has been pretty good. Thousands of copies sold, very positive reviews, and the response is getting even better after the last update. Beyond sales and reviews, there’s two things that I find really encouraging: the high activity in Steam forums, and the 60,000 people (and growing) that have the game on their wishlist.
How important is ‘story’ for you in a game?
A tricky question, and an interesting one too! I could answer that the “Story” is key in any RPG, very often what years later we remember fondly about games we loved. But at the same time, at least in the kind of game I want to make, it should always be surrogate to gameplay, because the core of a game is playing it, not reading text walls or watching cutscenes. No matter how well written they are, too much of it turns you from an active player, into a passive watcher/reader. Like sugar in a cake, you need to be careful with it.
I feel there has been a trend in the last decades, especially with RPGs from big studios, in putting the narrative ahead of the mechanics. And maybe they’re right, in the sense of more people enjoying a game when it’s full of twists, romance and witty dialogues. I have nothing against those, of course, but I personally enjoy more the games that put mechanics and gameplay at its core, and then everything else has its place and time around it.
Having said this, Archaelund in its current version, with just about 25% of the final content present, already has 34 quests and 160 dialogues; writing is what takes more of my development time, currently.
Do you add so many side quests to create more variety?
It’s just my design style; I find it very enjoyable to think of small “adventures”, and I think it creates the feeling of a world that is alive, with rival factions, people in trouble, antagonists that are not necessarily evil monsters, etc. It also contributes to the idea that the party is actually a group of wandering adventurers for hire, not just heroes saving the world. At least not at the beginning of the game.
Archaelund follows a story structure very similar to Exiled Kingdoms; there is a main story, but I think the “soul” of the game lies in the dozens of smaller quests scattered around the world. Some of them are silly and simple, some are dark and more complex. Some present difficult choices, some are straightforward.
None of them are “filler”, as when I write a new quest I have a planned reason for it to be there; maybe I want the player to hear of a region that will be visited later, or to introduce certain lore of characters. Or maybe it’s time for some humor and relaxation after a particularly dark scene.
I really enjoy the touches of humour in the game. Is this deliberate, or does it just flow from the situation?
Couldn’t be any other way; I am the kind of person that is constantly joking and laughing about everything in life. Humor is the most satisfying genre to write, but the most difficult too. And the sillier the humor, the harder to pull it off.
The most humorous dialogues or lines are rarely planned in advance. I make many revisions of every quest and sometimes I decide to make them lighter or darker, depending on what I feel is best for the current mood.
You have a complex magic system with multiple classes. Does this cause difficulties with development and why are you offering so much choice? Feel free to comment in depth on your magic system.
Complexity in RPGs can be a blessing or a curse; the important thing to remember is that it’s a means, not an end.
The complexity in Archaelund has the purpose of offering a great variety of characters and parties, so there’s just not one “best” way to play, nor a single strategy that trumps all others. I want the players to have the choice to plan ahead, designing characters that will become more powerful or gain synergies later on as they level up, or instead to create more straightforward character builds that are also viable. It’s important that your party feels truly yours, and that can be only accomplished by meaningful choice.
A secondary objective is, of course, replayability. But even if you’re going to play the game only once, the fact you played it your own way, knowing you discarded other options, is important.
There’s a risk with high complexity, of course; the player can become overwhelmed with too many uninformed choices. I have made a huge effort to make the game very informative to the player, right from the character creation screen. The game also presents stats in a simple and minimalistic way, but every mechanic and dice roll is explained somewhere or reflected in logs, for those that want to dig deep into the rules.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
I just want to thank you and The RPGWatch for the opportunity to reach out to more players! It’s been pretty fun to put my thoughts into words, and it’s not something I do often.
Information about
ArchaelundDeveloper: 4 Dimension Games
SP/MP: Single-player
Setting: Fantasy
Genre: RPG
Combat: Turn-based
Play-time: 20-40 hours
Voice-acting: None
Regions & platforms
Internet
· Homepage
· Platform: PC
· Expected: 2026-09-01
· Publisher: 4 Dimension Games
More information