Wave Of Darkness Interview

Well hello once again my fellow watchers and lurkers! I have a surprise for everyone this time. I was contacted by Igor Gajic, the Community Manager of Dreamatrix Game Studios.

At first I was interested in talking about their last Action-RPG game, Legends of Dawn, and he asked me instead if I was interested in helping him annouce their latest game.

But first let's talk about the developer, and about Legends of Dawn.

Legends of Dawn & General Questions

Couchpotato: Before we start with the questions, can you introduce yourselves?

Marko: I am Marko Banjac, Head of Development at Dreamatrix.

Dino: …and I am Dino Potrebica, managing director. Marko and I co-founded Dreamatrix together.

Chris: I am Christian Dumancic, CTO at Dreamatrix. We are an indie company dedicated to the production and publication of innovative games.

Couchpotato: What are your favorite RPG games you played over the years? A top five list should be good enough.

Marko: Through the ages: Guild Wars, Diablo 2, Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind, Sacred.

Chris: That's [a] tough one, there are too many to count but I would like to mention Eye of the Beholder series, SSI golden box series (from Pools of Radiance to Pools of Darkness, entire Krynn series), Realms of Arkania series, Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale series and Elder Scrolls series, entire Ultima series, Might & Magic series... Many more come to mind.

Couchpotato: What is your opinion about recent gaming trends like KS campaigns, F2P, forced online components, and the streamlining of most games in the last few years?

Marko: KS campaigns – great invention, it allows “small” people to convert part of their dreams into reality. On the other side it allows large companies to present themselves as indie.

F2P – Free to Play, truly amazing waste of time and money.

Forced online components – to put it mildly: pure dislike

Streamlining – I don’t like that simplification concept on PC. We will do the opposite in Wave of Darkness.

Chris: Kickstarter is good way for small teams to gain exposure. It carries its own risk and troubles but all else considered it is a good way to promote your game.

Free 2 Play - I wouldn't go that route. At least not with games we are currently making.

Forced online components – It makes sense from technical standpoint. On one hand piracy is great problem with current games and there is no simple solution to that problem. Forcing parts of the game logic onto developer's server makes sense.

On other hand, there are certain game features we can implement into game that are not related to piracy - auction houses, chat, mail system, item trading and partial or full multiplayer, game patching for non-stam games, content sharing, sharded dungeons or game world parts and more come to mind. Mixing single player with online component is something I would like to explore in the future. Provided players are not against it.

This was actually part of our plan from the start, even before we started working on LOD and Spaceforce. LOD had multiplayer implemented from the beginning, but as soon as the first players noted firewall warnings [like] "this application is trying to access internet" people started talking about developers implementing ways to spy them. Yeah right :-) So we disabled MP component totally and now there is no auction house or everything else I noted before.

Streamlining – If you mean 'streamlining' as in 'making games that are exactly the same as all the other games only with slightly different graphics' then answer is absolutely no. I would rather try to implement game features no one else has, even if those features turn out to be wrong for some reason or not fit into someone's idea of what RPG or fantasy or game mean. We have cursed items in the game. Maybe players will not like that. But just because no one else has them, it does not neccessarily mean that is a bad idea. Spells that become stronger the more you use them? Same answer. Games that don't act as one giant prescripted animation? Same answer. It could be I'm influenced too much with old games (Amiga era) where players had to brainstorm for hours to solve puzzles or whatever but I like to create stuff that other games do not have.

Couchpotato: Over the years, Dreamatrix developed nothing but Sci-fi RTS games and Space Sims. What made you decide to start developing RPG games in the last few years?

Dino: Actually we started developing RPG's long before any other game. At that time decent game engines were all extremely expensive, so we said, in our infinite wisdom, 'let’s make our own'. It so happens that building a game engine takes more time than the game itself so as the engine was being developed, some less challenging game development with it become a possibility. In 2007 Spaceforce Rogue Universe came out and guess what, there were some basic RPG elements built in, far less then we envisioned, nevertheless players really liked those. We wanted to make a Spaceforce Rogue Universe sequel with stronger RPG elements, [but the] contract with publishers prevented us from doing that before 2015 (as we found out later). From the inception of our team, we were always doing something for our RPG dream, only reality was happening as well so we had to do TV commercials, smaller games, music videos etc. We did a lot of things to finally be able to focus totally on RPG's, or in our case, it’s better that we call it “hack’n’rpg”.

Couchpotato: Your most recent game Legends of Dawn was funded on Kickstarter, and released with a lot of negative feedback. Were you discouraged by the overwhelmingly negative reception of Legends of Dawn?

Dino: We also got tons of positive and constructive feedback. “Negative” feedback was deserved, and I don’t believe in negative feedback. It is a feedback, people telling you what they don’t like or want differently and when you strip emotional part the substance of feedback is very constructive as it points to solutions and learnings. When people care they are passionate and then some things may be taken too seriously. When expectations are set, a few disappointments are bound to happen. If you can’t handle that, don’t do games (or anything involving other people). For those who may not know; due to some miscommunication LoD was released on Steam earlier than planned and backers got their keys a few hours after the release as we were rushing through the damage control. It was enough to set [the] stage on fire. A few backers were provoked and become extremely vocal. Those who were publicly supportive of us or our game were attacked and silenced as well. But hey, this is how this works nowadays. Behavior on internet and forums is still evolving from its “wild west” stage and exaggeration is the norm. Anyway 99% of our backers and new owners of Legends of Dawn were supportive and were happily playing the game.

Without the backers, supportive or at some point angry, we wouldn’t be on Steam, nor would we have a chance to develop our upcoming Wave of Darkness. We received so much helpful feedback and the whole experience was amazing. We’ll avoid repeating mistakes, [but] if you are doing anything new and ambitious, can you avoid them all?

Marko: Most importantly, the feedback we got from players, and a lot of them spent over 50 hours (some over 100), was invaluable. What we could, we built in right away in patches. We feel our main limitation was and still is the time so that we can be more interactive with the community.

Chris: I would be more discouraged if there was no feedback. Actually lot of that feedback (when you throw emotions out of it) is extremely good feedback.

Players had problem with Nvidia physics installation? No problem, we fixed it. Physics system is integrated into game and does not require separate software installation. On certain configuration there were memory related problems (actually hard limit of max process addressable space on 32-bit configurations). WOD is now 64-bit. No memory problems whatsoever. Certain AI creatures were annoying with their range based attacks? We fixed it, they are smarter now. They also move better and avoid obstacles in more logical way. Inventory not big enough? We introduced new expandable inventory with better item stacking and sorting. Item purpose not clear enough? New tooltips have more data for every single item type, including runes, potions and spells. Over 40 item types are upgraded and we introduced some new items such as relics, more scrolls, fishes (yes, you can fish now) and bags. Crafting is now completely rewritten. Players can now craft normal items, magical, special, empowered and blessed items.

And this is only the beginning. [The] list of all improvements is large. None of this would be possible without player input. [The] input we received was invaluable and the more we receive it, better the next game will be. We now have a wishlist of all the features players would like and we are working on making them [an] integral part of the game. As I said before, none of this would be possible without player feedback.

Couchpotato:  I see you finally sent out the collector edition this month, a year after the launch of the digital version. A problem I noticed with the physical editions of any Kickstarter game is the delays. Is there a reason for this, and is it something that the developer has no control over?

Dino: Control is an illusion. You can’t control a team member getting seriously ill, other companies going bankrupt, partners giving you false promises, theft, disk failures etc. We could write a book or even better we could make a movie “Challenge-Monsters and Excuse-Fairies, an Indie Developer’s Path”.

Our job is to take control as our understanding and capabilities grow, however achieved control will always be limited by what wasn’t experienced or understood. And just when you think you got [it], Mr. Life has a tendency to click on [the] “shuffle” button and you’ll have to start all over. For example, what do you do when your publisher goes bankrupt and you are in the middle of the development?

Kickstarter is a gentle platform, delays are “built in”, and backers are truly supportive. The struggle that Creators have to go through, including delays or missed features or even a total failure, is a part of the crowdsourcing experience, which all makes it more exciting, provocative and tremendously alive.

We are proud that we eventually delivered 100% including all stretch goals and physical goodies which put us in [a] minority group of creators on Kickstarter. We would be prouder if we could have it done as estimated or at least sooner. To somehow compensate for [the] long wait, we have added a physical copy of remixed soundtrack for our “physical backers”, who had to wait the most, and to “Collectors” it was included with [an] exclusive 20 page booklet. “Digital backers” also got a few more digital extras.

Couchpotato:  So after the last few questions, is there anything you would do differently, and can you share any tips for future crowd-funding developers?

Dino: We have traveled the path once so for the future campaigns, there will be considerably fewer unknowns, fewer risks or not, we’ll consult with Ms. Karma.

Starting a campaign is so time consuming, especially for us as non-native English speakers; it slows down development considerably. Being such a small team means every one of us has to fit in many roles and when we engage in [a] campaign obviously some parts of the project will be paused. If we could afford [it], we would definitely hire one or two full timers to help us with communication with community, writing updates etc.

Regarding tips for crowd sourcing campaigns it would be pretentious to think that we “got it” just from succeeding once. It so much depends on timing, your project, how much time you can put into the campaign, and so on. Form the “beware” category of tips, I would say you could play it safe and reduce your “firsts”, strip out some of your physical rewards or anything that involve[s] outside partner where your control is weaker.

You could always multiply your planned release by some factor to reduce delay risks and related consequences. The question remains; if you never traveled a path, how do you calculate arrival time? Can you predict “challenge-monsters” on your way, can you factor in all this in advance when you give your estimated promise?

If you are not a very experienced team, chances are you will fail at some points. Unsatisfied backer[s] may perceive you as stronger, more potent than you are and will come after you as if you a big bad company with sole intention of taking his hard-earned money. [The] backer may not understand how much impact his harsh sentence may have on motivation of your key team member or on a potential backer or future buyers. Sometimes if you are not there when he wants it, or if you seriously disappoint him, it may provoke him into [a] personal mission to go after you.

If this happens then, as Mr. Rocky Balboa would say, winning is about getting up after the fall, coming back after being bitten, for you too, quitting should not be an option, get up, communicate and fight for your supporters one by one. And hopefully those who appreciate your work will join and help you.

Now we come the  best part of the interview as I was given the chance to announce the developer is working on a  squeal to Legends of Dawn called Wave of Darkness.

I can't wait to share the new information.

Wave of Darkness Questions

Couchpotato: Now we come to the part of your next game called Wave of Darkness. How long has it been in development. And can you share a little information on the game for our readers?

Marko: We have originally envisioned a trilogy so part of the Wave of Darkness has been developed simultaneously with Legends of Dawn, and the rest of the game was being developed continually since LoD release. The story takes place in the world of Narr and continues where we stop in LOD. The player enters the game in times of war and chaos that reigns across the Danian area around their Capitol Sidis Tarea situated in midst of swamps. Featuring a vast and impressive game world, a comprehensive crafting system, original spell generator, system of sacrifices, new gods, adaptable creature AI, compelling storyline, future ‘modding’ capability, streaming technology, mini-games, and endless slashing, blasting and looting, ‘Wave of Darkness’ is a godsend from gamer-heaven to fans of the genre.

As does Legends of Dawn so the Wave of Darkness also sits somewhere between Hack and Slash and RPG. We call it “Hack’n RPG”.

Couchpotato: Is there a set release date for Wave of Darkness, or is it still undecided?

Marko: Game is in beta right now and after crowdsourcing campaign that we are preparing now we’ll put it on Early Access and then we’ll see.

Couchpotato:  How do you plan to fund your sequel? Will you go straight to Steam Early Access, or do you plan to use Kickstarter again?

Dino: In a few weeks we will start Kickstarter Campaign. After that we’ll go to Steam’s Early Access which will be another “first” for us... Release will happen when we collect data from community and implement or improve the most important things.

Most of Wave of Darkness development was funded by sales of Legends of Dawn. Croatian Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Crafts recognized in 2014 our Dreamatrix engine as one of the most innovative products developed locally and they supported further innovation with a small grant so this helps Wave of Darkness as well.

Couchpotato:  What would you guys do differently during the campaign, and development of the game? Also what can you promise the jaded naysayers to bring them back around to help support your project?

Dino: Dedicated community is one of the biggest assets a game developer can have. Before Kickstarter and the release of Legends of Dawn we had none. I feel that with involvement of the community that we started to build on Kickstarter and later on Steam the Wave of Darkness can become one of the genre’s best games ever developed from a truly indie team.

We’ll try involving community much more so Early Access is definitely interesting. We will communicate which elements are outside our reach and try to focus attention to elements of the game play improvements and balance that are within reach.

The advantage we have now is that Legends of Dawn players know exactly what the game is, its weaknesses and potential. After the release we have added a number of changes through patches however the bigger requests required so much work that they had to be put aside for Wave of Darkness where it is much easier to implement. We plan to compile the list of requests that are already implemented.

Chris: One of the biggest concerns players had playing LoD was item management. We introduced runes as the main component required to craft spells and other resources such as metals, bones, wood and herbs used to craft other items. Players collected all of these resources extensively.

This resulted in players having almost all of the inventory space spent on resources of one kind or another. To add insult to injury, there was limit in number of inventory slots and maximum weight players could carry.

In Wave of Darkness we are addressing this problem in various ways.

First of all, there is a change in the way inventory works. Players can now expand their inventory so that they can carry much more items. Bags can be bought in stores or you can find them in various itemholders (chests, locked crates, on bodies of defeated humanoids etc). Each bag expands your total inventory space. This way you can expand your starting inventory that has approximately 14 slots to one that has gargantuan 1000+ slots. This means players can carry bunch of items, provided that they are not overly heavy. Since runes, scrolls, keys and other small items have zero weight; this should be enough for even most demanding players.

(You can see examples of such scrolls in the following pictures: item_06.png)

Also, magical items, blessed or empowered items can now be crafted if you have scrolls describing such items.

Regarding empowered items - some items have magical bonuses which draw their power from certain relics. Player can have up to four such relics active at any given time. These relics improve all item’s special bonuses. For example, if you have empowered 'Long Sword of Fire' which causes +5 fire damage on each hit and if this sword is empowered using Jeweled Skulls, if you have one such skull, your sword will cause +10 fire damage, if you have two skulls, sword will cause +15 fire damage etc. up to +25 fire damage if you have four such relics. There are over 20 types of relics scattered throughout the world and thousands of items (practically all equipable items) that can be empowered using such relics. This means all swords, axes and other weapons, armors, helmets, pants, boots, rings, necklaces, shields and many other items can be empowered in this way. Catch is that they do not all use the same relic to empower them so you will have to choose whether you wish to empower your weapons, or armors, or maybe magical rings.

On the other hand, we have created new types of item parameters. Now, players can find various new magical items. One example of such items are “blessed” items. These items are blessed by one of three main gods - Perun, Svarog or Veles and they give players additional bonuses at the cost - each item has blessing that lasts for up to one hour of gameplay. Once blessing runs out, item behaves as normal non-magical item. Blessings can be 'recharged' using god shrines that are placed throughout the wilderness.

We have added additional data about weapons such as bonuses to weapon type vs. creature, bonuses to critical hit chance whether you are using small weapons (1 handed swords/maces/axes, knives etc.) or large weapons (staves, pole-arms, 2 handed weapons) and more.

We have also introduced minimal requirements required to use certain items, such as minimal ability scores, level or skill required. Also, some items can be used only by characters of certain race or gender.

Item tooltips are heavily updated to reflect all these changes and each item tooltip describes bunch of details regarding specific item. We hope this will give players enough insight into gameplay mechanics without the need to consult the manual. Everything, from basic parameters to magical properties to crafting resources is listed in each item tooltip. Of course, we have also added many new bonuses and expanded all existing items. All the magical bonuses from LOD still remain.

We have also introduced cursed items. In LOD we had identifiable items. These are magical items whose properties player does not know until he identifies such items using oracle stones. Cursed items act in similar way. They look like normal or magical items but they carry curses with them. Once equipped, curse becomes active and item cannot be removed unless you visit the shrine of good god. Curses range from those that prevent you to regenerate health or faith, to those that destroy your ability to cast spells or even those that remove all your resistances making you helpless in any magical fight. Cursed items can be identified the same way players used to identify magical items - by visiting oracle stones.

We have also added scrolls of summoning which summon various creatures to fight at your side. We have various elementals you can summon, undead creatures such as zombies or skeletons, and even some reptiles.

Also, we have added durability to equippable items. Each of these items gets damaged during combat. You can fix them of course. You can buy repair tools and fix all your items as much as you like.

All these changes are just the start. Changes are too numerous to list them all here, and this is only regarding items. You can expect massive improvements on all other fronts too so you can expect much more regarding overall gameplay experience.

Couchpotato: The information you sent me stated the game is not your standard causal RPG, but that it's made for hardcore RPG players. Can you explain what you mean, and give an example on how this will work?

Marko: We must be very careful with how we define our game. Once you put it in a certain category you are against all kinds of expectations, as we learned with Legends of Dawn. When the game is unique in terms of having bits and pieces of a few genres and not fitting any single category exactly, it is challenging to describe it in a short space or little time.

When we said it resembles old school RPG we primarily meant the look, the view and the fact that you are not let by hand and that you might want to use paper and pencil at some point.

For the Wave of Darkness we think the term “hack’n’RPG” is the least off. WoD is not Neverwinter type of RPG, and it is not Diablo type of hack’n’slash either. It sits somewhere in between.

Dino: It is quite special, with its own sets of twists, a few original things and unique mix of familiar stuff.

Marko: Over the time we all played all these games we love, and probably a fraction of each is incorporated inside in WoD. Many players suggested that we make tutorial at the beginning of the game, and we made it. Some of them asked for more informative tooltips. We made it, but still we do not keep the players hand. They will have to find out many things for themselves.

Dino: If you are the type of player who enjoys doing things you are told to do rather than exploring ways HOW to do them or even do them differently than you were told, you might find Wave of Darkness too complicated for your likings.

Couchpotato:  I see the game will be set in a dark and gritty fantasy setting. Is a dark setting mandatory for all new games to sell nowadays? I only ask as other developers have said yes to the question.

Marko: We made a decision about setting many years ago, because we like dark and gritty fantasy setting, we love bloodshed, undead, dirty political games and naive young heroes which always remain optimistic, even when Nekromant arrives. Let me enter my marketing mode; “Who is this dreaded Nekromant that everybody talks about? Yes, he has wings, and looks very unhealthy, but what that obscurant wants? Prepare for an epic journey to stop the wave of darkness that threatens the world of Narr ;-)”

Couchpotato: You also promise the game will not restrict players with invisible walls, and they can explore anywhere they want to. Can you go into detail about you mean?

Marko: WoD is an open game, with many dangers. Taking a wrong path may be fatal.

Dino: Guiding is scarce and you’ll have to do a lot of trial and error attempts.

Couchpotato:  How long will the game length be, and will you be able to replay the game to see different endings?

Marko: Currently we are testing it with 80+ hours of playing, this may increase before the release. Game will have greater replayability, and we hope that player will have different experience every time. End (or endings) is open at the moment and still subject to change.

Couchpotato: Thanks thats all for now and I want to once again thank you for the interview Dreamatrix. I look forward to playing Wave of Darkness, and was wondering if you have anything you would to add before we finish?

Dino: Our primary goal is to create the best game we can. There are only 6 people involved in daily production. We are a very small team and I am honored to be able to work with such truly amazing teammates, talented, hard working. Take a look at what Legends of Dawn is, the size of the world, the complexity and factor in that it is developed with our own engine and add the fact that our financial resources are very small by anyone’s standard. If there was a related category in Guinness book of records Legends of Dawn and even more Wave of Darkness would be good candidates in my not so humble opinion.

Marko: Some Gamers tend to compare games out of the context of who did it and with what kind of resources. Backers tend to understand and value those factors so we hope more and more gamers will join crowdsourcing platforms.

Thank you RPGWatch for having us. Thanks to all readers for reading. Thanks to backers and buyers of Legends of Dawn. Many backers came to us through your portal and we invite all your readers to follow us, to support Wave of Darkness and Dreamatrix Kickstarter campaign, to spread the word and to join early access when the time comes.

Well that's the end of the interview everyone. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. In-case you didn't read the whole interview the game will be on kickstarter in a few weeks from now.

So check back for information on our site at a later date. In the meantime you can check out the following links for more information.

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/dreamatrixgames
Twitter - https://twitter.com/DreamatrixGames
Developers website - www.dreamatrix.net