Krai Mira Interview

We are re-running an interview by Couchpotato (which was published before, but is new for RPGWatch) with Rostyslav Kravtsiv, the developer of Crimea or Krai Mira as it is named today.

Couchpotato: Welcome and thank you for agreeing to the interview. To get started can you introduce yourself to our readers?

Rostyslav Kravtsiv: Thank you for your interest in Krai Mira. My personality is not something that could be interesting to our future players, so I will just say that my name is Rostyslav Kravtsiv and I am a fan of the original Fallout (1, 2) and some other games where the story and atmosphere were fundamental things.


Couchpotato: How did you get started in game development, and decide to make your own game?

Rostyslav: I started as a web developer in 2001, and my first projects were simple flash games for a corporate website - "Mobile Safari", "Bunny Rush".
Nine years ago I realized that we'll never see a Fallout sequel in a way we like it. In that time I had a great desire to make a mod for Fallout, so I started learning the basics of game development, 3D modelling and animation. In a few months I had a plot, concepts and first models for a future game (in 2006 it was called "Crimea", and in 2007 I chose the name "Krai Mira" for it). Since that time the development passed through a few difficult periods. People joined and left my team, some of them made a significant contribution to the development, some tangled it. Many remember that 'fun' happening when my graphics was stolen by the programmer I invited to the project. After that I had to start working on the code myself, and Krai Mira moved to the Unity3D engine.


Couchpotato: As an avid RPG player I'm curious to know what are your top ten RPG games?

Rostyslav: Top 10 never existed for me. If the game is really good, it takes all your conciousness, making you live the story, and in that time you just can't remember who is on 2nd or 3rd place. Sometimes it was Diablo, SeaDogs, Commandos (not RPG but still fascinating) or even Morrowind. But kalways had something that called me to replay it once again, and replay in a new way.


Couchpotato: What's your opinion of the current Indie RPG market, and the recent trend of crowdfunding?

Rostyslav: The market of Indie games is overcrowded. Accessibility of game engines and plenty of information, tutorials and assets led to a situation where almost anyone can make it's own game in months. That's not bad, in fact it would be impossible to make Krai Mira with the current team 10 years ago. But your game should be really good to be noticeable, taking into account the huge amount of other games on the market.
Crowdfunding does help to find a source for making your game in time, but unfortunately, it usually shows to people only how the product may look in the future. In fact, most of the teams just put some nice arts or hire charismatic actor who tells how interesting it would be to play the game. And very often backers pay for that show. I think the next step will be implementation of some kind of restriction for developers, maybe a requirement to have at least a playable demo.


Couchpotato: Lets talk about your new game called Krai Mira. Can you give a brief overview of the game?

Rostyslav: The basis of a game of this genre, is the story and everything in Krai Mira is revolving around its plot.
The story takes place on vast steppes and deserts, radioactive swamps and forests, of the island affected with nuclear disaster and isolated from the outer world. The year is 2061.

Distinctive settlements are scattered around the island. Some of them are independent, and some are trying to unite in the form of a primitive state, to protect a looming threat from the Western Desert.

How dangerous is it?
To answer this question the protagonist will travel a lot across the island, performing quests, gathering items, trading, gambling and taking part in cruel fights. It's hard to combine alternative quest lines with balanced gameplay in an open game world, but we plan to have at least 3 ways to go through the game.


Couchpotato: Your website says the game is inspired by Fallout so what are the similarities, and what's different?

Rostyslav: Krai Mira may resemble Fallout, as any post-apocalyptic game does. We don't try to make a clone but do want to retain the feeling and atmosphere of an adventure in a post-nuclear world.

There were some things that always looked odd in Fallout... Predator plants and alien creatures, plenty of characters but just few armour sets. There could be some variety in random desert locations. There could be traps and mines. And of course the engine. A modern 3D engine where you can set resolution and quality, control the view rotating and zooming the camera, see real weapon and armor on characters, enjoy effects and particles - explosions, fire smoke, enemy's bodies falling according to the laws of physics. All this is realized in Krai Mira.
Also our game borrows some features from such games as Diablo and Commandos. Field of view and alarms improves the realism of battles, and you also have an option to switch between pseudo-realtime (a mode where all non-player creatures take their turns simultaneously) and traditional turn-based combat.

As for the RPG/stat system - from the start I decided to be realistic and to not overload the game with tons of perks and skills. Yes, it would be great to have such an amount of ways to develop your character as Wasteland 2 offers, but I understand that Krai Mira is an indie game and it would be very difficult to maintain a balanced gameplay with a complex RPG system.

As a desision I took the SHAPE system, which was a simplified mix of GURPS and SPECIAL.


Couchpotato: Krai Mira was launched on IndieGoGo campaign last year, and failed to get funded? Has this affected development at all?

Rostyslav: Of course this was not very encouraging, but it did not kill the development. It only postponed the release of Krai Mira. At that time I had to find a source for living and I had to take freelance jobs and stop the development of the game for a while. Fortunately, later on I got a chance to proceed working fulltime on the project due to an investment, and now I am happy to work on the development of Krai Mira.


Couchpotato: I noticed you offer the game for $1.99 on your website now, and you offer free downloads of every update. Can you explain the low price?

Rostyslav: Currently I don't pay as much attention to this as I pay to development. The game is not completed and we can't ask a higher price for it. But it's not bad to take some refund for working on the project, and also to get some feedback from our future players at the same time.


Couchpotato: How far is development for Krai Mira, and do you have an estimate for a full release date yet?

Rostyslav: Fortunately the most difficult period where I had to start learning programming and making a new game from scratch having only concepts and a plot, has passed. Now we have a playable demo and 98% of the game engine is ready. So release of Krai Mira is just a question of a time. A large amount of work is upcoming, mainly with new settlements, creatures, terrain assets and texts. I think it will be ready in mid-2016.


Couchpotato: That's all for now do you have anything you would like to add before we finish?

Rostyslav: Thank you for your time and consideration. Also I would like to thank everyone who helped with the development. Recently we started a GreenLight campaign, and if you like the idea, please vote for Krai Mira.