Legend of Grimrock - Interview @ GameBanshee

GameBanshee caught up with the folks behind Legend of Grimrock, Almost Human. The conversation is mostly about the company and indie development rather than game details and here's a snip:

GB: As an indie developer, it has to be liberating to have virtually no restrictions on creativity. But do you find that this is both a boon and a curse? Have you ever overextended yourselves when chasing "that one unique feature" that your game just has to have?

Petri: It is true that we have virtually no restrictions on creativity but practically speaking indie developers are always restricted by limited resources. Thankfully we happen to be in a good situation because what we lack in resources we can make up with our experience. That means we can estimate with quite good accuracy what we can do and what is beyond our reach. This is very important so that we don't waste precious time by developing features that would have to be cut in the end anyway.

Perhaps the only thing we underestimated was the time and effort needed to create a balanced skill system. The original plan was to make a simple and traditional class based system, but we didn't want to risk the game to be viewed as too simplistic. So, we decided to work extra hard and make a more detailed point buy based skill system but balancing all the skills deemed to be a bigger task than we anticipated. We are quite happy how it is now but we still want to add a little bit of extra and variety before release.