Tower of Time - Interview @RockPaperShotgun

RockPaperShotgun interviewed one of the developers of Tower of Time.

Tower Of Time [official site] was a tremendous surprise - an early access RPG, from first-time developers, with a unique real-time combat system. That's all three strikes, surely? Except no, it's really fantastic. Having finished the first floor of the tower, what's available for now, I wanted to find out more about how an unknown team from Poland were so audacious as to try (so successfully) at such a project. So I spoke to Krzysztof Monkiewicz, the project's lead, to find out how they got started, and where they're going next.

RPS: Can you tell us a bit about the team behind Tower Of Time? How many of you are there, and what have people worked on before?

Krzysztof Monkiewicz: At the moment we include ten full-time people. During development we contracted a few other freelancers for music, SFX and modelling of characters and environment. The team had experience with several games before, but there were not really any AAA titles. For me, more important than proven experience with large productions was the personality. I was looking for people who are creative, willing to take an active part in the development and not afraid of thinking outside the box. Whether it was a good call - only time will tell, but so far I am very happy with the initial feedback.

RPS: Tower Of Time seems an enormous project for a debut game. Making an RPG is a big enough task, but making one with a new approach to combat - well, that's crazy. How did you decide to start trying?

Monkiewicz: That is utterly crazy, I fully agree. When I announced to my friends that I wanted to leave my previous job (completely different industry) and start in game development, they questioned my mental integrity. However, that was always my dream - to find a way to share my ideas and create games that players will actually want to finish.

As for the scope of the game and genre - I realized we could either start small, create a game that would be a clone of another successful game and hope that it will somehow stand out from the swarm of other indie games, or take a risk and do something large and new. It wasn't a tough decision for me - I took the risk.
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