Umbra - Preview & Interview

Umbra has already reached 6 of 13 stretch goals on Kickstarter with 8 days to go.

Nathan O'Grady (Invision Game Community) has written down his first impressions - some snippets:

Umbra is an upcoming next-gen hack n’ slash title from indie developers SolarFall Games. Their first project as a team of like minded games industry professionals, Umbra is inspired by Diablo II and aims to offer plays a rich RPG action adventure with huge levels of personalisation, customisation, open gameplay and excitement. The game is currently pre-alpha, and is just under two weeks away from completing its successful Kickstarter campaign. I was invited to take a look at just a small piece of what Umbra was all about ahead of any initial builds being completed, and I was happy to accept the offer!

(...)

The level which I played through in Umbra was remarkably well constructed considering it was randomly generated. Things did not look at all out of place, and if you did not know better you would believe the dungeon which I found myself fighting through had been purpose built rather than created by a computer as I sat and waited. My mission was to claim a bounty in this dungeon, which of course lay on the head of an enemy towards the end of it. As I fought my way through, I had plenty of chance to try out different skills, appreciate the environment around me, and generally just enjoy the game. I felt comfortable playing, and happy with the entire experience around me, which for a single level in a pre-alpha game is a pretty impressive achievement too. Everything flowed well from start to finish, and I was never caught out by any nasty bugs or problems. It all felt very nice to play.

As a whole then, my first look at Umbra was a very positive experience indeed. I did not find anything I didn’t like about what I was seeing or what I was playing – it all felt extremely well developed for a project which as yet is in a very early stage of development. There are a number of other exciting features which I did not get to see which sound like they will be fantastic additions to the game too, such as fully customisable house building and multiplayer co-op and challenges among many others. At this very early stage then, Umbra already appears to be surpassing what anyone would likely be expecting of it. If things continue along a similar road, the final product will be well worth the investment of the backers who have helped it!

Zulai Serrano (iDigitalTimes) has interviewed Lead Programmer and Game Director at SolarFall Games Daniel Dolui:
Umbra: The Modder-Friendly Indie Game That May Put Skyrim To Shame

Some snippets:

iDigi: Players will be able to customize their homes in Umbra. Can you elaborate on the housing system and what makes it unique?

The house will be built thanks to resources find during the game. You will need to first look for the requested elements and then collect them, and then come back to where you want your house and create it. You will be able to customize the ground and the walls, choose how to light the house and decorate with varied furniture.

The best housing element will be unlocked thanks to achievement in the game, and you will be able to create a statue of your own self slaying a boss for example!Another cool feature about housing in Umbra is the ability to build your home and showcase weapons, armors and other items all over the place!

iDigi: How customizable is the game? Will it be modder-friendly (like Skyrim) when the time comes?

I started to develop games as a modder, so I would love that people change and mod the game as much as they want. Pretty much all game system and assets of Umbra are based on XML files, really easy and obvious to edit. We know that modding is something that can really push a game and we want to offer the possibility to people to really change the face of the game.

So integration of assets to our game system should be quite easy. If people want to go deeper into customization, they will then need to access Crytek’s Sandbox. It is a Crytek product, so we won’t be able to distribute it. The current version is currently available on subscription on Steam, but some assets are still compatible with FreeSDK, especially for weapon, props and animation creation.