#if we talking from a gameplay perspective then Mountain would be the best choice for me

[pizzaochcola]

oh to pick between Mountain, Saga, Mostima, or Saileach~~

[viropaulski-blog]

WHAT IS VIRO MOVE

Viro Move is one of the VR Fitness products from the team at FitReality.

This particular product is a free roaming game. As gamers and developers, we all tend to spend a lot of our lives sitting in front of our beloved gaming machines, when you work and play in the same area it’s obvious you’re not going to move very much. And so our challenge was simple, how we can use VR to help gamers to move more. As we progressed with the idea of moving gamers we realized our game was beginning to feel like a real workout. Meaning we were really beginning to sweat and feel the burn as we tested our early levels.

So we invited fitness experts into the development process to help us to mimic actual aerobics workouts, instantly we found that by stretching gameplay to the very edge we were now able to maneuver players to move around the game zone. Suddenly we had a game idea that was both engaging and healthy, and with that eureka moment Viro was born. So in a way Viro Move is our most important product of all because this is the one product which we built as gamers for gamers.

If you know our industry you will know that pitching a VR fitness game to the VR community is no easy feat. You guys know how the best VR games should look and feel, from a development sense exposing our game to the community will help us gather the right type of feedback to ensure Viro Move is the absolute best it can be.

As gamers -this is our baby. For the whole team, this will be a lifetime dream realized. We have been extra critical of every element of the game, even the tiniest details have had long late-night debates in the office. We debate and argue a lot because as gamers, we want other gamers to love the game as much as we do.

So VIRO MOVE is a free-roaming full body workout VR  game. If you are a VR gamer, you will know the BEAT SABER concept. And it will make sense if I tell you VIRO MOVE is a bit like BEAT SABER – but on steroids. For those of you who don’t know BeatSaber, I say – “OMG why not!”

BeatSabre – you have our deepest respect!

It is an amazing game that allows players to slice boxes to the beat of the soundtrack. The gaming community went wild for the gameplay. From a developer’s perspective, this game helped to propel the VR gaming community forward, faster and wider than almost all others in our industry.

Fans of that game will be happy to hear that our game has all the same wonderful game mechanics. Custom beat mapped music and that highly addictive sword slashing gameplay which amazed Jimmy Fallon and the entire VR gaming community.

In VIRO MOVE we also incorporated other game mechanics such as boxing, shooting, stretching, in-game weapons changing. Additionally, all of our levels are based on the movements from actual fitness routines. Our level designers worked with personal trainers and physiotherapists to create full body in-game movements that mimic fitness routines across multiple cardio workouts.

We began by green-screening our designers performing specific aerobics movements and then moved on to mapping specific movements from weapons training all the way to shadow boxing. For example, during a sword fight, you will complete Zumba, aerobics, dance and Kenjutsu movements without ever really knowing -You are very welcome.

*Our level designer Pawel, building lunges into his swordplay.

We designed the in-game immersive elements with an insanely high level of graphical environments along with the widest choice of intricately detailed weapons, obstacles, and environments.

Personally, I’ve played dozens of VR games, so it is difficult to shock me. However, when I first immersed myself into a Viro environment – things were moving in the background, birds were flying, the grass was blowing all around me. I mean, the guys didn’t have to make the random things in the background move for this game to be amazing, we could have had success with a much simpler environment. But the team believed the immersive experience is equally as important as the fitness routines, and honestly – it is.

Our developers pretty much incorporated every VR fitness mechanic that’s been proven to move virtual man, even invented a few new ones -and all that before the design team went back again to polish the tiniest detail. Then -and only then, they found ways to make those perfectly textured tiny details in the background move with the wind, the experience is unbelievable.

VIRO MOVE FITNESS AND WEAPONS TRAINING

Our game has incorporated boxing gloves, swords and guns as weapons to help players feel fully immersed in the gameplay. These weapons also help us to deliver training movements specific to each fighting style. I can honestly say – as an aspiring graphic designer, watching our artists drop highly detailed weapon skins every week, truly is a thing of beauty.

I’m not just blowing our trumpet here -at least, not much I hope. But I am in awe every time I see a new weapon appear. I mean, how could you not be? The weapons look so realistic, I’m super excited anytime one of the designers mails me a video flyover of his new weapon, the level of detail is inspiring. It’s hard to imagine it’s something that has been squeezed out of his head and onto a computer screen.

VIRO GUN TRAINING

I sometimes sit at my desk and zoom in on random weapons just to see the detail and effort that has been crafted into designing them.

When it comes to VIRO MOVE guns, I am the office nerd -even though when it comes to gun training, I am without question the worst player in the team. But I don’t care, Viro Move guns are my all-time favorite weapons. Our team has painstakingly crafted so many tiny details into each gun. Whenever a new gun drops I plan a good twenty or thirty minutes on photoshop – just to zoom in on a macro level so I check out the little things.

I’m not sure when I became a virtual gun nerd, but I am pretty sure it happened sometime during the last few months.

SWORD TRAINING

If you have never trained with swords, you have never lived. Holding a pair of swords on a mountain top feels nothing short of spectacular.

Now, this is my thing, training with swords is the highlight of my day. If you believe in past lives -as I now do, you will understand when I say “I’m pretty sure I was a secret Ninja in a past life”.

I just can’t get enough of VIRO’s sword training, I can train for thirty minutes alone with swords and although I am a sweaty train wreck at the end, I’m smiling all the way through.  And I honestly can’t describe it, it’s the simple things that inspire me. Like the feeling, I get by tipping two ends of the swords together before the game begins. The touch creates a vibration from the controllers in the form of a delicate sense of resistance, and happens anytime the glowing blade tips touch each other, as it would in real life, clearly! The feeling is just awesome.

BOXING TRAINING

No detail was spared. If you look closely you can see our designers even allowed for leather wear above the knuckles of this skin.

As a young man in my non-virtual life, I trained for some time to be a boxer. As it turned out I was a better Ninja than a boxer, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t relish the opportunity to use my experience and skills to get critical with our boxing level designers. Indeed, I felt this was my real opportunity to position myself as the team expert, and boy I was so very wrong.

Let me start by saying, I don’t think any of our guys have had real-life boxing training as I did. But they have worked tirelessly with professional trainers to build routines that simulate jabs, crosses, uppercuts and even under hooks and all the other boxing maneuvers my competitors used against my nose as a young man.

Watching these guys test their levels is sometimes like watching professionals shadow boxing in the gym. They have nailed all the movements, while I –the semi-professional, look and feel like a fat middle-aged dad trying to swat a nest of angry hornets. I’m getting better now, but it’s not at all like riding a bike, shadow boxing is an art form that needs time, practice and physical agility to pull off.

I need to pause a little to talk about our boxing gloves. We have an ever growing range of skins, from futuristic metal gauntlets to traditional leather and fabric gloves. Granted, you don’t get much of a chance in the game to look at the gloves, but I highly recommend that players take the time to stand there – when fully immersed, and just look at the detail that has gone into designing each of our glove skins.

Our designers have added details which to help create an enhanced sense of reality. For example, some leather gloves have ever so slight wear across the knuckles, really it’s the smallest things that make me happy sometimes.

STRETCHING

They say you should always save the best till last. I’ve always been a bit of a rule breaker and I’m not going to change today, so I have saved the worst for last. I hate stretching, I hate it more than going to the actual gym. But to be honest, it’s the most important Viro Move training tool. I try to train for twenty minutes every day and while that may not seem like a lot – trust me, after twenty minutes of Viro Move you will look and feel like you have gone ten rounds with Ivan Drago. I didn’t always make the time to use the stretching levels, which always felt like a bit of a mistake the morning after.

You can easily forget that Viro Move is a real aerobics workout – but it is, you will use muscles you didn’t know you had and if you don’t make time for stretching as part of your warm up and cool down, please expect the muscle cramp fairy to come to visit you while you sleep – and she’s not a kind lady.

Stretching is not always going to be as sexy as boxing, shooting or sword-fighting – fact, so we have put a lot of energy into making it relaxing and enjoyable, and remember most professional sports coaches will advise you to make time for stretching before and after training. Our team has built the stretching and flexibility movements into our game to help you eliminate that morning after pain. I have learned the hard way that a  six-pack is no good to anybody if you are not flexible and agile enough to stand up straight the next day. As it’s too late for me to become the next Arnold, I will settle for the ability to climb out of bed and bounce down the stairs like the sprightly twenty-year-old I still feel I am.

Stretching and flexibility are my new favorite buzz-words – still, my least favorite exercises but most probably the best thing Viro Move has given me – after swords!

MIXED MODE

I am a huge fan of Deadpool. Handsome, sarcastic, energetic, sexy, funny, muscular, worshiped by millions of women and a handful of men do you see the similarities? That’s right! Deadpool has exactly the same qualities.

The similarities don’t end there, when I play VIRO MOVE, I do so in “mixed mode”. Meaning, after I set the level, environment, music, difficulty, I can then set the game to mix weapons during gameplay. One minute I am shooting and dodging drones the next minute I’m slashing and boxing orbs. Guys, you can make believe you are Deadpool – the Ladies, we will imagine you are the lovely Laura Croft.

We built mixed mode for those of us who are experts, those who really want that extra challenge at the highest level. It’s fast, furious and even though you know a weapon change is coming, changing the weapons mid-game requires some serious practice and technique.

THE FUTURE OF VIRO

Since the initial idea we have gone on to develop other solutions for the fitness industry, but as a small team of developers, our efforts are focused on ensuring the gaming elements of all our games are the best they can be. Meaning, for sure we will help you get fit -it’s our mission in life, but we always want you to have fun in the process.

Blog is written by VIRO Paulski first published on the VIROMOVE website 

[4colorrebellion]

4cr Plays - Heaven’s Vault (PS4)

In 2014, Inkle Studios released one of the first mobile games that I really found compelling - a full-fledged competitor to anything on a dedicated gaming platform. That game was 80 Days, a branching narrative that tasked the player with making their way across the planet. It was a simple experience in terms of pure gameplay complexity, but so rich with choice that every single playthrough felt unique - a rare feat for the medium. 

After completing 80 Days, the developers at Inkle set out to develop their next game Heaven’s Vault. Five years later, the narrative adventure has finally been released. As you can imagine, given the long development cycle, Heaven’s Vault aims to again push the envelope on branching narratives. And, well, let’s just say that nobody can accuse Inkle of not being ambitious.

Read on for my impressions.

Set in a distant nebula, Heaven’s Vault places you in the shoes of archaeologist Aliya Elasra, tasked by her mentor to track down a missing roboticist. Aliya is not exactly thrilled with this task. Why send an archaeologist to track down a living person? Worse, you’ve been assigned a helper and babysitter, a robot that Aliya names Six - as Aliya’s past five robots have met unfortunate endings. Together, Aliya and Six set out to find the missing roboticist, somewhere in the vast nebula. 

So, why send an archaeologist on a search mission? Well, the quote from Aliya that opens the game says it best: “Stories don’t have tidy beginnings, the past is always present.” Janniqi Renba, the missing roboticist, has left a trail of ancient artifacts in his wake - artifacts that hint at a greater mystery to solve. Solving either mystery - the disappearance or the greater meta-mystery - requires understanding the past. 

In a way, the most accurate way to describe Heaven’s Vault would be to call it an “archaeology simulator.” Unraveling the central mysteries of the game requires the translation of an ancient hieroglyphic language, which in turn requires the interpretation of artifacts that you uncover on the many moons across the nebula. In this process, you can understand why this game took so long to develop. The creators at Inkle have invented a language, blending elements of German and Arabic - at least, that’s my interpretation of why I have seen of the in-game language. Translating this language requires taking small clues and fragments, making educated guesses, then building on these ideas. 

It’s an incredible experience, actually. In my day job, I am a professor of software engineering. This is something that I rarely bring up on this blog. It isn’t usually relevant. However, here, it actually is, because I can see much of what I do enshrined in the core gameplay loop of Heaven’s Vault. Heaven’s Vault revolves around the scientific method in a way that few games do. 

Here is the gist of what I’m talking about. When you want to solve a problem, how do you do it? Well, you start by amassing the evidence you have in front of you. You take it in, and see what stands out. You form hypotheses - what do you think should happen, given what you are observing? You test these hypotheses by performing experiments. If the hypotheses hold, you now have theories that can be used to explain the phenomenon you are studying. 

Now, are theories always true? No. They simply reflect your current understanding of the world. However, they represent the best guess we have, given the current evidence. So, you build on these theories. They form the foundation of new theories. You cross your fingers, hope you are right, and press forward - until you see evidence that a theory is wrong, and start all over again. You build mountains, and sometimes they rise and sometimes they crumble before you. You err, and err, and err again - but less, and less, and less. 

This is the process at the heart of much of what you do in Heaven’s Vault. You take the evidence in front of you - often in the form of an artifact. You interpret that evidence. You don’t just look at the writing, but what the artifact is and what it was used for. You use this evidence to attempt a translation. Helpfully, the game does also show you similar words that you have already translated in the past. You make your best guess, and if it seems to hold up to scrutiny, you use it to translate other fragments. Over time, these theories and translations build on each other into something greater. Sometimes, however, they all collapse in a heap when new evidence invalidates an earlier theory. 

It’s thrilling when you get it right, and can be quite frustration - then thrilling again - when you get it wrong. Err, and err, and err again, but less, and less, and less. 

Heaven’s Vault is a game about constant, tiny discoveries. There are grand, nebula-changing revelations, but these are not what will drive you forward. Instead, the compelling part of this game is unveiling the meaning of a glyph, or discovering how to conjugate the past tense, or in advancing your understanding how how an item was used in the past. 

It is also, interestingly, a game about coming to understand the people and robots around you. In Heaven’s Vault, there are the *big* conversations that you expect, that advance a storyline. However, there is also the near-constant ability to carry on a conversation with someone around you - usually Six, your robot companion. In some ways, this is a method of getting hints. However, these optional conversations also serve to build the characters of both Aliya, or your version of Aliya - after all, you choose how often to talk - and Six. I don’t want to spoil much here, but this also makes certain scenes in the narrative really land home as well. 

The core design of Heaven’s Vault is fairly open-ended. You can freely sail the nebula, visiting any of a series of unlocked locations. As you explore those locations, you will open up new locations to explore. You can visit the unlocked locations in almost any order, and you have a lot of freedom to choose when and how you tackle tasks. The locations themselves range quite a bit in what they offer, from rice paddies, to tiled terraces that remind me of time spent in Turkey. The choices you can make are not restricted to the order of locations you visit, but also in how you solve tasks. Do you trust your mentor? Do you cut a deal with that salesman? Do you tell Six everything you know or hold your tongue? Like in 80 Days, choice is at the heart of a lot of what you do in Heaven’s Vault.

At times, Heaven’s Vault can be infuriatingly vague. An open design, and core systems based essentially on the scientific method, mean that the game rarely tells you when you’ve got something wrong. At times, you will end up searching every moon in the nebula to figure out what you missed. This is nothing new for players of old point and click adventure games, but can be quite frustrating. for that same reason, triumphing over that frustration feels really good. However, for some players, it will be a bit much to handle. 

Visually, Heaven’s Vault is quite interesting - blending flat quasi-2D animation with 3D environments. For being Inkle’s first 3D game, it mostly works well. Environments are visually interesting - simple in a technical sense, but with excellent art direction. The character designs are top-notch, and I love how they blended elements of Middle Eastern culture with science fiction. You can tell that the developers don’t have a ton of experience with 3D movement. At times, movement feels slow and clunky. Still, it generally works, and I have no major complaints about the game from the technical perspective. 

Heaven’s Vault is a fascinating experience. It can be frustratingly vague - and advancing forward can be an exercise in beating your head against everything in sight until something cracks. However, it also captures the science of archaeology in a way that no other game has. Few games have so satisfyingly embedded a process of experimentation and discovery, and few games give you quite the same feeling of freedom in how you unravel the central mysteries. I can easily recommend giving it a try. 

A copy of the game was provided for review.

Official Website

PSN Store

[aurelliocheek]

The Making of Frostpunk: Interview with 11 bit studios

Dress warmly for our story about an extraordinary game.

Frostpunk is world’s first society ­survival game. Developed and ­published by 11 bit studios, the ­Polish makers of the fantastic This War of Mine, ­Frostpunk was released 2018 for PC and 2019 for consoles. Gamers around the world celebrated Frostpunk for its outstanding atmosphere, great steampunk look, and addictive build-up sim gameplay with moral choices to be made that sometimes make the player’s throat closed. A few days ago 11 bit studios released the new DLC The Last Autumn, a big expansion with a prequel scenario, new technology trees and resources, new buildings and a lots more. For our cover story a few developers wrote excellent articles about the unusual genre mix, the social aspects and the outstanding art design. In addition, Development & Art ­Director Przemyslaw Marszal, Development & Design ­Director Michal Drozdowski and Partnership Manager Pawel Miechowski took the time for a ­detailed interview. Let’s start with this!

Making Games: This War of Mine was a great success and instantly placed you on the international map of game developers. Instead of repeating the success with This War of Mine 2, you chose a completely different game and a completely new story instead. Isn’t that a bit crazy? Przemyslaw Marszal: It might seem like this when looking from a distance. But ­doing it the other way – making This War of Mine 2 right away would be much crazier. Why? Because, after the first one we were very ­tired. Especially tired emotionally. This game required so much attention to ­war-­related details, so much of this emotional understanding that it was just too much near the end of the development cycle. So sure – we felt that This War of Mine put us on the map in a very good spot to do a sequel. But at the same time, we felt we needed a change, and this feeling gained the upper hand. So we looked for the next topic. The one that, we thought at the ­beginning, could be less dramatic, less serious and harsh. The one that will let us think more about its core gameplay ­systems or its art style. That’s how we came up with an idea of steampunk city-builder. Yet, after about eight months of development, we started to understand that we just can’t do a game without a message, without a meaningful root that will be something we want to tell about. That’s how Frostpunk was born – a game about society adaptation in survival times. One more thing is crucial. Probably right now, I can say This War of Mine was an artistic statement touching the problems of civilians struggle during wartime. And in this sense, it was sort of a complete statement from us. We told what we wanted to tell regarding this particular problem and we felt that at that moment there was nothing meaningful we wanted to add to it.

How big has your team grown after This War of Mine? Przemyslaw Marszal: Just after the game release, not that much as I recall. But during the years after it started to change. This War of Mine was done by about 20 developers internally and Frostpunk during the next few years scaled the core team to around 45 people, but we also grew in other departments. Right now, we’re capable of doing three separate games with three separate teams. Before The Final Cut edition of This War of Mine, which released ­November last year, we still had a team ­doing working only on this project. We’re still be patching and tweaking the game, but most of those people moved to the new project. The second team is responsible for Frostpunk, and third the unannounced Project 8 game. We also have a publishing team, working on third-party titles, ­business ­development, and marketing teams or our own internal QA guys, because we also test in-house the games we’re publishing like Moonlighter or ­Children of Morta. All this accounts for about 125 people right now, but we still growing and moving into a new office in a building we bought in whole, probably in March.

What inspired you to do Frostpunk? Are you fans of the movies Snowpiercer or The Day After Tomorrow? Or did the infamous “year without summer” inspire you? Michał Drozdowski: I remember when we tried to figure out with Przemek on how to proceed after making our first prototype called Industrial. It was very economical, it was a steampunk-ish city-builder proto, so sort of what we liked it to be, but it lacked a lot in terms of motivation, message, and overall vision. What was quite intriguing is that each of us separately came with a very similar vision of a frost fighting society survival game at some point. My head was full of images of very strong-hearted men. Those people you could once find in a situation where nature is the ultimate obstacle and worst nightmare – people like sailors, mountaineers, whale hunters, oil-platform workers. It was mostly about this vision of those hardened people fighting for survival. Another question then will be how the frost and winter came in and took the rule? Well, we used to have pretty strong winters in Poland, and we know something about really cold weather. But winter seemed to be a great enemy, especially combined with the power of heat would have in that situation and a steam technology used to generate it. As you mentioned those movie titles – they were known to us, and particularly Snowpiercer is one hell of a movie. We all love it both for its world as well as being a very compact and metaphorical ­approach to society.

What was the initial idea behind Frostpunk‘s art direction? Przemyslaw Marszal: When we start ­prototyping a new project, we often ask ourselves: what we would like to hear from a player looking at a finished game? How would we like him to describe what he sees? So we set up a list of adjectives that we imagine would suit best that kind of description. And then try to think about how we could achieve that. What steps we need to take to get that kind of feeling from the players. For Frostpunk these adjectives were: cold, city, steampunk, seriously looking, with living society, victorian, looking like AAA game. Getting everything that working right at once in the actual game is like solving a puzzle. And coming to that result involves a lot of research, drawing and conceptualizing things. In general, a lot of trial and error processes. Plus there is one other ingredient – uniqueness. So the graphic not only must convey all the associations we want but also has its own unexpected and exciting bits. Bits like round circular ice hole with a huge generator in the centre or radial laid city.

Talking about the development process: What problems did you encounter in general and how did you deal with them? Michal Drozdowski: From my perspective, the biggest problems came up with a growing team. We doubled the size compared to our peak during This War of Mine production, and I think we were not fully aware of the consequences of this sudden growth. The problem that arose was communication. In previous smaller teams, we were used to having a lot of short daily conversations that made the game vision spread naturally across all team members. Keeping a healthy amount of design ­documents and a few occasional meetings was enough to make sure people understand what is happening and why it is happening. When the team sized changed dramatically, we realized that these measures were not enough. Some people still lacked knowledge about some important elements of the vision of the project or its creative directions. We had to make sure that we have a better communication ­process on our side. One that is more targeted at supplying the team with all the crucial information. Taking into account that saying something once, or having it written in a document rarely ensures that the subject can be considered as a ­piece of well-spread information.

Which design decisions would you have made differently in retrospect? Michal Drozdowski: I really don’t like to look into the past with that kind of ­approach. I think that every game we make is defined not only by the design itself but by the team and the time at which it was made. Because during that time we over­came many obstacles and made many hard decisions. There is always a great number of ideas or even partial design that ‘didn’t make it’ into the game for various reasons. But even if they did not appear in the game, there was a reason that something more important took their place. There is a time we feel the game is ready and complete. Of course, it can then evolve and change, which is great, but that first version, I consider it a closed chapter.

Which feature of the game are you particularly proud of? Michal Drozdowski: I tried to rephrase that question in my mind and ask myself that the whole time I spent working on Frostpunk. And there is one definitive answer – the team we build-up for this project. I mention it not only to give them credits for their skills, passion, and willpower but to stress that sometimes building a great team might be even harder than crafting a great game. In the end, it’s those people who make the vision change into a game you could release. Getting back to more particular features, I’m most proud of our narrative solutions. We were able to deliver a mix of systemic and emergent narrative mechanics combined with a more classical approach to storytelling. Finally, we got a game where each action and decision matters and adds both to the grand story of the player’s journey and the message we wanted to deliver.

What you can consider as the biggest thing the art department achieved during Frostpunk production? Przemyslaw Marszal: I must highlight two things. First, it is awesome when a lot of people that see a Frostpunk screen know immediately that this is Frostpunk. This uniqueness allowing for distilling this game in a split second from a lot of other games. A uniqueness that is clear to describe but also has its rules and magic. And the second thing – we really worked hard to connect art with gameplay in a lot of fields. I believe that we achieved this level of immersion in which gameplay and art are working as one entity, and deliver a bond absorbing players into one precisely defined mood during their play.

How satisfied are you with the reviews, the feedback from the community and the sales? Pawel Miechowski: Complaining is a national sport in Poland, so I should start with a set of complaints, but the reality is that the reception was fantastic and we have nothing to complain about. A massive part of the reviews was underlining the game’s original approach to the setting, gameplay, and its maturity. There were some 6s and 7s here and there, but we’re fully aware that this happens each time. We can’t just please every gamer out there because we are not making games for everyone but for a precisely chosen type of gamer. We know who our audience is. And the majority of the audience gave us great feedback, first with fantastically positive acclaim, and then by providing us tips and hints on how to improve Frostpunk further and develop expansions such as the Endless Mode. The only problem we had was that the first paid expansion – The Rifts – was a small one, is like an appetizer before the big one – The Last Autumn – and we didn’t communicate that clearly to the community. So the reception of The Rifts was not as good as we’d want, but then we communicated precisely what is our plan and now The Last Autumn is out with great acclaim from the players. And when it comes to sales – the game paid off in just two days after the ­release and it was more than four years ­development process so the financial ­success was fantastic. Sometime last year the game crossed 1.5 million copies sold and is still selling very well.

How did you finance the development? Pawel Miechowski: Initially, the game was called Industrial, and the funding of the ­prototype was granted by the Creative ­Europe program. After it was made, we knew there was a huge potential, and we’ve decided to invest our resources into the game. It was roughly three million ­Euros of our funds, spent on the development in over three years during which, in the course of numerous iterations, the game morphed from Industrial into Frostpunk.

The (lack of) state support for the games ­industry is a much-discussed topic in Germany. Tell us about the situation in Poland? Pawel Miechowski: I’ve heard now there is a big program in Germany to support kick-starting studios and prototypes of the games, so I’d like to congratulate the German industry for making this discussion to happen. In Poland, things changed in a good direction over the last years. We also got nothing special six or seven years ago except some small grants for exhibiting at international shows. Now there are dedicated programs for R&D, programs for supporting exhibiting at the shows so practically every indie studio that has at least the will and some own funds can participate in shows like gamescom, PAX or ChinaJoy. From time to time there are programs to kickstart prototype development but those are not big ones. All in all the state support is solid. However, there are always things to improve, like the higher game development education-oriented things. There’s a lot to do in this field.

Was it difficult to port Frostpunk to the consoles? Why did it take so long? Pawel Miechowski: We did what we’ve ­aimed for and made Frostpunk play on those platforms like a natively ­developed console experience. To achieve that our team redesigned the UI and control scheme from scratch. The whole system went through five iterations during the ­development process and nailing it right, and getting the right game performance on consoles, was more important for us than finishing the game earlier. The decision about the delay was the right one from today’s perspective. The game is doing really well on this sort-of uncharted market for strategy games because we think this genre on consoles is still a bit of a blue ocean. There aren’t many of them, and we believe Frostpunk: Console Edition could be seen as a benchmark for those, especially in terms of the player-friendly interface. Also, we get a great amount of support both from Microsoft on Xbox and Sony on PlayStation, so we feel they see there is space for the games like ours.

With your publishing program, you support in some way other indie studios. ­Please tell us about that. Pawel Miechowski: We have a special philosophy of creation that can be underlined as meaningful entertainment. Games that leave a mark in the player’s minds, make them think about them even when thy not playing it. At some point, we’ve come to the conclusion that there are indie games out there who share the same philosophy and it would be great to create an eco­system of devs making those games with an extra mark, like ourselves. These devs need help on the market to succeed and this is where we come in with our know-how and resources. Primarily, we are a development studio, so we know exactly what the developer needs. We have the experience because we’ve been in the trenches, so to speak. Starting the role of the publisher and creating this ecosystem for the devs was a natural business direction. 11 bit studios can provide everything a developer needs – funds, marketing, QA. But we need to fall in love with your game. It has to ignite a spark that we truly understand. We’re a picky publisher but we consider it our mission. And when you look at the ­latest release like Moonlighter or Children of Morta, this proves we’re doing it the right way. Proof for that is the way those games were reviewed, the feedback from the community, how they performed sales-wise and how many awards they won.

In a nutshell: What are the three most important rules that an indie studio should follow? Przemyslaw Marszal: I think it’s hard to say if we are still indie devs. But looking back – what helped us a lot was, in the first place, understanding where in our ideas the value for players lay. And why players were not only paying for our games but more importantly also giving us the time to dive into our fantasies. Being brave and looking for our own way, trying to find this unique personality of the studio was the second thing. And thirdly, having an awesome, honest and friendly team that understands the goals of 11bit Studios as a company and treating them as there were theirs own. Michal Drozdowski: I’ll add something from the design point of view. The first thing is knowing what you want to achieve. All great games have a good strong focus – a few things that are critical for them and at which they aim to be the best. This focus is crucial to make further decisions during development. Having a very clear vision of the game you’re making, keeping consistency during design, production and finally, sales are the key aspects in delivering an outstanding experience to the players. This may sound as being a bit obvious, but it’s actually one of the hardest aspects. Be able to judge what are the very things that shape the personality of your game and treat all the remaining ones just as a nice to have. During prototyping or developing new features, you may easily find yourself straying from the path, so make sure to cross-check several times during the project that your main vision is still your goal.

What comes next from 11 bit studios? Przemyslaw Marszal: You know we just can’t tell. Yet what we can guarantee that whatever we do we want it to be a huge challenge for us. We won’t settle, we will push ourselves to achieve new experiences, emotions, messages, and craft more meaningfulness into our games. We will struggle while doing it, swearing and cursing on our ambitious decisions. Yet in the end, we will be satisfied and we hope players will be too.

Przemyslaw Marszal Development & Art Director

Art director and co-founder of 11 bit studios. He’s responsible for the art direction of all company titles, as well as managing development teams together with Michal. With almost 20 years of experience in game development and many games shipped under his belt, he always tries to work on titles never imagined before.

  Michal Drozdowski Development & Design Director

He is a creative director and a co-founder of 11 bit studios. He’s responsible for the game design, recently for Frostpunk and all company titles as well as leading, supervising and managing studio’s internal and external design teams. He’s designing gameplay in games for about 20 years now.

  Pawel Miechowski Partnership Manager

Working in game development since the late 90s. In the early 2000s landed in Metropolis Software and worked there as a writer and PR manager. Later in CD Projekt Group and from 2010 at 11 bit studios, initially as a writer and PR guy and now working as a partnerships manager.

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