Co-Optimus: Tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you all came together as a development studio?
Steffen Kabbelgaard Grønning: The Danish games industry is really small. You may know games like LIMBO or Hitman, but there are really few studios doing well. So what we realized several years ago, was that pursuing a game development career was basically the same as wanting to be a professional football player. Being aware that only a few succeed, Kenneth (my partner) and I founded BetaDwarf two years ago at a University in Denmark, and we decided to go all in! We convinced a lot of people who wanted to build [their] CV’s, to join us with the possibility of a job in the future and potential revenue from FORCED. Rumours of an ambitious startup quickly spread and, as we had hoped, more than 10 awesome people joined us in just the first year. We had found a deserted classroom at our university and we actually lived there, because it was a bit far from the city and it became convenient to just crash near the computer.
Some team members even skipped their apartments to save the rent, because they spend all their time in our classroom studio anyway. After a year of what was basically training and learning how to work as 10 team, we applied for government funds, and were the first students to succeed. We got $30.000 which meant everything for us at that time, because the university had discovered that we were living in one of their classrooms, which apparently was not okay. So we literally Googled the cheapest place to live in Denmark, and found a big house in Karlslunde, which 7 of us moved into. The 8 others in the team kept their apartments and are taking the train instead of the stairs down to the living room, which is now our studio. We’ve been here for almost a year now, and more than 30 people has contributed to FORCED, however the core team is around 8 people.
Co-Optimus: So, a new studio, with new developers to the video game scene. Your first undertaking, as you mentioned, is FORCED, an action/tactical cooperative game that seems equal parts Diablo and Gauntlet. Explain the general setting and gameplay.
Steffen: FORCED is about cooperation in a fantasy gladiator setting. As players you were born in a valley with only one mysterious exit. From experience your folk knows that a small group must be sent down into the hole every now and then or bad things will happen to the valley. So upon birth half of the valley [dwellers] are marked with a sign indicating that they are explorers, and must spend their life preparing for the day - when it is their turn to venture down the hole. No one has ever made it back to the valley...
We actually just finished the animatic intro yesterday!
FORCED is about small concentrated challenges (a bit like small WoW instances). These challenges vary a lot from being very tactical, action oriented or even puzzle solving. You can play 1-4 players but we have put a huge effort into scaling the difficulty vs number of players. Usually games just ramp up enemy health- and damage or number of enemies, or they might even put in a limited player AI or simply not allow anything else than a particular number of players. Our solution is quite ambitious, as we are making new enemies and even altered environment based on number of players. So in a 3 player game, you can encounter enemy types that you would never see in single player. This also allows us to make enemies that require a lot more co-op to defeat, as these ones doesn’t have to be beatable in singleplayer.
Some of our main features are invented for co-op and are simply made possible to use in single player, instead of the other way around.
Co-Optimus: Like what?
Steffen: Like our most unique mechanic in FORCED, the spirit mentor. It’s a trainer formed as an orb, that guides the players through the challenges and the gladiator world that the hole has lead to. Basically it’s a player shared character. Players can control it simultaneously, by simply pushing a button, which will call the Mentor to the calling players position. The Mentor can interact with special shrines, forming it into a powerful bomb, a magical razor blade, a healing pulse, a shockwave and many other powerful forms that are vital for success. Activating the Shrines and utilizing the shrine powers ensures a lot of tactical player movement in the game. And when a team communicates and really utilizes the orb, it turns FORCED into a very unique experience.
Besides the Spirit Mentor, there is also another cooperative mechanic - the combat mark system which allows various cooperative maneuvers. Most player abilities either spend or add marks, and in that way players are able to combine abilities for more effective playing. “An area stun ability, stuns all surrounding enemies while adding 3 marks to them and a chain lightning shot is fired to spend those marks dealing heavy lightning damage”. Unlike many ARPG’s, FORCED is controlled with either dual stick controller or w,a,s,d mouse, allowing movement while you attack and aim.
The Spirit Mentor - tool and tormentor
Co-Optimus: Dual-sticks?
It might be a bit surprising but we could not find many other games that had good melee combat design for such controls. They would typically require the melee attacker to take a few hits, and we did not want FORCED to become a potion management challenge. We’re really happy with our solution, which involves a knockback system where interrupting enemy attacks and dodging are important. So for instance one of our design goals became to ensure that a threat would never result in damage that could not be avoided.
Sorry, I can’t stop mentioning features and aspects about FORCED once I get started :)
Co-Optimus: It's not a bad problem to have. Speaking of features, what about character customization? Will players be forced into certain roles?
Steffen: Customizability - before players enter a trial, they can easily re-pick weapons, and each of the 4 weapons the players have access to in FORCED have 8 active and 8 passive skills that are repickable. Also the skills are designed to offer new utility rather than more power, so the skill you start with, can definitely be used in the later challenges as well. That allows for some interesting ways to constantly tweak and alter the playstyle. We want players to experiment throughout the game, and not just stick with their fireball from level 12 to 99. However we also appreciate progression, so you have to unlock your options first!
Co-Optimus: Those are a lot of features to implement. I mean, right out of the gate, you decide to make a - for the most part - purely cooperative game. Which begs the question: Why? Why start there and not try some something a little less ambitious?
Steffen: BetaDwarf is made up of multiplayer gamers and we want to focus on creating multiplayer games. We basically came to the conclusion that experiences must be shared for them to be truly powerful. We have all found it really hard to find co-op games for LAN parties that were not just grind fests. We were in love with much of the 5 person instance content in WoW, but to actually play those you had to spend a lot of preparation time - it was not anywhere close to pick-up-and-play, the group, gear and level had to be right.
You’re right and I think that we initially underestimated just how complicated it is to make a coop game, with GUI, balancing, story flow etc. Which is all much more simple in a single player experiences. In the light that we were complete noobs when we started, it is a very bold move to deal with an online cooperative multiplayer game in 3d... If the team had not been so compelled to make this happen, that we even moved in together, it probably would have failed a long time ago. It has been and is indeed challenging, but we have also learned a lot from pushing ourselves so much.
The BetaDwarf Development Team
Co-Optimus: Did you all have any experience developing and/or releasing video games prior to starting Forced?
Steffen: Not really. We had made some ambitious study projects, actually we had made a really cool concept of RTS vs FPS, which we held university tournaments in. We got known for that in the university and it helped a lot when we gathered the team. But we have never released anything before.
Co-Optimus: What, then, inspired the particular mechanics at work in Forced? How did you know what would work and would be fun?
Steffen: Extensive iterations and testing is our approach to uncover an interesting game formula. We basically spent the first year experimenting with base mechanics of FORCED. We have tried a dozen things, and we have been to several conventions with a total of 1000 test persons. Getting the Spirit Mentor mechanic right and the overall game flow formula was really challenging. Games like Left 4 Dead, Bloodline Champions, Lara Croft - Guardian of Light, Alien Swarm and [Warcraft 3] mods like Hero Defence has been very inspiring. We’ve had a lot of fun with Alien Swarm, but it really had this casual even weird progression going. You could basically choose whatever map you wanted and if you failed you would still be rewarded. We wanted a more challenging co-op PvE experience, with a real sense of progression.
Cooperation in action
Co-Optimus: What's been the most surprising element/feature thus far in your testing?
Steffen: One of my fondest moments with testing our game, was at a convention, when one of our players outsmarted and even beat the designers in one of our levels. She had devised a new path of commanding the orb over a series of shrines, and after having whispered her plan to her partner, proceeded to thoroughly defeated our team. I’m happy to say that she promptly received a sandwich and a clap on the back for her efforts! This is not a unique occurrence at our many events, and is one of the things I’m happiest about in our game. The fact that the game is so tough and the solutions so diverse, that we frequently get beat at our own game - literally.
[Ed. Note: While there's no PvP component to FORCED, times for completing each challenge are recorded and leaderboards will be maintained to compare times. Here, Steffen is referring to having their own times beat by players]
Co-Optimus: As you're developing the game, what is it that keeps driving you on to see it through? What is it about this game that makes you want to see it out there for games to play and enjoy?
Steffen: Actually we were happy to see Dark Souls being so well accepted. Sense of completion can be a rare thing these days and that’s what we want to bring to a lot of co-op teams out there. We want to offer a co-op experience that requires communication and teamwork to succeed. In a single player game, being stuck can be much worse, but in co-op you have a team to keep the morale up and constantly suggest new ideas to beat a challenge.
At conventions we’ve seen groups playing FORCED for many hours in a row, even groups of people that did not knew each other. Sometimes they would be stuck in a really hard challenge, but after several tries - succeeding in that trial lead to a team roar that they probably won’t forget. That’s where a game reaches a level of creating an experience that these persons might remember for a long time, especially because they were sharing it. We want FORCED to give players a lot of those moments, so when former FORCED teams sit together many years from now sipping a drink, they will think back to the days where they together succeeded in roars of glory that formed friendship bonds never to be broken! :)
Co-Optimus: The game has currently been in development for 2 years, without any crowd funding. Assuming you all receive the remaining $20k to fully fund your Kickstarter, when could we expect to see some playable version of the game? Full release?
Steffen: We will launch a closed beta early in december with online multiplayer. Any backers who pledged for the golden key will be part of it and we will keep updating until release in the first quarter of 2013.
Co-Optimus: Finally, what are some of your favorite co-op games? What do you end up playing when you need a break from development?
Steffen: Most of us enjoy games and the underlying game systems, so we play a lot of games and our steam accounts include 200 games in most cases. We also play games for the sake of investigation. At the moment we enjoy games like Heroes of Newerth (probably the most played game in the house), Starcraft 2 & Alien Swarm. But when I asked them, the team also mentioned Borderlands, Left 4 Dead, WoW, Bloodline Champions, Team Fortress 2, Lara Croft: Guardian of Light, Trine and Wc3/Starcraft mods like Hero Defence, TD etc.
We'd like to thank Steffen from BetaDwarf for taking the time to speak with us and shed some light on FORCED. If you're interested in contributing to their Kickstarter campaign, you can follow the link here.