Indie Dead Monarchy: Open-World | Turn-Based | Mercenary Management | RPG - Fully Released May 19th 2023

[Bantichai]

It's gone now, best 20 minutes of my life.

 

[Bantichai]

There's a rare game-breaking bug as in, it's only been reported now after a year since I released the rebuild version, that disables city interactions. It seems to be occurring from a specific ambush event, I don't know which one yet so I will have to manually go through them all. Whilst waiting for a fix, I can fix the save file manually or you can walk around until another event triggers and finishing that event should fix it. Sorry for the inconvenience, especially if it happens on an ironman run.

 

[Skorpion]

It's gone now, best 20 minutes of my life.

Im glad you could have that moment good sir!

 

[vazha]

Bantichai Did you try to get in touch with Mortismal or Simo? This seems to be their cup of tea.

 

[Bantichai]

Bantichai Did you try to get in touch with Mortismal or Simo? This seems to be their cup of tea.

Cheers for mentioning those two, yeah they are both on my radar. Mortismal seems to find turn-based combat stagnating though based on his recent video, I'm not sure if DM will feel more of the same to him or not. I know Simo is on a quest to play every merc game too. Unless they get to me first, I think I might wait a bit, push out a few updates before contacting them but thanks for reminding me.

 

[Modron]

Are their dedicated keys for zooming in and out on the keyboard? If not can you introduce them my mouse wheel is geting a little long in the tooth and slightly unresponsive at times.

Oh and please double the keyboard scrolling on the map it's pretty slow. Just another thought maybe put some space between the exit button on the loot screen and all the other buttons.

 

[SpoonFULL]

It would also be good to provide UI and/or font size scaling slider to increase the size of the text.

 

[Axioms]

Bantichai Did you try to get in touch with Mortismal or Simo? This seems to be their cup of tea.

Cheers for mentioning those two, yeah they are both on my radar. Mortismal seems to find turn-based combat stagnating though based on his recent video, I'm not sure if DM will feel more of the same to him or not. I know Simo is on a quest to play every merc game too. Unless they get to me first, I think I might wait a bit, push out a few updates before contacting them but thanks for reminding me.

Splat is really into these kinds of games. Have you reached out to him? Or do you wanna build the game up more before big exposure?

 

[Acrux]

Splat is really into these kinds of games. Have you reached out to him? Or do you wanna build the game up more before big exposure?

Did you look at the previous page? He just reviewed it on Sunday.

 

[Axioms]

Splat is really into these kinds of games. Have you reached out to him? Or do you wanna build the game up more before big exposure?

Did you look at the previous page? He just reviewed it on Sunday.

Did you expect me to read more than one page? Madness.

 

[Bantichai]

I

Are their dedicated keys for zooming in and out on the keyboard? If not can you introduce them my mouse wheel is geting a little long in the tooth and slightly unresponsive at times.

Oh and please double the keyboard scrolling on the map it's pretty slow. Just another thought maybe put some space between the exit button on the loot screen and all the other buttons.

I can have a look at adding dedicated keys for zooming in and out on the keyboard. Do you have a personal preference?

Regarding keyboard/camera panning, you can speed it up by holding [RMB] while using WASD at the same time, or drag and pan by clicking in the mouse wheel.

Putting some space is a good suggestion.

 

[Bantichai]

It would also be good to provide UI and/or font size scaling slider to increase the size of the text.

Yup I have this on the list, I'll see what I can do about it.

 

[Modron]

Do you have a personal preference?

Well you have camera panning and rotating in the qweasd area, r and f don't seem to be bound to anything in the overworld as far I can tell would keep them all in reach.

 

[Bantichai]

Do you have a personal preference?

Well you have camera panning and rotating in the qweasd area, r and f don't seem to be bound to anything in the overworld as far I can tell would keep them all in reach.

Hmm, R/F are rotate and "finish individual fighter's turn" in combat. I could bind it in the overworld but then it wouldn't be consistent in combat. Or I can probably create an additional set of alternate keys for zooming in/out during combat and still have R/F for overworld?

X is changing weapons in combat. C in overworld is for the camp. During combat C doesn't do anything though, so maybe Z and C for zoom in/out keys in combat?

I know at this point ideally I just introduce keybinds, probably something I eventually look into setting up, anything UI related just takes a while to do unfortunately.

 

[Modron]

Yeah whatever works is fine.

 

[Alienman]

Did an interview with Bantichai. You can find the interview here, or read it down below! Thanks Bantichai !

Spoiler

Welcome to yet another developer interview. This time we are talking to Kevin Zhang, the man behind the recently released tactical RPG Dead Monarchy. We talk about the hardship of being a solo developer, dreams of the future, and what is planned next.

---

Tell me a little about yourself – who is the solo developer behind Dead Monarchy Studios?
So I’m Kevin Zhang, that part is probably quite apparent. I’m a Chinese man born and raised in Australia previously with a Thai surname. Yes, I am quite culturally confused. Dead Monarchy is my first game, I started development when I was 24, so the start of 2017 basically. I had no real experience prior to that, I just took on a relatively useless multimedia/games design degree that didn’t really teach me anything other than good folder management.

How come you started the difficult task of becoming a solo developer?
Depression and curiosity. Came out of a hurtful relationship and wanted to find meaning in my life. For a while games became the crutch then when I healed myself, I wanted more and more from gaming and eventually that curiosity made me take the plunge. I essentially see my whole solo game development journey as “real-life ironman mode”, I’m enjoying each step of the way, discovering new things and implementing things I’ve always wanted to do. It’s become a way of life for me now.

Is it your full-time job? If not, is it a dream to make it so?
Nah, I got other part-time jobs. It is my dream to be able to make games for a living but considering my games are super niche, it might always be a dream. That’s alright though, gives me enough reasons to keep pushing forward.

Do you do everything yourself – programming, sound, writing, etc?
I suppose if you want to get really technical, I designed the entire game myself but I didn’t develop the entire game myself. That is to say I didn’t make everything from scratch, I assembled various pieces that on their own are just tools, pieces of the puzzle. They have no real inherent meaning until they are put into the context of a game. I used to fiddle around with LEGO a lot, so in my mind it is like assembling a giant LEGO set. The music, those are all non-exclusive pieces, though I scour the asset store for suitable tracks which is surprisingly very hard to find. The writing, that’s all mine, it’s not particularly great but it gets the job done. I have various tools that assist me in programming and I invested quite heavily into those tools to get tailored solutions for Dead Monarchy. The only custom assets are the vast majority of the armour/weapon models and the animations, which I got help from by various contracted freelancers. It is still and I really mean this, an ungodly amount of work, especially when dealing with 3D which can quickly become a blackhole.

Let’s take for example the armours, when the models come in, I break them down into smaller pieces so I can get more customisation from them. I then rig the armour, decimate the polygons, create the alternative textures needed, like blood, scratches etc. Then I need to do the icons, do another pass for clipping and then set up the item in-game. I’m not a great animator either, so I got a freelancer animator to do my animations however for each attack he needed to animate, he wanted me to do a video of each attack taken from multiple angles. He would then use that video as the basis for the animation. So I spent about 100 hours of my life with a mop, hammer and umbrella bashing and slashing away like a maniac. After those animations are done, I then need to sync them with the various death and hit animations, etc, etc, etc. So when you take a step back and look at the entire picture, the assets make up about 90% of the overall game development process.

Tell me about your gaming journey, what started it, what do you play on, and what are your current genre favorites.
I started on Pokemon, then found Age of Empires in a cereal box, yeah Australia is weird. Then I got heavily hooked onto Diablo 2, the thought of losing my gear terrified me. I loved that game so much and since I was a poor Asian kid whose parents didn’t allow them to buy PC games, I “borrowed” Diablo 2 from my best friend. Yeah, I’m a loot whore. After Diablo 2, I went to Runescape and then Morrowind. Morrowind was probably the peak for me. I’ve told this story so many times that sometimes I mess up the details, but I was around 12 then. After Morrowind it was a steady decline for me. Onto Oblivion then Skyrim and for the most part I exclusively played AAA games, I scoffed at indie games (the irony, I know). Somewhere along the line between Oblivion and Skyrim, I played Fallout 3, found out about Fallout 2 on wiki and that was what propelled me into discovering the classics which then led me to indie games. Indie games then led me to Battle Brothers. I only play on PC these days and I really only play turn-based games now.

Battle Brothers seems to be a clear inspiration for Dead Monarchy going by structure and setting. Are there any other games that inspired you and in what way if that is the case?
Battle Brothers is the main one. I didn’t actually know Warband had a single player campaign, for the longest time I thought it was purely an online fighting game like Chivalry. I also didn’t play Warband until after Bannerlord, by then though Dead Monarchy started to give off Warband vibes unknowingly to me but I think that was mainly because Battle Brothers was inspired from Warband as well.

Beyond Dead Monarcy, what would be your absolute dream game if you could go completely wild?
My absolute dream game is the “ultimate” game that I’ve mentioned on Steam. It would be Warband but on a more intimate scale. So turn-based combat, managing each individual soldier, territory control with some life simulator elements. Adventurer phase, ruler phase and the ability to be beaten back down to adventurer phase only to rise up again. I believe I can achieve it with time, so I guess my dream actually is to just retain full functionality and mobility of my eyes and limbs.

Dead Monarchy (now fully released) started as an Early Access title, how was that process? Did buyer feedback help, or was it more a question of financing?
Buyer feedback definitely helped shape the game dramatically. I think the concept of early access is great, it’s just most developers burn out. The biggest motivating factor for me though was to “work in the light” so to speak. I spent a couple years just working alone without anyone knowing and after a while you start to question all your ideas, it starts to feel like you are “working in the dark” and just digging a deeper hole. So at some point you just say, it’s now or never, let’s put it out there and see how the community reacts to it.

What do you think about Early Access in general, do you buy Early Access titles?
I think it’s great but as mentioned above, I don’t think it’s for everyone and most developers burn out so it gives EA a bad reputation. I’ve only bought 3 EA titles, Battle Brothers, Stoneshard and Bannerlord.

Have you ever considered Kickstarter or something similar?
I did but I didn’t think I would qualify for Kickstarter, I had no previous games, no real experience, not really anything to show for. I figured I’d be ruining my reputation before I even started. Considering that I had to completely rebuild Dead Monarchy as well, I don’t think I would have dealt with the pressure well when expected to deliver.

How about publishers – is it something you have considered for financial stability? Have any publishers contacted you?
I’m not too keen on the idea, a couple publishers have but they all seem obscure and somewhat shoddy.

What hopes do you have for the future now – for the game and studio?
Dead Monarchy‘s release did better than I thought, Splattercat’s video really helped shine some light on Dead Monarchy. It still isn’t breaking the bank, but I feel I am starting to gain a small foothold. If I can never make it full-time, I will be happy enough to just work on games for the small community that has gathered around me.

You are selling your game rather cheap, under ten bucks, and it was even cheaper on release day (50% off from what I remember), how come? What did you base the value on? Is it a question of confidence or making it a less risky purchase for the customer?
It’s $10 because AOD is $15 and I don’t think my game is as deep as that. The combat is sure, but the story is pretty light, I thought $10 sat nicely in the middle. I set my launch discount at 40% because I want to start work on the “ultimate” game no later than 40, so it was a lucky number I suppose.

What engine does Dead Monarchy run on?
Unity 2019, eventually I’ll have to upgrade again.

The setting of Dead Monarchy is fascinating – an apocalyptic medieval wasteland filled with bandits and despot lords. What inspired you to create this setting? It reminds me a bit of the game The Age of Decadence, do you know of it?
Yup, I know it and I know it well. I don’t mention it though because I’d rather not have DM’s story compared to AOD’s which is vastly superior. I also think AOD had peak graphics and I honestly mean that. I don’t think graphics need to get any better. If you can clearly see it is a tree, it’s a tree. You don’t need to be able to count the individual leaves. I also think gamers and developers have forgotten about the power of imagination. Not everything needs to be presented on a silver platter, things can be abstracted and stories can play out in your head.

I’d rather a game with AOD’s graphics that encompassed the whole world as opposed to a photorealistic game that encompassed the size of a city. I believe in quantity over quality, because you only need so much quality before it gets redundant. I want to create a game where a player can play one playthrough for a year, so that’s why quantity is more important to me. The concept of quality is also such an abstract and subjective thing to discuss at this point now. Pixel art is technically bad graphics, it was birthed from technical limitations yet now it is an accepted art style. Why can’t I just say, the art style in this game is “Old-School” and have everyone accept it? Is it because it is still considered to be realistic? Pixel art was still meant to imitate the real world though but it gets a free pass?

What is the “The Great Mistake”? It sounds very ominous and intriguing. It’s definitely a good story hook!
That will be something I expand upon in further games

Like Battle Brothers, Dead Monarchy seems very gameplay orientated, but do you consider the story an important part still?
Absolutely, it’s just I have limited time. By limited time I mean, the amount of time you are comfortable with committing to on a specific section of the game without any guarantee of financial success. Whilst I know I may not ever make a hit, I don’t want to ruin myself financially either so I have to stay somewhat agile, that is until I hit 40. All bets are off when I hit 40 and at the point I’ll just go all in and commit to one game.

Was turn-based gameplay set in stone from the beginning, or did you experiment with real-time or maybe something else?
I have a janky demo somewhere on IndieDB where you would make all your decisions at the start of the round and then they would play out afterwards. It was fun to experiment but not practical.

When starting Dead Monarchy, you get a warning about how difficult the game is – what prompted you to make this warning? Complaints? Are modern games too cuddled?
Inspired by AOD and I wanted to let players know that it really is a hard game, but a rewarding one too if you can stomach it. Maybe jank is the hardest boss.

Have you finished your own game from start to finish on the hardest setting? If so, was it tough?
I’ve finished it three times, the last run was a lot harder after I nerfed the arbalest but it was also the most exhilarating as I started to develop completely different builds. It’s mostly a practice in patience. When I was 21, I discovered XCOM EU and was playing that on ironman mode, I had nothing else to do as I had no internet due to just moving to a new house. The concept of ironman mode to me was fascinating so I quickly got used to dying. It was like high stakes gambling without the loss ruining you or your family. It was the second peak actually, a revitalising era after Morrowind.

The setting is considered low-fantasy, does that mean magic, and monsters don’t exist, or are they just rare?
Monsters did exist in Dead Monarchy, then the “Great Rebuild’ came and I wiped them due to them being too janky even for my tastes. I’m actually going to reintroduce some of them back into the game though, in the post-release content.

Is diversity of equipment important for a game like this? Is more always better? (Jagged Alliance 2 1.3 patch for example got a hilarious amount of weapons).
Absolutely, loot is life. I stuffed Dead Monarchy with armours until it broke, I couldn’t fit them all in. I have a video actually. Someone is probably bound to call me out on it and say “Why are you selling a new game with assets that were meant to be for Dead Monarchy?” The reality is, when you look at the sheer amount of equipment, especially for one solo developer, you KNOW it’s insane. You’ll feel it in your bowels and your body won’t be able to deny it. It is absolutely ridiculous, completely unnecessary, enough raw art assets for 4 games, but I wanted to do it anyway. Eventually, when technology gets even better, I’ll be able to do it and shove them all into one game. Those are the raw art assets too, I can create at least 3 unique sets from one base armour model. Why create so many assets then? Well, freelancers come and go, you work to their schedule. So when they are free, you want to make the most out of their time. One of the freelance modellers I used to work with one day just up and completely left the gaming industry, you never know. I also get excited and want to show off cool things and remain transparent so I show it all off.



Does the world level up with you, and why did you decide to go with/without this aspect? Hard to balance?
There is no level scaling in Dead Monarchy. If you get wrecked, you get wrecked. I did it because when you have level scaling you lose all sense of character progression. Scaling to time is alright though and I did do that initially with the first iteration of DM which is actually still up on the beta branch, it has all the janky monsters.

Any interesting anecdotes about the development of Dead Monarchy?
A lot of my work peers thought I was insane, I am inclined to agree. One peer thought I wouldn’t be able to even make 10k from the game. I made it, then spent it on DM again.

Is there anything you want to add about being a solo dev? Maybe a few tips to others, what to avoid and such?
I think what I’m doing is probably inspirational but I don’t think it is an example to follow for other solo developers. It is an ungodly amount of work, it costs a lot of money especially for the scale that I am aiming at. I think you should start on small projects. I’m doing this because I’m legitimately curious to see how far one solo dev can go, I don’t necessarily think it is a recipe for success though and I went in accepting the consequences rather than being blinded by my dreams. If you really want to do something as crazy as what I’m doing, I would suggest reading up on project management. Knowing where to source your assets is half the battle. I also think you should seriously consider planning and plotting out your life like when it is ideal to have kids.

Dead Monarchy 2, when?
The real question is “Unnamed Ultimate Game” when? I plan to develop a few standalone expansions/game that will continue iterating upon the combat and focusing on other major features that I had to cut out like base management. Then eventually when I receive enough feedback on those standalone expansions/games, I will combine them all and start work on the “ultimate” game. As for how long, probably decades at the rate I’m going. Unless I do Patreon and somehow secure a steady stream of funds enough to go full-time or drastically cut down on work.

As a final question, is there anything you want to add, anything you want to tell the reader?
Thank you for the support, is all I can say. I always try to be straightforward and transparent. Thank you for reaching out to me to do the interview and thank you to the readers that read it. I truly appreciate every ounce of support. I also want to thank the Codex, they were the ones that found me first too, out there drifting in the vast indie sea.

---

I want to give a big thanks to Kevin for answering my questions. I wish him all the luck with Dead Monarchy and future endeavors.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Modron]

I kind of wish the maximum difficulty raid contracts had a chance of spawning a champion raider. You'll be swimming in meteoric silver medium armor, helmets, shields, 1 handed swords and warswords. Since graveyards and castle ruins are about 5-10 times less present than crypts you'll take forever to get other types of armor and weapons.

 

[Bantichai]

I kind of wish the maximum difficulty raid contracts had a chance of spawning a champion raider. You'll be swimming in meteoric silver medium armor, helmets, shields, 1 handed swords and warswords. Since graveyards and castle ruins are about 5-10 times less present than crypts you'll take forever to get other types of armor and weapons.

This is a good spot, I'm gonna put it down on the list, should be relatively straightforward to do.

Also, post-release content will be adding new "legendary companies" and they will have equipment from different cultures, the equipment will be purple too.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Tell me about your gaming journey, what started it, what do you play on, and what are your current genre favorites.
I started on Pokemon, then found Age of Empires in a cereal box, yeah Australia is weird. Then I got heavily hooked onto Diablo 2, the thought of losing my gear terrified me. I loved that game so much and since I was a poor Asian kid whose parents didn’t allow them to buy PC games, I “borrowed” Diablo 2 from my best friend. Yeah, I’m a loot whore. After Diablo 2, I went to Runescape and then Morrowind. Morrowind was probably the peak for me. I’ve told this story so many times that sometimes I mess up the details, but I was around 12 then. After Morrowind it was a steady decline for me. Onto Oblivion then Skyrim and for the most part I exclusively played AAA games, I scoffed at indie games (the irony, I know). Somewhere along the line between Oblivion and Skyrim, I played Fallout 3, found out about Fallout 2 on wiki and that was what propelled me into discovering the classics which then led me to indie games. Indie games then led me to Battle Brothers. I only play on PC these days and I really only play turn-based games now.

I think that every story like that is beautiful.

 

[Bantichai]

Tell me about your gaming journey, what started it, what do you play on, and what are your current genre favorites.
I started on Pokemon, then found Age of Empires in a cereal box, yeah Australia is weird. Then I got heavily hooked onto Diablo 2, the thought of losing my gear terrified me. I loved that game so much and since I was a poor Asian kid whose parents didn’t allow them to buy PC games, I “borrowed” Diablo 2 from my best friend. Yeah, I’m a loot whore. After Diablo 2, I went to Runescape and then Morrowind. Morrowind was probably the peak for me. I’ve told this story so many times that sometimes I mess up the details, but I was around 12 then. After Morrowind it was a steady decline for me. Onto Oblivion then Skyrim and for the most part I exclusively played AAA games, I scoffed at indie games (the irony, I know). Somewhere along the line between Oblivion and Skyrim, I played Fallout 3, found out about Fallout 2 on wiki and that was what propelled me into discovering the classics which then led me to indie games. Indie games then led me to Battle Brothers. I only play on PC these days and I really only play turn-based games now.

I think that every story like that is beautiful.

I still find it hilarious that I used to avoid indie games like the plague just to end up as not only an indie dev but a solo one.

 

[udm]

Kevin, you've played nuSEXCUM on Ironman, but have you played X-COM on Superhuman Ironman?

 

[vazha]

Did an interview with Bantichai. You can find the interview here, or read it down below! Thanks Bantichai !

Spoiler

Welcome to yet another developer interview. This time we are talking to Kevin Zhang, the man behind the recently released tactical RPG Dead Monarchy. We talk about the hardship of being a solo developer, dreams of the future, and what is planned next.

---

Tell me a little about yourself – who is the solo developer behind Dead Monarchy Studios?
So I’m Kevin Zhang, that part is probably quite apparent. I’m a Chinese man born and raised in Australia previously with a Thai surname. Yes, I am quite culturally confused. Dead Monarchy is my first game, I started development when I was 24, so the start of 2017 basically. I had no real experience prior to that, I just took on a relatively useless multimedia/games design degree that didn’t really teach me anything other than good folder management.

How come you started the difficult task of becoming a solo developer?
Depression and curiosity. Came out of a hurtful relationship and wanted to find meaning in my life. For a while games became the crutch then when I healed myself, I wanted more and more from gaming and eventually that curiosity made me take the plunge. I essentially see my whole solo game development journey as “real-life ironman mode”, I’m enjoying each step of the way, discovering new things and implementing things I’ve always wanted to do. It’s become a way of life for me now.

Is it your full-time job? If not, is it a dream to make it so?
Nah, I got other part-time jobs. It is my dream to be able to make games for a living but considering my games are super niche, it might always be a dream. That’s alright though, gives me enough reasons to keep pushing forward.

Do you do everything yourself – programming, sound, writing, etc?
I suppose if you want to get really technical, I designed the entire game myself but I didn’t develop the entire game myself. That is to say I didn’t make everything from scratch, I assembled various pieces that on their own are just tools, pieces of the puzzle. They have no real inherent meaning until they are put into the context of a game. I used to fiddle around with LEGO a lot, so in my mind it is like assembling a giant LEGO set. The music, those are all non-exclusive pieces, though I scour the asset store for suitable tracks which is surprisingly very hard to find. The writing, that’s all mine, it’s not particularly great but it gets the job done. I have various tools that assist me in programming and I invested quite heavily into those tools to get tailored solutions for Dead Monarchy. The only custom assets are the vast majority of the armour/weapon models and the animations, which I got help from by various contracted freelancers. It is still and I really mean this, an ungodly amount of work, especially when dealing with 3D which can quickly become a blackhole.

Let’s take for example the armours, when the models come in, I break them down into smaller pieces so I can get more customisation from them. I then rig the armour, decimate the polygons, create the alternative textures needed, like blood, scratches etc. Then I need to do the icons, do another pass for clipping and then set up the item in-game. I’m not a great animator either, so I got a freelancer animator to do my animations however for each attack he needed to animate, he wanted me to do a video of each attack taken from multiple angles. He would then use that video as the basis for the animation. So I spent about 100 hours of my life with a mop, hammer and umbrella bashing and slashing away like a maniac. After those animations are done, I then need to sync them with the various death and hit animations, etc, etc, etc. So when you take a step back and look at the entire picture, the assets make up about 90% of the overall game development process.

Tell me about your gaming journey, what started it, what do you play on, and what are your current genre favorites.
I started on Pokemon, then found Age of Empires in a cereal box, yeah Australia is weird. Then I got heavily hooked onto Diablo 2, the thought of losing my gear terrified me. I loved that game so much and since I was a poor Asian kid whose parents didn’t allow them to buy PC games, I “borrowed” Diablo 2 from my best friend. Yeah, I’m a loot whore. After Diablo 2, I went to Runescape and then Morrowind. Morrowind was probably the peak for me. I’ve told this story so many times that sometimes I mess up the details, but I was around 12 then. After Morrowind it was a steady decline for me. Onto Oblivion then Skyrim and for the most part I exclusively played AAA games, I scoffed at indie games (the irony, I know). Somewhere along the line between Oblivion and Skyrim, I played Fallout 3, found out about Fallout 2 on wiki and that was what propelled me into discovering the classics which then led me to indie games. Indie games then led me to Battle Brothers. I only play on PC these days and I really only play turn-based games now.

Battle Brothers seems to be a clear inspiration for Dead Monarchy going by structure and setting. Are there any other games that inspired you and in what way if that is the case?
Battle Brothers is the main one. I didn’t actually know Warband had a single player campaign, for the longest time I thought it was purely an online fighting game like Chivalry. I also didn’t play Warband until after Bannerlord, by then though Dead Monarchy started to give off Warband vibes unknowingly to me but I think that was mainly because Battle Brothers was inspired from Warband as well.

Beyond Dead Monarcy, what would be your absolute dream game if you could go completely wild?
My absolute dream game is the “ultimate” game that I’ve mentioned on Steam. It would be Warband but on a more intimate scale. So turn-based combat, managing each individual soldier, territory control with some life simulator elements. Adventurer phase, ruler phase and the ability to be beaten back down to adventurer phase only to rise up again. I believe I can achieve it with time, so I guess my dream actually is to just retain full functionality and mobility of my eyes and limbs.

Dead Monarchy (now fully released) started as an Early Access title, how was that process? Did buyer feedback help, or was it more a question of financing?
Buyer feedback definitely helped shape the game dramatically. I think the concept of early access is great, it’s just most developers burn out. The biggest motivating factor for me though was to “work in the light” so to speak. I spent a couple years just working alone without anyone knowing and after a while you start to question all your ideas, it starts to feel like you are “working in the dark” and just digging a deeper hole. So at some point you just say, it’s now or never, let’s put it out there and see how the community reacts to it.

What do you think about Early Access in general, do you buy Early Access titles?
I think it’s great but as mentioned above, I don’t think it’s for everyone and most developers burn out so it gives EA a bad reputation. I’ve only bought 3 EA titles, Battle Brothers, Stoneshard and Bannerlord.

Have you ever considered Kickstarter or something similar?
I did but I didn’t think I would qualify for Kickstarter, I had no previous games, no real experience, not really anything to show for. I figured I’d be ruining my reputation before I even started. Considering that I had to completely rebuild Dead Monarchy as well, I don’t think I would have dealt with the pressure well when expected to deliver.

How about publishers – is it something you have considered for financial stability? Have any publishers contacted you?
I’m not too keen on the idea, a couple publishers have but they all seem obscure and somewhat shoddy.

What hopes do you have for the future now – for the game and studio?
Dead Monarchy‘s release did better than I thought, Splattercat’s video really helped shine some light on Dead Monarchy. It still isn’t breaking the bank, but I feel I am starting to gain a small foothold. If I can never make it full-time, I will be happy enough to just work on games for the small community that has gathered around me.

You are selling your game rather cheap, under ten bucks, and it was even cheaper on release day (50% off from what I remember), how come? What did you base the value on? Is it a question of confidence or making it a less risky purchase for the customer?
It’s $10 because AOD is $15 and I don’t think my game is as deep as that. The combat is sure, but the story is pretty light, I thought $10 sat nicely in the middle. I set my launch discount at 40% because I want to start work on the “ultimate” game no later than 40, so it was a lucky number I suppose.

What engine does Dead Monarchy run on?
Unity 2019, eventually I’ll have to upgrade again.

The setting of Dead Monarchy is fascinating – an apocalyptic medieval wasteland filled with bandits and despot lords. What inspired you to create this setting? It reminds me a bit of the game The Age of Decadence, do you know of it?
Yup, I know it and I know it well. I don’t mention it though because I’d rather not have DM’s story compared to AOD’s which is vastly superior. I also think AOD had peak graphics and I honestly mean that. I don’t think graphics need to get any better. If you can clearly see it is a tree, it’s a tree. You don’t need to be able to count the individual leaves. I also think gamers and developers have forgotten about the power of imagination. Not everything needs to be presented on a silver platter, things can be abstracted and stories can play out in your head.

I’d rather a game with AOD’s graphics that encompassed the whole world as opposed to a photorealistic game that encompassed the size of a city. I believe in quantity over quality, because you only need so much quality before it gets redundant. I want to create a game where a player can play one playthrough for a year, so that’s why quantity is more important to me. The concept of quality is also such an abstract and subjective thing to discuss at this point now. Pixel art is technically bad graphics, it was birthed from technical limitations yet now it is an accepted art style. Why can’t I just say, the art style in this game is “Old-School” and have everyone accept it? Is it because it is still considered to be realistic? Pixel art was still meant to imitate the real world though but it gets a free pass?

What is the “The Great Mistake”? It sounds very ominous and intriguing. It’s definitely a good story hook!
That will be something I expand upon in further games

Like Battle Brothers, Dead Monarchy seems very gameplay orientated, but do you consider the story an important part still?
Absolutely, it’s just I have limited time. By limited time I mean, the amount of time you are comfortable with committing to on a specific section of the game without any guarantee of financial success. Whilst I know I may not ever make a hit, I don’t want to ruin myself financially either so I have to stay somewhat agile, that is until I hit 40. All bets are off when I hit 40 and at the point I’ll just go all in and commit to one game.

Was turn-based gameplay set in stone from the beginning, or did you experiment with real-time or maybe something else?
I have a janky demo somewhere on IndieDB where you would make all your decisions at the start of the round and then they would play out afterwards. It was fun to experiment but not practical.

When starting Dead Monarchy, you get a warning about how difficult the game is – what prompted you to make this warning? Complaints? Are modern games too cuddled?
Inspired by AOD and I wanted to let players know that it really is a hard game, but a rewarding one too if you can stomach it. Maybe jank is the hardest boss.

Have you finished your own game from start to finish on the hardest setting? If so, was it tough?
I’ve finished it three times, the last run was a lot harder after I nerfed the arbalest but it was also the most exhilarating as I started to develop completely different builds. It’s mostly a practice in patience. When I was 21, I discovered XCOM EU and was playing that on ironman mode, I had nothing else to do as I had no internet due to just moving to a new house. The concept of ironman mode to me was fascinating so I quickly got used to dying. It was like high stakes gambling without the loss ruining you or your family. It was the second peak actually, a revitalising era after Morrowind.

The setting is considered low-fantasy, does that mean magic, and monsters don’t exist, or are they just rare?
Monsters did exist in Dead Monarchy, then the “Great Rebuild’ came and I wiped them due to them being too janky even for my tastes. I’m actually going to reintroduce some of them back into the game though, in the post-release content.

Is diversity of equipment important for a game like this? Is more always better? (Jagged Alliance 2 1.3 patch for example got a hilarious amount of weapons).
Absolutely, loot is life. I stuffed Dead Monarchy with armours until it broke, I couldn’t fit them all in. I have a video actually. Someone is probably bound to call me out on it and say “Why are you selling a new game with assets that were meant to be for Dead Monarchy?” The reality is, when you look at the sheer amount of equipment, especially for one solo developer, you KNOW it’s insane. You’ll feel it in your bowels and your body won’t be able to deny it. It is absolutely ridiculous, completely unnecessary, enough raw art assets for 4 games, but I wanted to do it anyway. Eventually, when technology gets even better, I’ll be able to do it and shove them all into one game. Those are the raw art assets too, I can create at least 3 unique sets from one base armour model. Why create so many assets then? Well, freelancers come and go, you work to their schedule. So when they are free, you want to make the most out of their time. One of the freelance modellers I used to work with one day just up and completely left the gaming industry, you never know. I also get excited and want to show off cool things and remain transparent so I show it all off.



Does the world level up with you, and why did you decide to go with/without this aspect? Hard to balance?
There is no level scaling in Dead Monarchy. If you get wrecked, you get wrecked. I did it because when you have level scaling you lose all sense of character progression. Scaling to time is alright though and I did do that initially with the first iteration of DM which is actually still up on the beta branch, it has all the janky monsters.

Any interesting anecdotes about the development of Dead Monarchy?
A lot of my work peers thought I was insane, I am inclined to agree. One peer thought I wouldn’t be able to even make 10k from the game. I made it, then spent it on DM again.

Is there anything you want to add about being a solo dev? Maybe a few tips to others, what to avoid and such?
I think what I’m doing is probably inspirational but I don’t think it is an example to follow for other solo developers. It is an ungodly amount of work, it costs a lot of money especially for the scale that I am aiming at. I think you should start on small projects. I’m doing this because I’m legitimately curious to see how far one solo dev can go, I don’t necessarily think it is a recipe for success though and I went in accepting the consequences rather than being blinded by my dreams. If you really want to do something as crazy as what I’m doing, I would suggest reading up on project management. Knowing where to source your assets is half the battle. I also think you should seriously consider planning and plotting out your life like when it is ideal to have kids.

Dead Monarchy 2, when?
The real question is “Unnamed Ultimate Game” when? I plan to develop a few standalone expansions/game that will continue iterating upon the combat and focusing on other major features that I had to cut out like base management. Then eventually when I receive enough feedback on those standalone expansions/games, I will combine them all and start work on the “ultimate” game. As for how long, probably decades at the rate I’m going. Unless I do Patreon and somehow secure a steady stream of funds enough to go full-time or drastically cut down on work.

As a final question, is there anything you want to add, anything you want to tell the reader?
Thank you for the support, is all I can say. I always try to be straightforward and transparent. Thank you for reaching out to me to do the interview and thank you to the readers that read it. I truly appreciate every ounce of support. I also want to thank the Codex, they were the ones that found me first too, out there drifting in the vast indie sea.

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I want to give a big thanks to Kevin for answering my questions. I wish him all the luck with Dead Monarchy and future endeavors.

Thanks for reading.

Game journalism / interviewing done right. Thank you!

 

[RPK]

this is an awesome success story. congrats on the launch of your game!

 

[Lyre Mors]

The redemption arc of a filthy casual turned omega chad PC gamer/indie dev. Does the heart good.

 

[Bantichai]

this is an awesome success story. congrats on the launch of your game!

Cheers mate!