Fallen Gods
Fallen Gods is by far the largest project we’ve ever undertaken. While I had a lot of cRPG development experience from working on
Torment: Tides of Numenera and
Dragon Age: Origins, helping on
Colony Ship, and attempting to make various cRPGs of my own over the years, I really had no idea what I was getting into when I started
Fallen Gods back in May 2014.
Numerical measures of a game’s scale can be deceptive (“lies, damned lies, and statistics!”), but they are a useful starting point.
Fallen Gods has about 250 major events (text adventures) each with numerous possible “paths” and resolutions, a level of choice, reactivity, and non-linearity that goes far beyond our prior games (and entails much more writing). On top of that are hundreds of minor events (things like combat encounters, lore discoveries, dungeon flavor, item or follower interactions, and the like).
Each event requires not only text and design, but also graphics and sound. We now have over 250 illustrations, plus things like enemy formations for combat encounters and environmental scenes for minor events. The “intro” node of every event is voiced, which totals over around seven hours of voice over. And the events (and game in general) are full of music, with over 40 tracks thus far.
And setting aside events, there are obviously the hundreds of animated sprites that compose the exploration and combat aspects of the game.
All these numbers continue to tick inexorably upward!
The massive scope of
Fallen Gods has been possible primarily thanks to teamwork and time (a decade of development). While some members have come and gone over the years, and some have joined recently, others have been with me from almost the very start.
Fallen Gods has an amazing, international crew (spanning four continents), all of them artists in their disciplines.
All the way back in 2014,
Daniel Miller and Maciej Bogucki joined the team.
Fallen Gods’ amazing pixel art is thanks to Dan, as are some of its illustrations. Dan’s work will be familiar to Wormwood Studios fans, as he did key animations for the Stranger in
Strangeland. Maciej’s role doesn’t have an easy label; he’s the sinew of the project: editor, scripter, sounding board, producer, overseer. He pushes all of us to be our best and leads by tireless example.
In 2016,
Jamie Campbell and
Anders Hedenholm began creating
Fallen Gods’ soundscape. Jamie is an amazing voice actor, and his delivery of the narrator’s voice helped guide my writing as the years went on. Anders—fittingly from Sweden—found a way to compose music that feels authentic to the setting, unique, and beautiful.
A couple years ago,
James Spanos—one of my fellow founders of Wormwood Studios and one of the three core creators of
Primordia and
Strangeland—took over coding from Connor Brennan, who helped launch the project. Since James joined, the game has leaped forward, which is unsurprising because no commercial Wormwood Studios game has ever been finished without his involvement, and his inexhaustible energy was a dynamo of our past projects as well.
Right now we have four active illustrators:
Ivan Ulyanov (whose work has appeared in numerous adventure games, including several released by the publisher of
Primordia and
Strangeland, Wadjet Eye Games);
Jan Pospíšil (one of the illustrators of
Six Ages, a sequel to one of
Fallen Gods’ inspirations, King of Dragon Pass);
Gessony Pawlick; and
Cleopatra Motzel. Almost a decade ago, Cleo did the knotwork for the runestone that has been the game’s main menu, and recently she jumped back in to create a logo and enhance her earlier work.
The very long development cycle—and uncertain nature of embarking on RPG development—meant that I took a different approach for
Fallen Gods in terms of team structure.
Primordia and
Strangeland were collaborations where no one got paid during development and the three of us shared in the backend royalties. For
Fallen Gods, we’ve actually had a budget, which I’ve funded out of the royalties I earn from
Primordia and
Strangeland. From 2014 on, almost all of my royalties have gone to the
Fallen Gods team as part-time contractors. For those curious about the costs of even a shoestring indie RPG, the development cost has been around $80,000 (another number ticking inexorably upwards!), divided between art (45%), coding (25%), production work like scripting, editing, testing, QC (25%), and audio (5%). (Obviously, I don’t pay myself!)
It’s been a long road, but the end is now in sight! And there’s no one I would rather have taken that journey with than these comrades in arms. I can’t wait for people to see (and play) what we’ve created together!
When is that release going to happen? I anticipate 2024, but I never like to make promises on release dates. Of course, getting the game out is never the end of the road. As James and I have done with
Primordia and
Strangeland, I’m sure we’ll continue supporting and refining the game for years to come!
They make huge difference in quality, speed and programming of not only basic but also innovative features. They are code Messi/Ronaldo. Game developers love clueless juniors or long time programmers who stick with one company but never acquire programming skill outside of narrowly defined engine capabilites and design needs for said company (e.x. Bethesda Seniors). Why? They ask for less $$$, which in the end costs studio more. 1 Senior = 7-11 Juniors
