Fallen Gods - upcoming Norse saga-inspired roguelite from Wormwood Studios

[MRY]

Ivan Ulyanov.

 

[Cohesion]

Ivan Ulyanov.

Russian guy?

 

[MRY]

Yep! We've now run the gamut of American, German, Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Russian illustrators (not to mention Brazilian and Australian). We are a veritable United Nations of starving artists.

 

[lightbane]

That reminds me: will you sell this game to Russia? I'm not sure if you can to begin with, with all of the restrictions going on.

Other devs stopped selling their game (or offering demos) to get at Putin, not sure what is your take.

 

[MRY]

> not sure what is your take

My take on Current Event X? That I normally don't have anything meaningful to add to the conversation about Current Event X, so I don't, even though there's often pressure on game devs to take one side or the other of every Current Event. The only soapbox I'll never get off is the same one I stood on for Primordia and Strangeland, and for the parts I created of TTON and other games/shows/etc.: humanism, compassion for suffering, respect for tradition, decency to others, and the belief that as terrible as the world may be, we shouldn't give up on it or the people in it. In FG, a lot of that is defined by "negative space" (i.e., look at how bad it gets when the gods are only interested in their own luxurious comfort and not in the duty that is supposed to run with power/greatness), whereas in Primordia you get a protagonist who embodies those values, but it's the same soapbox. If I couldn't preach those values in my games, I wouldn't make my games.

Whether I sell FG or give it away is still up in the air (I will probably sell it because it's important that the team get a "commercial" game credit for the amazing work they've done), whether we go through a publisher (which may have its own restrictions) is still up in the air, and I have no idea what Steam is currently doing with our other games like Primordia and Strangeland, though I continue to see Russian reviews, so I don't think sales are blocked.

 

[Tyranicon]

Whether I sell FG or give it away is still up in the air (I will probably sell it because it's important that the team get a "commercial" game credit for the amazing work they've done), whether we go through a publisher (which may have its own restrictions) is still up in the air...

Was FG not planned as a commercial product? It's surprising to hear that such important details are still being considered when, as I understand it, the bulk of the game is finished and we are awaiting launch?

Anyways, from what I've seen in Roxor's Let's Play, this appears to be a stellar game with quality writing, art and a decent amount of love put into it. You guys deserve a payday.

 

[MRY]

Always intended to be commercial, but from the outset I wanted to preserve the option to give it away. I don’t love selling games—for the most part, people who buy them need the money more than I do. But with Primordia, Strangeland, and the failed Cloudscape project, we did profit sharing. Once you do that, your teammates’ pay depends on selling the game. For FG, I’ve paid everyone out of pocket (more less ploughing whatever I made from my other game work into FG), so the only person whose bottom line is affected is me. The main reason that matters is that I have always wanted my game making hobby to be a moneymaker for my family, not a moneyloser, so if I give FG away that would limit the budget for whatever I make next.

If you told me to a certainty that 5X as many players would play if it were free, I’d probably make it free. But the irony is that free games get shunned for other reasons, so charging may actually attract more players. My hope is that the price will be low, maybe $9.99, though the upside of a higher price is that you can discount more.

 

[lightbane]

Good to know you won't go with the NPC route to piss off as many Russian customers as possible "until they rebel! They can't get away with it (TM)!!!", as some devs did. The Let's Play is awesome indeed.

 

[Tyranicon]

Always intended to be commercial, but from the outset I wanted to preserve the option to give it away. I don’t love selling games—for the most part, people who buy them need the money more than I do. But with Primordia, Strangeland, and the failed Cloudscape project, we did profit sharing. Once you do that, your teammates’ pay depends on selling the game. For FG, I’ve paid everyone out of pocket (more less ploughing whatever I made from my other game work into FG), so the only person whose bottom line is affected is me. The main reason that matters is that I have always wanted my game making hobby to be a moneymaker for my family, not a moneyloser, so if I give FG away that would limit the budget for whatever I make next.

Respect.

If you told me to a certainty that 5X as many players would play if it were free, I’d probably make it free. But the irony is that free games get shunned for other reasons, so charging may actually attract more players. My hope is that the price will be low, maybe $9.99, though the upside of a higher price is that you can discount more.

I can't guarantee it, and there's probably no way to know for sure, but I suspect that if you release it for free you will have much larger download numbers than as a paid product. There's a number of factors working for you, and they are important, such as you and your brand already being a known quantity with a community attached, as well as the game not being shovelware (most free games are either this or a tech demo).

The only con is that you can't set discounts on a free product, and discounts rounds are very helpful for visibility.

A case study you could look into is Doki Doki Literature Club, which while being in a very different genre, is one of the few serious cases of where a free game met popular success. The popularity of it being so overwhelming that they were able to monetize it with a paid version that has 20k+ reviews on Steam, at 15 USD. I'm not sure if that was something they planned from the beginning or not.

Something to think about.

 

[sser]

MRY doing everything in his power to not say he's working pro bono.

 

[MRY]

The three issues with a free release:

- As noted, I want the team to have a deserved commercial credit. It’s trickier for them to say “even though it’s free, I was paid thousands of bucks, promise!”

- If I want to self-fund another project out of game-dev income rather than lawyer income, there has to actually be game-dev income.

- Even if we could replicate your example, I don’t love the idea of doing anything based on a premise of selling an enhanced/expanded/whatever down the line. If the same team is doing the enhancing then that means years more spent focused on developing FG. If we farm it out, it means the “best” version isn’t the one I poured my soul into. That defeats the whole point of all the work I put into game dev in the first place. We will definitely support FG for ages (as Dualnames and I have done for Primordia and Strangeland), but if I’m still doing game dev, that has to be secondary to making new worlds and telling new stories about new characters (which is what I love). Maintenance is an obligation, but not a diversion. And to me, I just hate the idea of upselling, though I realize the shareware model of giving part away for free is different (and something I loved as a kid).

-EDIT-

sser I wouldn't say "pro bono" because while I believe that games are a public good (especially heroic games and games that let you inhabit a world/persona different from this one, for reasons I wrote about in my short obit for Arnold Hendrick), the reason I'm willing to put in the exhausting work and deal with the headaches of game development is because of the happiness it brings me. Some people get happiness out of making money from their games (and that's great), I get it out of making a connection with a player through something with my voice/vision/what have you. It was really awesome the first few times I was getting paid well to write game stories, but that dopamine hit is long gone.

 

[sser]

Always intended to be commercial, but from the outset I wanted to preserve the option to give it away. I don’t love selling games—for the most part, people who buy them need the money more than I do. But with Primordia, Strangeland, and the failed Cloudscape project, we did profit sharing. Once you do that, your teammates’ pay depends on selling the game. For FG, I’ve paid everyone out of pocket (more less ploughing whatever I made from my other game work into FG), so the only person whose bottom line is affected is me. The main reason that matters is that I have always wanted my game making hobby to be a moneymaker for my family, not a moneyloser, so if I give FG away that would limit the budget for whatever I make next.

Respect.

If you told me to a certainty that 5X as many players would play if it were free, I’d probably make it free. But the irony is that free games get shunned for other reasons, so charging may actually attract more players. My hope is that the price will be low, maybe $9.99, though the upside of a higher price is that you can discount more.

I can't guarantee it, and there's probably no way to know for sure, but I suspect that if you release it for free you will have much larger download numbers than as a paid product. There's a number of factors working for you, and they are important, such as you and your brand already being a known quantity with a community attached, as well as the game not being shovelware (most free games are either this or a tech demo).

The only con is that you can't set discounts on a free product, and discounts rounds are very helpful for visibility.

A case study you could look into is Doki Doki Literature Club, which while being in a very different genre, is one of the few serious cases of where a free game met popular success. The popularity of it being so overwhelming that they were able to monetize it with a paid version that has 20k+ reviews on Steam, at 15 USD. I'm not sure if that was something they planned from the beginning or not.

Something to think about.

Not just a different genre, but this borrows heavily from another medium: books. There are some popular titles that started out as freebies that transitioned to a paid-for model, usually while still giving it away for free. 'Beware of Chicken' and 'The Wandering Inn' spring to mind, usually stories that come from places like royalroad or sometimes even an archiveofourown – the freeness allows way more eyes-on, and people generally like to pay for things they like. Amazon itself has a subscription system where you can read anything assigned to it for free (KDP). So if an author subs their book to the program, then readers and pick it up for free (broadly speaking), and then 'Zon pays it on the back end to authors based upon pages read. I've no idea how it could be executed, but it would be cool to see such a subscription-model on stores like Steam. It would broaden the door a bit to the indie market and all those games people are reluctant to try via buy.

 

[Maxie]

you may derive whatever positive emotion from gamedev if you like, but market-wise - someone with an income outside gamedev, and a p respectable one at that, judging by your lawyer accolades, is leading the race to the bottom. you can accept lower margins, but devs as a whole won't, especially in the current economy.

 

[MRY]

That’s a fair concern but I don’t think anything I do is “leading” any race anywhere. If you go on Steam and examine the volume of “free to play” or “freemium” or very inexpensive games, I think the market is what it is. On its best day I don’t expect FG to occupy more than a minuscule portion of the market, and only a tiny percentage of developers and players will have heard of it.

Of course if charging more for my games could save us from the flood of asset flips, Skinner boxes, fan-scamming, etc. I would happily charge more. I just think it won’t, and I should do what is best for the game, the players, the team, etc. and let the market do what it will

 

[AdolfSatan]

people who buy them need the money more than I do.

If anyone’s spending living money they don’t have on games, you releasing it for free won’t cure their imbecility, that money will go to waste somewhere else.
The poor downtrodden that can’t afford but aren’t dumb will pirate it as they do with everything else, you’re not changing anything. Wanna help them? Upload a clean torrent yourself somewhere.
But putting your game up for free won’t help anyone monetarily, set a price.

 

[MRY]

Yes, I know no straw ever actually broke a camel's back. All the same, and Socrates notwithstanding, at some point the tolerable life depends on respecting your superstitions, rituals, and traditions rather than trying to coral them into reason. But, anyway, that particular discomfort is offset by the other considerations listed above, so I think it is more likely than not that we will charge something, be it $9.99 or $4.99 or $14.99 or whatever, I'm sure it will arbitrarily end in 99 cents because god forbid we have round numbers.

 

[huskarls]

you get tired of these group therapy sessions after 9 years?

 

[lightbane]

Will this game have expansions after release?

 

[CryptRat]

Did anyone ever write any article about games which are sold on Steam but available for free elsewhere, like traditional roguelikes and whatnot? I don't know how bad of a business model it is for people who don't give a shit about business models to begin with and just want people to pay for their games but in the same time not really.

 

[lukaszek]

Did anyone ever write any article about games which are sold on Steam but available for free elsewhere, like traditional roguelikes and whatnot? I don't know how bad of a business model it is for people who don't give a shit about business models to begin with and just want people to pay for their games but in the same time not really.

never saw one, perhaps one can compare available TOME numbers? Its successful title so it should be meaningful

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Did anyone ever write any article about games which are sold on Steam but available for free elsewhere, like traditional roguelikes and whatnot? I don't know how bad of a business model it is for people who don't give a shit about business models to begin with and just want people to pay for their games but in the same time not really.

never saw one, perhaps one can compare available TOME numbers? Its successful title so it should be meaningful

I think ADOM is the most notable example.
Probably Dwarf Fortress and Cataclysm: DDA too.

 

[lukaszek]

Did anyone ever write any article about games which are sold on Steam but available for free elsewhere, like traditional roguelikes and whatnot? I don't know how bad of a business model it is for people who don't give a shit about business models to begin with and just want people to pay for their games but in the same time not really.

never saw one, perhaps one can compare available TOME numbers? Its successful title so it should be meaningful

I think ADOM is the most notable example.
Probably Dwarf Fortress and Cataclysm: DDA too.

dunno how to use proper tools, but according to wikipedia(citing steamspy), in 2016, on steam, tome4 sold about 150k copies.
Even though it did offer game for free

 

[MRY]

Will this game have expansions after release?

I want to release the best game I can. I’m sure we’ll keep supporting it and adding smaller stuff. A larger expansion would depend on whether there’s an audience and what the appetite is (including with the actor who does the VO, I suppose).

Honestly I would like to move on to making a new world with different narrative/stylistic constraints. But if players craves an expanded FG, it would feel incumbent to try to deliver. Unlike Primordia and Strangeland, which felt over and done with narratively, FG could always have more events, victory conditions, followers, etc., at least to the extent there is suitable thematic material for them (easier said than found).

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1641190/view/6582648703807594215

Team Introductions: Jamie Campbell

After a hiatus, I’m pleased to continue the team introductions! Next up is Jamie Campbell, the narrator of
Fallen Gods
, is another of its longest-running contributors and another teammate who brings both amazing talent and passion to his work. When we set out to cast the narrator for Fallen Gods back in 2016, I expected a few auditions—instead, dozens upon dozens of voice actors put in, each with his or her take on the text and the speaker. (One of them, Steven Kelly, would fittingly go on to voice the scribe Fimbul Fambi in
Strangeland
, bringing the same skaldic personality to that role.) We ultimately chose Jamie, who not only delivered what I had heard in my head, but also drew out qualities that the written words had only hinted at.

Jamie’s distinctive delivery—sometimes wry, sometimes epic, sometimes disgusted, but always warmly, wisely human—brought the language to life, and inspired the approach I took to the many thousands of words I wrote over the next eight years. Throughout it all, he has remained a rock of reliability on the team, steadily working through the hours upon hours of voice acting. His answers testify to the thoughtfulness and sophistication with which he approaches his work.

After reading what Jamie has to say, go listen to his stuff on SoundCloud, including a fabulous reading of “The Raven” (anyone who played
Strangeland
knows how much I love that poem) and a performance as Kefka, a villain who left a lasting impression on me.

- Mark Y.

Mark
: Within hearing just a few events’ worth of voice over, it becomes apparent that the narrator has a personality of his own. How would you describe that personality, and how did you construct it?

Jamie
: One of the things that drew me to the project in the first place was that I read that one of Mark’s influences in creating
Fallen Gods
were the
Lone Wolf
game books by Joe Dever, which I collected and absolutely devoured as a kid. These were grand fantasy adventures told in the second-person, and once I understood this as an inspiration, I had that type of backdrop in mind, and I remember how my inner voice would hear those books as I read them. They were like Tolkien meets
Choose Your Own Adventure
.

The skald introduces every event node that the player comes across, and because the player is accompanied by his voice so often, I wanted to establish a sort of “baseline neutral” as a launching off point. Unless there’s an emotional or dramatic start to an event, the skald generally approaches it with a similar level of calm and interest in whatever’s transpiring. However, when the action is punctuated by something dramatic or unusual—an ambush or an environmental peril—I wanted to get right into it to make the player sit up and take notice so that they’re emotionally tuned in when it comes time to make their decision as to how to proceed.

The narrative takes stylistic inspiration from ancient epic poetry, and the fact that this sort of luxuriant language and poetic structure is woven into the writing presents a unique challenge, but also makes it ridiculously fun to read. (I majored in Classics, and I absolutely love this stuff.) Because of that narrative tradition, and due in large part to much of Mark’s wonderfully-paced writing, it felt natural to deliver the lines with a sort of ‘round-the-campfire, oral tradition vibe. Some of the lines are more prosaic than others, but the skald’s lines often lend themselves to a bit of a rhythmic, metered delivery, so I’ve tried to inject a bit of poetic flair and musicality into them where appropriate.

Regarding the personality of the skald, I see him as something between a conscience, a co-conspirator, and occasionally a judgmental observer, like a bemused St. Peter (or Valhalla’s equivalent) taking notes in his Big Book. At times lofty and serious, heavy with gravitas, and at times conspiratorial and sly. He’s concerned about the player-character when their life is in danger, and relieved and content when things are going well, or when some boon materializes. Because the skald spends so much of the adventure “over the shoulder” of the player and spinning their song, it strikes me as a fairly intimate relationship – with a caveat.

When I was brought on board as the skald, I remember thinking back to how much I absolutely loved John Rhys-Davies’ wonderful narration for the CD-ROM version of
Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness
when I was a kid. I haven’t heard that stuff in 20+ years, as I intentionally stayed away from revisiting that when developing the voice of the skald. But what stuck in my memory all these years later is a sense of what I’d call “detached intimacy.” Similarly, it feels to me like whoever the skald is, their fate is somehow intertwined with the player-character’s, as if the skald wouldn’t exist or wouldn’t serve a purpose without him. They’ll never meet face to face, but they’re close companions anyway.

The mystery of the connection that may or may not exist between them is part of the fun; the skald may truly have some stake in the wellbeing of the player, or he may just be doing his best as a storyteller. I think that this sense of mystery also colored the not-quite-discernible accent of the character. To me, he feels like a “person from nowhere,” and this unknowable, faceless voice is another element that fits right in with the ancient poetic and oral traditions to which it pays homage.

Mark
: You’ve been working on
Fallen Gods
for almost a decade. Has your approach to the voice over, or the narrator’s personality, changed at all during that time? Has the passage of time presented any challenges?

Jamie
: It became apparent early on that consistency was going to be absolutely vital so that there’s a level of comfort that the player settles into as they travel along in the adventure. This is especially true because of the non-linear, procedural nature of the game. At any given time, a player’s next encounter might be something that I recorded five years ago, or it might be something that I just finished yesterday. Thankfully, Mark and Maciej have been not only an excellent audience, but fantastically helpful collaborators with regard to choosing which takes felt most appropriate. I think that in doing so, they helped steer that consistency along.

With regard to whether the approach and personality of the skald changed over the years, I’d say that it’s been a very engaging balancing act. On the one hand, keeping the aforementioned “baseline neutral” as a bedrock to keeping consistent with what’s come before, and on the other, developing a keener sense of just how close the relationship between the skald and the player comes to feel over the course of this vast number of lines and encounters.

I mentioned earlier that a lot of the passages have the feel of ancient epic poetry. As the voice developed, it was important that even when voicing events that don’t necessitate this poetic rhythm, I wanted it to feel like that same heartbeat was there; it needed to remain buoyant and ready to move when the words next wanted to dance to Mark’s lead. After years of recording, so many brilliant passages have come in and surprised me, and there’s an ever-widening scope of just how many adventures the player goes through with the skald accompanying them. I hope that ultimately the passage of development time won’t be evident, but on the other side of the microphone, I’m always learning more about this world, and I’m just having a blast throughout.

As to the challenges of working on a project with this kind of lifespan, it’s presented one particular challenge which I’m delighted to have. Over the last few years, my wife Katya launched a successful handmade jewelry brand called GogolHaus, which she operates out of our home studio. She’s crafty enough to have also built the structure of my recording booth (Orm bless her) in the same room, so we’re often splitting work time between a jewelry workshop and a recording studio. But we’re both able to pursue our creative work in our little space, and I feel very fortunate for that.

Otherwise, it’s been great fun to be on this
Fallen Gods
journey for so long with such talented collaborators. Being a spoke on the wheel of this project, which is so clearly a labor of earnest love, has been hugely fulfilling, and I can’t wait to see (and hear) it in action in its final form.

Mark
: In addition to the narrator, you voice any character who has direct dialogue in the events’ intro nodes. How do you go about differentiating these voices?

Jamie
: It’s very common in video games and other media that take place in a pre-industrial setting to lean on British accents. It seems as though developers or creators often think that in the minds of the audience, those voices feel authentic to anything “fantasy.”

I’m not Scandinavian and wouldn’t purport to fake such an accent for hours upon hours of dialogue and narration, so we established a baseline with the
Fallen Gods
trailer (which also served as my audition for the role way back in 2016). Leaning into an American accent felt like it might clash with the world of the game, but I wanted something that was familiar enough to retain a lot of range and consistency. What felt right was a sort of dampened Transatlantic accent that tended toward a rhythmic mode of speech, which would lend itself to the often poetic pieces of writing that Mark provided for the events.

The flavor of the writing and visuals are suggestive of the history of a certain region of our world, but because we weren’t tied to leaning into a Scandinavian accent for the skald, it meant that there was also a lot of freedom when it came to the voices and accents of the other characters. The game isn’t reflecting a slice of history from our world; it’s its own thing. As such, I was able to play around a lot with the voices of the many characters that the player encounters throughout the adventure.

This is also a world where many of the people and creatures that the player encounters understand who the player-character is: They’re speaking to a god who’s fallen from Skyhold. The player-character isn’t someone who’s at the height of their once lofty powers, but they’re no one to be trifled with either. This often informed the development of a character’s voice and differentiated them from each other. What’s this character’s relationship to this fallen god? A wary thief who stumbles upon the player in the wilderness is going to have a very different attitude to the haughty Lord of the Mud who laughs at the very notion of the player’s supposed power.

Sometimes Mark would have a specific reference in mind that I might use as a baseline for a character, but most often I was given free rein to just reach for context clues and have fun with it. There’s a great collection of memorable characters here, and many of them were such a joy to voice. A wurm who’s trying to project the power it once had through intimidation, while being deathly ill and desperate for help from the very person it’s threatening, or an undead who finds it so hard to speak and whose mind is so addled that it vocalizes on its inhalations. There was typically some quirk to work with, which made each a singularly fun challenge.

I can’t wait for you all to enjoy the game, and to let us know what you think!

 

[MRY]

We may make some last adjustments, but figured I'd share a document we threw together to introduce folks to the world of Fallen Gods. Amazing work by Marcelo Orsi laying this out, and illustrations from everyone on the team (I think).