Greetings, Shifters! ✊
We recently organized a Q&A session where we invited you to ask your burning questions on Discord, and we're thrilled to share the answers with you today! It was a fantastic opportunity for us to connect with our amazing community and provide some insights into what goes on behind the scenes ????
We prepared a video of the entire session available for you to watch. But if you're short on time, don't worry! We've also summarized the key points in written form below. Enjoy!
[previewyoutube=3B1ORD9L53A;full][/previewyoutube]
Q: How did your team form up?
A: It started a bit after Valle and I met. We met at the university, where we were studying Chemistry, so not quite Game Development back then. But Valle had an interest in Game Development since high school, so he was developing games. He had just finished a game project and was starting a new one, and he asked me for ideas and input. I started helping, and it eventually snowballed into us working together. Finally, we started a studio in 2018 have been doing this game since. The current team has been formed through first us, and then people we met on the way.
Q: How big is your team, and what are their roles?
A: The core team that works on the game daily except us two, there are two more people. We've got Oskar who's been helping us with VFX, so he's like a technical artist, and we've got Gabi who helps us with the environments and 3D assets. But we also have people who help us with music, sound, 2D art assets, etc.
Q: How did you find the idea of becoming what you kill? That's the most interesting and "exotic" feature of the game IMO!
A: At the beginning, we only had one creature you could play as and shape-shift into a human and a creature. Then we added two more, so you could always shape-shift between four forms. But progession-wise, we felt like we didn't get what we wanted; We wanted to have more possibilities of progression with the beasts, and that's when we came up with an idea that they're not just something you have all the time, but rather an ability or an item. When you defeat a beast it can drop its form and properties, and you can pick it up and become it.
Q: Did you think at any point of the game about making some PVP features?
A: No. We wanted to make a co-op game. PVP takes a long time to develop because it has to be very fair and extremely balanced. We felt like we wanted to focus on the co-op aspect and PVE rather than PVP. We decided very early that PVP won't be our focus.
Q: Were there any road blocks, either from the art side or programming side, that had to have a creative workaround for the issue(s) encountered?
A: It's a hard question because, of course, we had some roadblocks here and there. We've been working on the game for so long that we tend to forget. But when we found problems with performance of the game, we had to come up with some workarounds or skip on some features. E.g. we always liked to have plenty of lights in our game — creatures, humans, environments emit light, especially in the dark areas, so a lot of things had shadows. But it soon became apparent that the shadows costed the game a lot, and we had to cut down on them a bit. It affects immersion a bit, but for now, we felt like it was more important for the game to flow well. Our game is about precision - you have to time your attacks, etc., so we didn't want performance to suffer.
Q: For how long was Corriden in development? What took the longest time to make?
A: We've been developing the game since 2018. We both started working on it part-time, but we started working on the prototype even before that. We were working and studying before that, so... I don't want to count the years anymore. But we've learnt a lot along the way. What took the longest? Programming! Not only to do the programming, but to learn it as well. When we started I did make some games, but they were small and in a different programming language. So it was more or less like starting from a scratch when we started working in Unity.
Q: What is your proudest moment of what you've currently developed for Corriden?
A: It's hard to pick just one, but a whenever we went to conventions to show our game, then seeing people play it and have fun would make us proud and happy. Also, when someone plays it and streams it online or makes a video and has fun with it of course makes us happy! But the biggest milestone so far was that we managed to reach the goal for the Kickstarter. That was a really nerve-racking time and we're happy that so many people wanted to help us release the game. We'll be the most proud when we get to release the game!
Q: Will there be another playtest or will it be onto full release from here?
A: Our last playtest was really good. We got a lot of reports on issues, and we're very grateful for them. We definitely want to squeeze one more. Maybe not necessarily in the same open form, but maybe for the Discord community and Kickstarter backers, so on the smaller scale. Can't promise it, but we'd love to!
Q: Do you have a future goal in mind for Aftnareld Studio such as develop at least one AA or AAA game?
A: That's very hard to answer! If we got the opportunity - sure, but getting such an opportunity is really hard. You need a lot of money, and a lot of people, and it's a very big risk. Maybe we'll get to do a AA in the future, who knows, but AAA is probably out of our reach. It would be fun, though! We already have ideas for big projects! For now, our heads are in the indie space, but who knows, maybe after a couple of projects we’ll be ready for something bigger.
Q: Those ideas that you've mentioned - are these more like Coridden 2, or something completely brand new?
A: Right now, we're focused on Coridden, and we're thinking on how to expand on it in the future. We haven't decided yet if there will be Coridden 2 - it depends on what we feel like we've learned after releasing Coridden. What people liked and disliked and if there's more to explore there. We'll keep this one a bit of a secret. We'll see!
We had a blast answering your questions and hope you enjoyed the session as much as we did. Thank you for being such an engaged and supportive community. Your enthusiasm keeps us going! ❤️
If you have any more questions or ideas, feel free to reach out to us on Discord or any of our social media channels. We're always here to chat!
Until next time!
/Aftnareld Team
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