Everyone is a hero of their own story
Two weeks ago at Game Scope 2017 in Aalborg expo I discovered a playable prototype of Arcadia Fallen, The legend of the spirit alchemist. At first glance the game looked intriguing because there was no apparent eye-candy stuff. After minutes of play, I found myself playing a story of an alchemist meeting various peculiar characters on her journey. I managed to talk to developers, so let’s hear about the game and the team.
Daniel Svejstrup Christensen - CEO and Technical programmer
Mette Jakobsen - Art director and writer
Jesper Green - Sound and music designer
How is it to work as 3 friends?
Mette: Galdra studios is a three person indie team in Aalborg. We knew each other from the university, and we’ve been making games throughout studying. Now we want to create something completed. Everything becomes easier when you know each other’s interests, because we can ping-pong a lot of ideas.
We also play Overwatch together in the evenings, and it sometimes becomes an improvised company meeting. Often someone comes up with an idea or a solution. We write it down and look at it next day. Meet each other at informal settings makes the process easier.
Daniel: The game is within a visual novel genre, which comes from Japan. But we are combining it with the western game style, where we are inspired with role play mechanics from Telltale and Bioware games. Applying them in the visual novel, so that we can deliver immersive and interactive narrative within indie environment. While not focusing on combat, we are using our resources to make story rich experience.
Mette: We made the engine as part of our Master thesis, so we wanted to use it. We’ve been friends for long time and participated on many game jams together, therefore we had a lot of concepts. But Arcadia Fallen seemed like the one, we could actually finish together. It had a reasonable scope and interesting story, which we wanted to explore. We’ve been researching visual novels as part of our education, so it felt natural to use it as the next project.
Do you also play together traditional roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons?
Mette: Not much of that, but we played Vampire: The Masquerade together. Because we are located in different places, we mostly play online now. Overwatch has been the major game recently. It’s just lovely and competitive.
How do you approach sound and music design?
Jesper: In the beginning it was a bit of a challenge for me - I received only written description of the game - fantasy, magic, alchemy and a bit of steampunk. I realised this is not gonna be heavy metal (which I am used to). Then I started experimenting with more orchestral compositions, where I want to make more unique expression.
When working in the genre, where you don’t have experience, there is the challenge in writing music. But I got inspired and started to learn the compositions. The setting is fantasy and magic, so I am using whimsical approach. I’m still discovering the unique sound to this world.
Have you thought about including heavy metal into the game?
Jesper: Actually, recently I’ve made a song for the game, where I gravitated towards power metal. But that’s considered extra for now. So far I’d say maybe.
How do you approach your role as technical programmer in this game?
Daniel: Along being a director of the project, I take care of programming. What I provide is technical core of the game and a toolset for the team. Combining necessary mechanics for the game so the team can work around me and implement the assets (story, music, graphics). You can say it is creating a framework for my teammates.
Mette: We noticed, that lot of Japanese visual novels are being imported to steam, and there is interest in them. These games are traditional RPG and very focused on the story. It is mainly for people interested in playing the stories. Right now it has a female protagonist, but ultimately we aim for customisable player character.
Are you familiar with “Shandification”? (reference to a concept by youtuber MrBtongue about storytelling in literature and games - interesting stuff. Check video HERE )
Mette: No. Our main approach is - Everyone is a hero of their own story. Because everyone has a story. It should feel like that. We also write short stories about the world, because we want to make this universe alive. Because we have our super cool music composer and songwriter Jesper, we are aiming to have the songs about the adventures as part of the game.
The setting of Arcadia Fallen has roots in the traditional fantasy. It is meant as those hero tales, like the Bard’s Tale games - drinking beer and telling stories about great adventures.
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