Exclusive Interview with KING Art - Part 1

Earlier this week we visited the experienced German indie developer KING Art Games in their studio in Bremen. KING Art offered to show us their upcoming story-driven fantasy RPG The Dwarves and to make an extensive interview. The Dwarves is already their third Kickstarter, following the successful campaigns for the TBS Battle Worlds: Kronos and the adventure hit The Book of Unwritten Tales 2.
We decided to make this interview in the old fashioned way: with a voice recorder. The transcription below is very close to Mr Theysen's actual words. Only minor edits have been made to improve readability and remove a few repetitions. We'll bring you the second part in a couple of days.

RPGWatch: Please introduce yourself to our readers.

Jan Theysen: I'm Jan Theysen, one of two co-founders and the creative director at KING Art Games. My job for The Dwarves is writing and game design. As the creative director I'm also the one who has to deal with a lot of everyday problems and to make sure we're on schedule.


RPGWatch: What is The Dwarves?

Jan Theysen: The Dwarves is a fantasy RPG based on the series of novels with the same name, written by Markus Heitz. It's a little bit complicated, it's not like you can say it's a game like XXX. The game design is influenced by many different games.


RPGWatch: I think you have to explain that.

Jan Theysen: Our game has three different layers. Basically, there's a world map on which you can travel around, which is, for example, similar to a game like Banner Saga. We have quests and story elements, which pop up on the world map, sometimes randomly, to give you little story bits and pieces throughout the campaign.
And then we have a second layer. It's basically our exploration and adventure layer. That's similar to typical isometric RPGs like Divinity or Pillars of Eternity, where you have your character, move around, examine things, and talk to NPCs etc.
Finally, we obviously have combat. Our combat is actually pretty unusual, so I'm not sure there is a good comparison. Maybe the best comparison is something like Warcraft 3, where you have, you know, some strong hero units with a couple of abilities, and many enemies. So you're controlling the powerful hero characters who can use their special abilities to fight against dozens and sometimes hundreds of enemies. Beneath all that is a physics based crowd simulation that lets you use the environment to your advantage.


RPGWatch: Okay, let's dig into these three different layers. So traveling on the world map and exploration - is this grid based or can you move freely?

Jan Theysen: We're on a 3D world map. On this 3D map there are something like 200 or 300 different waypoints, and you can travel from one waypoint to other directly connected waypoints. Each travel from waypoint to waypoint is takes one day. The waypoints are interesting points on the map, for example a village, or a stronghold, but it can also be a bridge over a river or just any point on a road. On each of these waypoints and also between the waypoints, a number of things can happen.


RPGWatch: Can you give us an example?

Jan Theysen: Sure. At one waypoint there might be a tavern. When you reach the waypoint a pop-up window with an illustration says: “You see this tavern, you hear chatting and you see the flare of a fire through the window. What do you want to do? Do you enter the tavern, do you look through the window, do you explore the surroundings of the tavern or do you continue your journey?” This almost feels like old school pen & paper or a “choose your own adventure” book.
There can also be events between two waypoints, for example you're traveling down the road and then there might be a pop-up like: “100m ahead you see a fallen over carriage and you hear a scream out of the woods to your left. What do you do?” Then there are multiple different options what you can do and this might lead to a quest, to combat or to nothing. Some of these encounters are random, so every play through offers something new.



RPGWatch: Only the hero group on an abstract world map sounds a bit static.

Jan Theysen: The player group is represented by a small token on the world map. You can see other tokens too, for example orc armies, the king's knights or traveling salesmen. If you want you can go after an orc horde to attack it, or you can try to meet a merchant to buy supplies. This is interesting because this adds a little tactical element to the game. If you, for example, attack an orc horde early on,  it's harder to win the battle, but on the other hand this might give you advantages later on, because this orc horde might have destroyed a village if you would’ve left the orcs alone. Now the village still exists, and maybe there is somebody who could give you a quest or could sell you something. So there is a little strategic element as well.


RPGWatch: I think this leads directly to another question. What about choices & consequences?

Jan Theysen: There are choices & consequences all the time. We feel this is basically what makes an RPG an RPG. In our case it's a little bit tough though, because the game's main quest is the story of the first novel. If there were big decisions in the main quest, we would have the problem of killing off a key character we would need in a possible sequel. So some things are set in stone. But other things, when it comes to side quests, character relationships, or how to level up and to progress in the world, are actually quite dynamic.


RPGWatch: How far in the future are these consequences usually? Just around the next corner or 5 hours ahead?

Jan Theysen: It depends. Let's go back to the example with the orc hordes I used a few minutes ago. Pretty early in the game you see three different orc hordes. Each of these orc armies has its own agenda. They're traveling on different paths across the map, fighting against human settlements and stuff like that. You can destroy each of the 3 hordes in any order you like and at any give time or you don't fight them at all. All of that has different consequences. For example if you destroy horde A first, then maybe some human army will help you against horde B because they no longer have to deal with army A. But if you destroy army B first, then maybe you can save a village you couldn't have saved otherwise. Or if you don't destroy one of the armies completely, this army will travel to a hideout and will ambush you 3 hours later, when your paths cross again.
This is one of the reasons why we like this concept with a world map, which is not that complicated asset-wise, you know. It's text and illustrations and sometimes, okay, we cut into a detailed scene and you see the action in an isometric view, but many times we just stay on the world map. And one reason for that is that we could make the game much more dynamic that way, because it's far easier to just write all the consequences than to animate and show everything in close-up scenes.


RPGWatch: You said that if you don't kill a complete orc horde the survivors run away. So they can flee?

Jan Theysen: Well, yeah, in this particular case it's a story-driven thing that a part of this army retreats and then you have to decide to go after the retreating army or help other guys out.



RPGWatch: But this is an exception?

Jan Theysen: Yeah, in this case it's a story-driven thing. But still, it's not like the objective of the fight is always to kill the last orc. Sometimes you have to defend a city and survive a couple of waves of enemies, for example. Or you have to destroy enemy catapults to make sure they can't destroy the city gates, or stuff like that. And if you accomplish that, the battle is over. Depending on how well you did and if you did some optional tasks during the battle as well, the story continues based on that outcome.


RPGWatch: I take it the story is very important for your game?

Jan Theysen: Yes. It's based on the novel by Markus Heitz. I read the book, I don't know, 7 years ago. When I read it I had this thought “oh, that would be a nice story for a game”, but I really didn't think about that WE could make this game.
Years later we came into contact with Markus because one of our game designers designed the Dwarves board game. You know, it's a story made for an RPG, you might say. There are very strong characters, and the story is fast-paced. There are many battles but also exploration and strong story moments in between. We liked that a lot. We said, now this is the basis for the game, this is our main quest. On the other hand we didn't want to simply retell the story, but rather wanted to expand it. So there are optional quests and of course some adjustments because we had to change some things which work in a book, but not necessarily in a game. All the big beats in the novel are in the game. All the characters are in the game, all the big battles, but there's a lot of additional stuff going on.


RPGWatch: And is Mr Heitz involved in developing the game?

Jan Theysen: He is. One of the nice things when we met Markus the first time was that he basically said “okay, I've written the book. Now it's your job to make the game”. There's a great amount of trust. When we have questions, when we want his opinion, we ask him and he says whatever he thinks might work, but it's not like he's signing off all the milestones or has the last word on everything when it comes to the game.
Markus is also involved in the writing. He will write a couple of quests, maybe even a new playable character but that's one of the Kickstarter stretch goals, so we're not sure about that yet.


RPGWatch: The first thing people think about when they hear 'dwarves' nowadays is 'Tolkien'. What's special about your dwarves?

Jan Theysen: When Markus wrote The Dwarves he wanted to bring the classic sidekick or comic reliefs front and center. He wanted to make the dwarves the heroes and explore their history and their story. So it's not like he wanted to re-invent the dwarves or to make them all new, but to just to focus on them and to give them the appropriate attention. We liked the idea and we liked the concept of exploring this race everybody knows, but which hasn't been the center of a story that often.


RPGWatch: As you know RPGWatch is a hardcore roleplaying website. What makes The Dwarves attractive to a hardcore RPG fan?

Jan Theysen: First of all, we have a hard time really nailing down what the dwarves is in only three sentences. The elevator pitch was always a bit complicated. The Dwarves is an untypical game, not “a game like XXX but with new elements”.
I think The Dwarves is an interesting game for RPG players who play a lot and who know a lot of games because it offers some new ideas; things which are not standard, out of the box, RPG elements. For example the combat system, I think, is pretty innovative. [Jan is too modest. Helms Deep style combat hasn't been done before in an RPG. - ed.] And as a long time RPG fan, I actually like the world map a lot and the idea of traveling for days and weeks on a big world map, to have this big, global scale, you know. There are different kingdoms, different powers in this world and you are this small troop of maybe 12 heroes that has to decide the fate of the world. I like that a lot.

End of part 1. If you want to support the Kickstarter campaign for The Dwarves, simply follow this link.

Come back in a few days to read what Jan said about
- their innovative combat system with a physics based crowd simulation
- party management
- character development