RPGWatch - Soldak Entertainment Interview

Our next interview this month is with Steven Peeler of Soldak Entertainment who took time out of his very busy schedule to answer some my questions for our site.

Couchpotato: Welcome to RPGWatch Steven can you give everyone a brief introduction about yourself, and your gaming studio Soldak Entertainment?

Steven: My name is Steven Peeler. I’m the programmer, designer, and owner at Soldak Entertainment. Soldak is a small indie game developer. We’ve been making action RPGs since late 2004.


Couchpotato: How did you get started in game development, and what were your motivations for founding Soldak Entertainment?

Steven: I basically started writing games back when I was a kid and as I got older the games got more and more complex. I started by typing in games on my parents TI-99/4A from magazines. I created some simple games in high school. I built a software renderer in college and started some more sophisticated games. After college I started working on a full fledged action RPG with a small group of other people, but ultimately we really didn’t have enough experience to pull that off. Then I went to work for Ritual Entertainment.

After Ritual, I started Soldak mostly because I wanted to focus on actually making games instead of having meetings, getting sucked into politics, and having publishers constantly demanding dumb things.

More information.

Good interview Couch and Steve. Glad to hear Slodak is doing well. Zombasite sounds like it will be ambitious and engaging. A culmination of a lot of knowledge and experience learned from your other games, and substantial amount of new stuff too. Looking forward to it. Art is looking good. Like the jungle ascetic.

I'll admit that I've only played Din's Curse, but I thought it was very well done. It's very much like Diablo I, but with a better character development system, and the feeling that each dungeon is alive. Each dungeon has factions (monsters fight each other) and bosses which can grow, take the places of other bosses, and disasters which can get worse due to the player's inaction. One of the better hack & slay games out there, if you can get by the graphics.

Originally Posted by forgottenlor
I'll admit that I've only played Din's Curse, but I thought it was very well done. It's very much like Diablo I, but with a better character development system, and the feeling that each dungeon is alive. Each dungeon has factions (monsters fight each other) and bosses which can grow, take the places of other bosses, and disasters which can get worse due to the player's inaction. One of the better hack & slay games out there, if you can get by the graphics.

That actually sounds really, really cool! I've never heard of Din's Curse until now, will definitely have to do some more research.

Great interview, Couch. Thanks!

Steven seems like a smart guy with a good head on his shoulders. I've never heard of Soldak until now, but I will be looking out for Soldak Entertainment RPGs from now on.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Great interview, Couch. Thanks!

Glad you liked it Fluent.

We covered all his games on the site if you need more information. The developer also released six new screenshots for Zombasite this month on his website.

Soldak Zombie survival.


I'm hopeful for a great game.

Their games are a great "time spenders", games you can play for a little while and have lots of fun while doing it. Unfortunately, for me, their games couldn't hold my attention for more than couple days.

Looks like he defnitely upped his graphics for this new title.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Glad you liked it Fluent.

We covered all his games on the site if you need more information. The developer also released six new screenshots for Zombasite this month on his website.

Originally Posted by Darius Rivenguard
Their games are a great "time spenders", games you can play for a little while and have lots of fun while doing it. Unfortunately, for me, their games couldn't hold my attention for more than couple days.

same here. I think their games always have a lot of potential (game world goes on regardless of player action is something I want to see more of in other games) but all urge to play just disappears after a few days. In Drox, I enjoyed it a lot for a few days then suddenly just couldn't find any motivation apart from upgrading my ship and items which wasn't enough. Still, they *are* good games and I don't regret picking them up. I'm certainly looking forward to Zombasite.

Thanks for the interview, Steven and Couch. I didn't know Zombasite was in such an advanced stage. I bought all the Soldak games, and there is no doubt I'm going to buy that one too.

Always looking forward to anything that Soldak release.

Love Din's Curse and still play it regularly, looking forward to the new game.

Thanks for all of the kind words everyone and thanks again for doing the interview Couch.

Rule of thumb for Soldak's games is that they started in a good place and only get better with each title over time as they experiment further and shore up elements as they go---rarely consistent dev outfit period, within either the indie or larger entities in the industry.

Steve is in the know .

Steve is like Vince Dweller for me. I like both guys and hope they eventually make a fantasy crpg someday. I just never finish hybrid games and have mostly stopped buying them.

Thank you again Steven and Couch for making this interview possible. Because of that, I have discovered Soldak games and it's been great for me.

In short, you guys rock!!

Nice. I wonder if Steven could compare his Zombasite to other zombie games like 7 Days to die or Dead State…

Originally Posted by Farflame
Nice. I wonder if Steven could compare his Zombasite to other zombie games like 7 Days to die or Dead State…

I haven't played 7 Days to Die and only a little of Dead State back in beta (it's stuck in my backlog) so I can't give a good comparison.

If you can tell me specific things that either of those games do or don't do, I can compare Zombasite to them.