Dungeon Hero - Preview, Interview @ VideoGamer

Dhruin

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Simon Bradbury from Firefly is doing the rounds promoting Dungeon Hero and a new preview is up at VideoGamer:
While we haven't quite wrapped our head around how Dungeon Hero's combat system will work, we're enthusiastic that it's a game that won't force us to learn another 20 multi-string combos just to get through it. It's an RPG for sure, with levelling up, but it's described as "RPG lite". Firefly is hell bent on making the game as accessible as it possibly can, a far cry from its super hardcore PC RTS strategy heritage with the Stronghold series. And we're glad.
For us the combat system and the game's main character are thoroughly overshadowed by the compelling "living, breathing world" Firefly is developing. This is what interests us most about Dungeon Hero - seeing a dungeon from another point of view. Exploring underground tunnels and overground trenches and discovering that, actually, goblins aren't all that bad after all. That and the promise of a side by side co-op mode.
...and a two-page interview, which focuses on the development and surrounding issues like the death of the PC:
VideoGamer.com: I wanted to ask you about the feeling that PC gaming is dead, and how we're seeing a lot of games previously PC exclusive coming to console because of piracy, which is a big issue.
SB: It is. It always has been in some ways and it always will be. I guess Steam does OK. But for us, clearly a third person game would have to be multiplatform, absolutely no bones about it. But a first person shooter game, Crysis? That game was a very expensive big game and piracy hits them quite hard. It's a short shelf life title that flies off the shelf. Strategy games are probably the last bastion of the PC because they're games that suit the PC really well. The mouse and keyboard control, the fact that you load and save half a dozen billion of them. You can patch them, they're involved games, they need a lot of patching and things like that, upgrades, DLC, the Internet, all of those things still work well on PC. Strategy games have never been brilliant, RTS for example, on consoles. It's just not suited to it. Especially builder games. We're safe. God only knows if we'll still be safe five years down the line, but right now strategy games are safe, partly through the interface and partly through the people who like to play them and the nature of the game. Anything else beyond that I think you're right, it's a bit scarier and you've got to really put it on consoles.
More information.
 
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Interesting point he makes about the strategy genre. It doesn't seem to be getting quite the console treatment, as he says, that a lot of the multi-platform titles with RPG in the title seem to be drawing, like Space Seige, and his own game Dungeon Heros seem to be focusing on. I just wonder why he considers them safer

... partly through the interface and partly through the people who like to play them and the nature of the game...

but not RPGS. Is the dynamic that different in terms of people who play them, interface, etc? Couldn't it be more a demand thing, with strategy having a bigger marketing base than cRPGs?

Just some thoughts.
 
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Well, I hope there's more to it than just replacing all the human NPCs w/ goblin NPCs. I was thinking this was going to be a kinda Dungeon Keeper-like environment. Instead I'm reading an action-RPG, in which you (I guess) live with and help goblins, and can attack in all directions.

Tho I have dumped countless hours in Firefly's stronghold, I have to admit, I'm becoming less and less enthusiastic about this project the more I hear about it.
 
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