Blightbound Interview with Ronimo Games' Jasper Koning
I recently had the chance to chat with Jasper Koning, co-founder of Ronimo Games and game designer on many of their titles. If the name sounds familiar, he and some other students at the Utrecht School for Arts created de Blob, which was bought by THQ and made into a full game.
Maxi-Geek: Previously, the games created by Ronimo Games Have had a very distinct visual style, but Blightbound seems to change that. There are parts of the design that feel familiar to those of the past games, so the question is, was the style chosen because if its connections to previous games, or was it something that the team decided they wanted to make?
Jasper Koning: I think, after Sword and Soldiers, Blightbound is a break away in some ways, but we still wanted to our strengths, which is in a lot of 2D, but we also felt like as a studio, we should tread the water in the 3D space. I don’t know that we will ever make fully 3D, because as I said, our strength is in 2D, but this time it was definitely a conscious decision to go a bit darker.
It was also a decision to make something that was PvE (Player vs Environment) instead of PvP (Player vs Player) as all our games up until then had been PvP focused. So, it was a decision to do some new things as a studio.
MG: The story of Blightbound is a bit different, as the world is now covered in this blight, that spread across the world, after the defeat of the Shadow Titan. Was the story one that evolved as a choice of the gameplay mechanics you wanted to use, or was it more a matter of this is the story you wanted to tell?
JK: It was a bit of both, we wanted a very striking story. Pretty early on, we had this idea of a place, where you would go between runs, initially it was a tavern, but then evolved into a town and what we now called the Refuge. We wanted a couple of things in there, one was that the blight was ethereal and could not be permanently solved, because this is a multiplayer game, that people can play together regardless of where they are standing in the world. So, I guess it was semi-important, that whatever state the world was in, you couldn’t really fix it, you could improve it, you could improve your own situation a lot, but the world remain fairly dangerous.
MG: Obviously, the Titan is a big deal, even when you are in the Refuge, he is there, providing a sense of danger, around your safe zone. You mentioned before about expanding the zone, by getting artisans and blacksmiths in, does the actual size of the refuge increase, or is it just the amount of things inside that do?
JK: The amount of things, for now. So, initially you will see empty build spots, like you can put in new buildings. The refuge has a centralised level called the Prosperity level, and once you hit certain levels, you will get more artisans, but some will also require monetary stimulation to join up. So, you will start with a mostly empty plot and you can grow it over time.
MG: The big thing is that the game is a three-player multiplayer game, you and two friends sort of thing, but you mentioned that there will be 20 recruitable heroes that you can play as.
JK: Well we are not launching in early access with all 20.
MG: But the goal is to have all 20 by the time the game releases in full?
JK: Yeah, we have 20 in development, I think the early access release will be featuring nine initially, and obviously, over the course the course of the lifetime of the game, we want to get that number as high as possible. Because traditionally, in an action RPG, you pick a character and you play that character for as long as you like and as long as you feel there is interesting build options and such, but some of the most exciting stuff, about action RPG, happens when you start a new character, so we wanted to focus on that experience. Instead of going deep, our game is a little more shallow, but we have more character to choose from and they all have their own voices and backstories, they all have their own mix of skills, and their own passive ability that alters their gameplay in some ways, to make them all feel different.
MG: Of course, if you have more heroes in there, you need to ad an Australian, as we are not represented enough in games.
JK: That’s true.
MG: Apart from the crazy guy in Overwatch
JK: *laughs*
MG: Now with the different classes, are you able to assign different classes to any hero, or is it more that there are a set number of heroes that are warriors, a set number that are assassins and so on?
JK: Oh yeah, the latter. There are a set number of each class and as it stands now, the assassins are female, and the rest are all male. That is something we would like to expand upon in the future, but yeah, that is the way it works now, you will at least have one lady on your team.
MG: Because it is a three-player game and there are three different classes, is it every time you go out, you have to have one of each class, or can you assemble a team that you want?
JK: No, we have specifically designed it to always need one of each, so we could design the combat and the puzzles around the knowledge that there is always going to be one person to teleport, like the mage, or one person who is able to block like the warrior. So there are enemies who do interesting stuff like that, the most basic one is a guy who has a shield and he can’t be damaged from one side, so its up to the person playing as the tank to get his attention and make him face a certain direction, so that the other players can hit him in the back.
MG: You just mentioned that the levels will be designed to make use of each of the different classes, is there any procedural generation to the levels, if you just wanted to run in and bash some enemies, or is everything pre-created?
JK: Everything is pre-designed, every dungeon has a little narrative, but there is some randomisation to the enemies, some encounters can change and also some encounters will change, depending on the difficulty level. When you go in as a team, the game will make an assessment of your strength as a team and tried to match that with the monsters, in relative terms, you can also pick how much higher the monsters should be compared to you.
The other thing is that when you play with a party and finish a round, your party will gain notoriety and that is a value that will make some maps more difficult, so the higher you really want to push your notoriety, the more challenging things will become, but so will the rewards. So the goal is to have parties really push themselves, to crazy difficulties, which will be interesting to see.
MG: A lot of challenge, but a lot of reward, for those that invest the time into the game.
JK: Yeah.
MG: As a studio, you guys have developed for multiple platforms over the years and at the moment the game is PC only. Are there any plans to bring it to other platforms, like Switch, or are you focused on PC development right now?
JK: We are seeing what the future holds, we have nothing to announced, but we have taken some steps to prevent some of the mistakes we made with earlier games, like Awesomenauts. With that one, we relied heavily on SteamWorks, for the back end of the game, and in a latter end of the games life, we built our own back end, but both those back ends were not really suitable for console, so when we wanted to make a console version of Awesomenauts, it was really hard, we had to work an external partner.
So now we have a cross-platform multiplayer back end, so now if we and Devolver Digital decide to move it over, it is definitely doable. Plus, we also have full controller support, so we are technically ready, but we are only focusing on the PC version only and getting that right.
MG: Now you mentioned before about the early access, which kicks off on the 29th, how exciting is the team there to get the game out into player hands and see how they like it?
JK: This is the first time we are doing early access, so we don’t know how excited we should be, but obviously it is a launch for us, so we are excited. We have been playing the game with the community in closed beta, with community members that come from Awesomenauts and Devolver and it’s looking really good, so we are really excited, fingers crossed.
Actually, for this game, we have a very rapid pace plan for updates, so a lot of us are already working on stuff for beyond the launch, but yeah, it is going to be good. We depend on the success of the games, and this time we got an investment from Devolver, but if the game doesn’t sell that might change things for us.
MG: How has it been working with Devolver Digital? They have picked up a reputation for working on games that are a little out there and offer something quite different for gamers. Has working with them impacted development in anyway?
JK: No, Devolver is a very natural fit for us, because as you said, they are known for games that are a bit more out there, but they are still genres that players will know, but with a little more character or quirks. Which that is something Devolver is good at picking out and something that we pride ourselves on, Awesomenauts was known for its characters, for example each character there had their own theme song and we are trying to do the same for Blightbound, with each character being rich in lore, being over the top.
It is still a recognisable list of game concepts, it is still an action RPG, but in a beat em’ up kind of perspective and with some MMO style class interaction, so that’s basically it, so I think it is a great fit for Devolver.
MG: With the multiple characters, and stages with their own narrative and stuff, would you expect people could play everything once, like one character through each of the stages and be done with it? Or do you expect that with the sheer variety of characters, team combinations and upgrades to the Refuge, that this would be a game for people to be playing for years and months to come?
JK: I mean the early access launch, definitely has a finite amount of content, but we created all these systems so that we can expand into something that can be played forever. It is also the reason we created all these characters, to make sure that people don’t burn out on the game, because they keep playing the same thing over and over.
So, what we have, especially initially, you can only match make with one of each character, so with a pool of three, so you don’t even know which class you might be. This also going to help the matchmaker from being clogged with everyone wanting to be an assassin character, and at a later stage, you will be able to queue as a single character, but there will be bonuses for queueing with all three. We also have a system where characters will get sick from the blight, when you play with them, so that the sickness with change some of their stats, but if they get too sick, they will be unplayable for a period of time, so you have to leave them to recover in the Refuge.
If you were to only focus on a single player, or wanted to play as them, you can do so for a few rounds, but eventually the blight will force you to change it up, just to protect players from themselves, giving them a variety of gameplay styles to experience.
Many thanks to Jasper from Ronimo Games and Devolver Digital for the chance to talk Blightbound, if you want to get in on the early access action, the game is coming to Steam next week and you can wishlist it below.
