DIYgamer

Takin’ a Trip Down ‘Spice Road’ with Simon de Rivaz [Interview]

How does one develop a game which appeals to a niche demographic and yet pull in a whole new audience? To say the least, that is one of the most difficult tasks for any developer to face. But for Aartform Games’ Simon de Rivaz, what’s most important is the complete package: refined and accessible to a variety of gamers. I conducted an online interview with Simon and came out with quite a few interesting answers. Never heard of “Spice Road”? Here is your remedy, and your remedy is good.

DIYgamer: Hello, Simon! Please introduce yourself to the DIYgamers.

Aartform: Hi Arsen, I am Simon de Rivaz, founder of the indie studio Aartform Games. I am originally a graphics specialist with XBox experience from my days at Lionhead, and I published a sketch based modeller called Curvy 3D [http://www.curvy3d.com]. I have worked on a several indie games both as an artist and as a programmer.

DIYgamer: Well, let’s get straight to business. I hear you’re coming out with a new game titled Spice Road, how does this game work? What are some key components of the gaming experience?

Aartform: Spice Road is a strategic adventure game set in a parallel 18th Century, where the exotic trades of the Silk Road travel the wilds of central Asia. Dotted along the trade routes small towns are islands of commerce and humanity. Spice Road is a sandbox with trading, trecking, bandits and town building – while a core mission tree develops your relationships with the factions (Nations, Companies and Religious Organisatons with power in the wilds) while testing the limits of your different skills and can unlock new ablities.

In the tradition of the best sandbox games you can play on different sides of the same situations – so in one mission you will be a merchant building trade routes, and in another join sides with bandit clan feeding of the caravan trails. As a variation on a straight RPG adventure you can also get involved in founding and developing the townships, this is done on a personal level whereby finding a good tradesman and setting him up with a business can bring in some local revenue but also change the dynamics of trade in the surrounding regions. Town management is also played on a political level, the policies you set on slave and narcotics will drag in different kinds of visitors and have a knock on effect with your standings with the major factions. So by exploring sandbox play, mission progress, and town alignment you can unlock new buildings and units from the factions as well as special agreements and favours that can speed your way to victory.

Combat plays an important but not central part of the game. Evasion and diplomacy are often more useful than a gunfight, especially in the face of terrifying odds. The battles themselves are on the scale of large squads, and play-out mainly under AI control with a few officer level commands to charge or retreat. I decided to go for this simpler combat system rather than detailed micro management to reflect the brutal and chaotic clashes between musket and Mongol where the experience and skill of the individual fighter, and complex swings of unit morale governed the battlefield – and most of an officer’s job was to choose if and where to engage, and manage his troops between engagements.

DIYgamer: When will we see its release and how far are you in its development?

Aartform: I’m looking at a late 2011 release but the real answer is when it is ready. The sandbox part of the game is about halfway through development, once that is working smoothly there will be a good amount of time dedicated to beta testing while the rest of the content and missions are created. In a game of this scope a lot of the quality comes from keeping a flexible design late into development and learning from extensive testing. With this extra flexibility comes some variability on the release date.

DIYgamer: What sort of reception do you think Spice Road will receive? Do you feel that it’s exciting enough for anybody to try or is there a niche community your game is geared toward?

Aartform: I think good games in any genre shine out and reach a wider audience, and as Spice Road carves a new space in a market of endless genre clones it will be interesting to all kinds of players – and a fresh experience for dedicated strategy and RPG players. I would be disppointed if I only reached 18th Century Trading Simulation fans – I aim to make a simple and fun world for players to visit and enjoy rather than a niche labyrinthine game that is only accessible to genre experts.

That said, it will attract a more explorative, thoughtful player than a button mashing action game and it is definately something you will want to allow plenty of time to play, its not a casual game.

DIYgamer: I read in another interview that you are welcoming others into the world of Spice Road and look forward to how they’ll be utilizing the code to beef up some of the parts you’ve purposely left simpler; are you hoping to get some non-developers into the mix? How has the coding process been for you? What would you say has been the hardest thing to do in Spice Road and why?

Aartform: I use a simple text format for my trade goods, buildings, missions and so on. This allows for easy non-technical extension of the game with new goodies. In practice I don’t expect many people to heavily alter the gameplay – but adding a new item or mission with some of your own storyline should be straight forward and fun to share with other players. I love games where I can see under the hood and change their data easily – so I’m going to allow that in Spice Road too.

Coding has been straight forward so far. I have a long background of game coding so when I began Spice Road I could take off the shelf a couple of my old prototypes: a 3D Adventure RPG (Storm), and a Trading Sim (Raid) to form the base for the new game. So in the first couple of months I could get the trade and combat parts of the game up and running and then more on to the details of the mission structure.

The hardest part in Spice Road is the user interface. There are a lot of pages to interact with and they should be consistant and easy to understand. I think this area will take a lot of hammering out during the beta test phase. Each action on the interface – when multiplied a thousand fold in real play can have a big effect on how smoothly the
game plays out and whether the player enjoys the adventure or is frustrated by the interface.

DIYgamer: Finally, how will you distribute Spice Road and what is your desired price point?

Aartform: Spice Road will be available digitally at around $24 direct from www.AartformGames.com – and probably from the usual big digital distributors too.

DIYgamer: What can we expect from you in the future? Any other titles currently in development?

Aartform: I have a long standing Sci-Fi RPG, working-title: Storm, that I would love to work on in the future, although I don’t yet have the finance it deserves.

DIYgamer: Is there anything else you’d like to share with the gaming community? Thoughts, philosophies, news, etc.?

Aartform: I love experimental Flash games, so as a diversion I made my own in FlashDevelop – a little Tower Defence game called “Slice: Fortress“. In the course of a week I wrote code, made the art and got it all working – a microcosm of game development. But by far the largest amount of time was spent playing the game and tweaking the difficulty and treasure curves to make a satisfying gameplay experience. I suspect Spice Road will follow a similar path with the obvious graphics and mechanics working quite soon – but the invisible balancing and experience polishing having the largest chunk of time. I appreciate not having a publisher rushing me to release as soon as the overt game is complete – giving me time to make a really fun finished game.

Simon made some pretty strong points. It’s good to see developers step up to the plate and experiment with different game mechanics. A sandbox strategy adventure title? That sounds pretty awesome to us. We’ll keep you posted on “Spice Road.” In the meantime, best of luck to Aartform Games!