“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.”
-Robert Frost
Have you ever thought about how hard life was during the medieval age? Diseases, famines, poor hygiene and a lot of violence: in other words, nothing really pleasant. Now, if this is true, the question is: why videogames and videogamers are so attracted by this historical period?
In truth, I don’t have a real answer but I can’t stop asking myself this question.
I can just assume that the presence of so much violence and the validity of the law of the strongest were the ideal soil for the birth of heroes and legends. And everybody knows that where there are heroes and legends there are also a lot of videogames!
Anyway, if the medieval age doesn’t seem to you tough enough, try to think how hard could be living in a medieval fantasy world, with dragons, orcs and all those horrible monsters.
Glorious Companions is set exactly in a world like this, a harsh world full of people (and monsters) who live only to kill you. You are wondering what can you do in response?
It’s simple, fight for your own life!
1st TURN) Someone defined your game as an interesting blend of Mount & Blade and Heroes Of Might & Magic. I’ve also found many similarities with Battle Brothers. Now tell me, what differentiates Glorious Companions from these games? In other words,
which are the original ideas behind your game?
We get compared to Battle Brothers a lot and I agree that both games are in a pretty similar
vein, though contrary to what some people think, we started the development of Glorious
Companions long before we’ve heard about BB. To be more precise the first iteration of
GC came to life as far as back in 2009.
Anyway, to answer your question:
First of all, our game features races and classes. Games like Battle Brothers and Mount &
Blade has a medieval setting that doesn’t allow them to work much in terms of unit
variety. In this regard, we are more similar to Heroes Of Might & Magic, but our units are
much more customizable and you get to level them up, train them and equip them as you
please.
Moreover, because our game is grounded in a fantasy setting, we get to go pretty wild in
terms of unit abilities and their design. In Glorious Companions each race has their own
resource and magic rules. Additionally, each unit has its own skill tree and they’ll only
get to equip a limited number of abilities at a time. There’s your basic active abilities,
passive abilities as well as what we call Master Abilities and Captain Calls. It gives us a
whole new facet of gameplay that the other games don’t have.
Another thing is that our combat system works really well in a multiplayer environment,
and it is in fact the real origin for the game itself. Initially, we planned to make a PC
wargaming multiplayer game, but we decided to work on a single-player experience first
to gain some footing in the genre.
Fun fact: We got our own internal multiplayer league where everyone gets to play a BO3
on Friday. You won’t believe how feisty it gets, haha.
2nd TURN) Glorious Companions seems to have been conceived as an open-ended
game, so the question is: can we expect a real campaign or a storyline to follow?
For the moment we’re focusing on the sand-box gameplay and it’s something that we
want to make as good as possible before thinking of some actual story-driven campaigns.
That’s not to say that we want to leave players wandering aimlessly. For example, in the newest update we’ve added an Overarching Goals system into the game, it’ll help guide players since the very beginning of their adventures. We also plan to implement end-game
content in the form of Ancient Guardians that will begin to rise up from beneath the ground further into the game and wreck havoc across the land. Other than that we will most likely implement some kind of an on-boarding quest that the player receives at the very beginning, interwoven with a series of more developed quests popping up here and there.
3rd TURN) Ok now let’s talk about enemies. How many enemy types will we encounter? During my short playthrough I’ve encountered humans and beasts, but besides these enemies, what else can we expect?
One of the more notable ones will surely be the aforementioned Ancient Guardians, but they’ll start appearing later into the game. We plan to rework the NPC party generator to allow us to make more interesting AI-controlled groups for the players to battle. We will expand on the ‘bandits’ type of enemies by adding new variants of them along with some special skills that they’ll use.
There’ll also be special ‘dungeons’ that the players will be able to enter, they’ll sport some weirder creatures than the ones trotting above the surface. At the end of each dungeon,
there’ll be a boss with its own set of special abilities and a movement pattern to learn and beat.
4th TURN) At the moment when you visit a town you can take some simple quests, like kill “X” monsters or retrieve a specific item. Do you intend to add more articulated quests in the near future?
Yup, as I said before we plan to implement some more developed quests than the ones currently available. The planned Politic System will also allow us to add more diverse missions.
5th TURN) Are you thinking of adding any kind of social interaction (like romance/friendship) among companions?
It’d definitely be a cool feature, but we have to keep the scope at least somehow manageable, so, unfortunately, it’s not on our roadmap at the moment. However, if the game would pick up at some point and the interest in Glorious Companions would grow, we’d be more than happy to develop the interactions with companions further.
6th TURN) A very rich world where low fantasy meets magic and technology. Can you tell us a little more about the lore of the game?
The land that the game is set on was submerged in the ocean for a few centuries before it rose above the water. We will try to convey this setting in our visual overhaul of the World Map, with giant sea creature skeletons, remnants of huge coral reef ecosystems and a fair share of secrets scattered across the continent. The island in question was always a centerpiece of racial conflicts between the inhabitants of the world of Navaroth, due to being rich in natural resources.
In this newest update, we’re introducing the second actor in the global conflicts – the race of vicious Scarres. They should better convey the fantasy setting of Glorious Companions.
For some weird reason, we’ve started the development of the game with the Valrenay, the
Steampunk wielding race, which is in fact a rare sight in the world of Navaroth.
7th TURN) I read on the forum that in the near future it will be added a “city management” section. How exactly will it work?
That’s one of the features that we’re really excited about, though it’s directly connected to the World Map 2.0 Update. After being granted a settlement by the leader of the faction you belong to, or after successfully besieging one, you’ll be able to build new structures, adjust the taxes and fiddle with the import/export settings. New structures enable new units to spawn in the Taverns, as well as improve the settlement’s general prosperity.
Without a settlement of our own, we’re left to rely on what type of buildings other lords will construct in their cities.
8th TURN) I’ve to be honest. At the moment the global map seems to be a bit empty. I read that in the next updates we can expect a complete overhaul of the map, but what exactly will be upgraded? Can we expect something like events or even random quests?
When we’re done with the new World Map it’ll honestly feel like a whole new game. You can check out the attached WiP pictures to see what I’m talking about. But the changes won’t only be visual. The whole terrain will be split into smaller regions, and we want each region to be filled with various points of interest. So, there’ll be settlements, neutral enemies, lords, resource outposts and interactive objects on each section of the land.
There’ll always be a capital settlement in each region, but it might change with time – some settlements will grow, others will crumble due to external events and internal politics.
Another thing we’re going to add in the update are Resource Outposts, structures that are
built to gather resources, e.g. lumber mills or ore mines. They’re the places where the cities
will import the raw materials from and craft them into tier 2 materials before exporting
them to other regions. Players will also be able to interact with them, either buy the
resources cheaper than in a town or force the miners to give up their materials. The latter
might trigger a battle encounter if the workers feel confident enough.
9th TURN) The combat phase seems to be already quite enjoyable but also a little bit
repetitive. Do you think to add more features (e.g more scenarios or environment
interactions)?
Definitely. First of all, we’re still implementing new abilities, and in the newest update
we’ve enabled AI enemies to use them too, which should already make the battles much
more interesting. As I mentioned before one of the really important systems that is on our
radar is the dungeon system, which will feature whole series of encounters where the
players will have to think hard on how to manage their resources throughout and still be
able to beat the final boss.
We also have a few ideas for environment interactions but nothing set in stone yet.
10th TURN ) Glorious Companies was released in alpha state about six months ago. Why did you decide to use Early Access and, above all, what this period of test taught you?
Well, I have to admit that our Early Access launch didn’t go very well. Even though we’ve
postponed it a few times, we definitely released the game too early and the exposure it
was getting suffered due to that. Still, the feedback we’ve received was really valuable and
we’ve implemented some things that we wouldn’t think of if the game wasn’t out. We also
appreciate the few players that support us along the development and we’re eager to
provide them with the best experience possible.
11th BONUS TURN) Before leaving you, just a bonus question. Which is the latest
turn-based game you’ve played or still playing?
I’ve bought Temtem on release but haven’t had the time to give it a go yet, but I’m pretty
excited for a PC Pokemon-like game. I liked Mutant Year Zero a lot, though I didn’t finish
it in the end. Other than that I’m pretty hyped for the recently announced new DLC for
Battle Brothers.
Thank you so much for the time you have dedicated to us! Obviously we will continue to follow your amazing project.
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