Exploring the power of nostalgia with MythForce. An interview with Beamdog.
I love a good coop game as well as a good dose of eighties nostalgia as well as Dungeons and Dragons. When I saw the trailer for MythForce a...
I love a good coop game as well as a good dose of eighties nostalgia as well as Dungeons and Dragons. When I saw the trailer for MythForce a 4 player coop dungeon crawler that feels pulled right from the small screen in the era of he-man, transformers and more it immediately had my attention. A few months ago it was released as an early access game on the EPIC game store and though I was highly interested I just had not found the time to get some real hands on. Lucky for us we ran into the MythForce booth at PAX West this weekend and we had the pleasure to sit down with Kael Nicholson and Luke from Beamdog studios, the developer of MythForce and talk about the game, the studio and their vision going forward.
GVG
All right. Well, thank you for having us. So, yeah, mostly I was coming to check out MythForce. But tell me a little bit about Beamdog. What else are you guys doing?
Kael Nicholson
Right, so Beamdog has been around for about 13 years. It was founded by two of the founders of BioWare, Trent Oster and Cam Tofer. For the first or ten years of our life we've been doing enhanced editions and platform ports of the classic BioWare RPG titles. So your Icewind Dale, Baldurs Gate, Baldurs gate two, Neverwinter nights etc. So well three years ago, you know the dream was always to kind of do our own IP.
And about three years ago we decided we were going to do it. So we finished up some console projects with those titles and then we staffed up a little bit and we had a good partnership with our publisher at the time. So we thought, let's just try this thing. So we had a team that was highly skilled in circa 1997 technology.
So we really needed to kind of retool for a little bit and learn a little bit about Unreal and the tech we wanted to use. And you know, it was a little probably overly ambitious. So it's kind of new team, new tech, new team, new ip all at the same time. We went from 20 to about 80 in the span of two, three years, so we grew really fast.
And we knew we wanted to build a game that was going to be a good vehicle for the studio to make that kind of stuff. Right. And it wasn't going to be too challenging in terms of, you know, like intensely story driven RPGs or things like that. So we thought this was something fun, something we love. We're all big Roguelike fans.
We thought that's a good medium, right? We kind of, you know, it's kind of a creative look. We can add to it and it just keeps enriching. You know, it's got a nice sort of formula for that, you know, and it kind of gets in some of the spaces that we'd like to play with a little bit like procedural generation and feel really learning the toolset of Unreal.
So, we thought, that's a really cool idea. Let's, let's explore that a little bit some of us are playing a game called Barony, you guys ever play that one. It's like a low poly pixel co-op, dungeon hack kind of thing. And I'm a huge fan of like, you know, the classic like Westwood stuff, you know, like eye of the Beholder those classic kind of Dungeon stompers. Luke as well as our bossed obviously, from way back then and we were kind of passionate about doing something in that space that was not only fantasy, which we love and accessible, which is a big belief of ours, but, you know, a lot of us were kind of young parents, too, and we kind of want something that our kids could enjoy. And that was kind of difficult to find. Like there's a lot of especially in fantasy, it's a lot of its sort of like the grim, dark, you know, gory kind of, which is fun, and we love, but not really something for six year old's playing it at the time. So, we kind of knew that's where we were going to go with it. We started explorations into, you know, conception and ideation, that kind of stuff. And then Luke actually had the idea of being a giant animation nerd to sort of lead into the Western animation of the eighties.
GVG
Yeah, I mean, that clearly shows, and I think you have the best trailer I've seen in years. If you haven't seen it, you have to watch it. I played it like four times when I first saw it. Like, I've just got to play this. Can this be a show? It's really, really well done. It definitely captures that feel and it was really impressive.
Kael Nicholson
We had wonderful partnering. The video editing partners we had were phenomenal. The music composers, I mean when that when that track kicks in. It's sooo Nineteen Eightie. That was all the guys at Archipelago Entertainment. Ross, Laura, you have just really phenomenal talent.
GVG
I haven't played it myself yet. I know it's already out but tell me a little bit about that and the game and how it structured.
Luke Rideout
Sure. Yeah, no problem at all. So the game itself is a four player cooperative multiplayer dungeon crawler. You basically choose one out of four archetype class characters who each have their own unique personalities. And you travel through a dungeon either alone or in a group to get to the boss of the dungeon and defeat them and to move on to the next adventure.
Currently in early access, we've only shipped the first adventure so far. Which is called Bastion of the Beanstalk. Episode two Crypt of the Necromancer is Coming this fall and we'll be dropping pretty soon. We're in we're we're deep into development of that right now. And then the third and final adventure where you go and fight Daedalus, the vampire lord is the last in the game
Which is due for early first half of next year. Yeah. Let's see if we've been in an early access for about four months. At this point.
Kael Nicholson
Is it only four months, it feels like two years.
GVG
And how is that performing for you so far?
Luke Rideout
Pretty well, yeah. I think that, you know, we've managed to build a real strong community. We've got a lot of loyal players who are giving us a lot of really great feedback. We are in a three week update cadence right now, so every three weeks we release a new update with some additional balancing, some new features, some new content for the game, and working towards those major milestones like the new episode drops, new character coming in, like the new year, that sort of thing as well. We do go in early access that we wanted to provide some kind of really regular update cadence so that people understand.
GVG
They understand it is not forgotten.
Kael Nicholson
Yes. You know, like we're big, you know, early access fans, we participate lots of early access titles, you know. So, my favorites were like Subnautica. It was pretty deep into really doing bug reports to their inline tools that, you know, Deep Rock Galactic was another favorite of mine. So, it was really we really liked that ecosystem. We really liked the transparency of the tone process.And as a CEO, that's kind of built its roots on, you know, great community focused like Dungeons and Dragons, is a very community involved thing. And when we did these enhanced missions, we really kind of tried to embrace, you know, the modding community and hired a bunch of developers for that community. We always reaped amazing benefits from being really tightly knit with our fans, with our community. And this felt kind of like a natural extension of that. This is our first early access title, but it didn't really feel bumpy like it was.
GVG
We had that discussion talking to a few people this weekend. The problem with early access is sometimes it's used as an excuse to just get money now but then the game never goes anywhere. And then the excuse is "well it's early access", but it never ends or reaches a stage where you feel it's final. Or when it is final, it's like the same game, you just put at one-point-o and that was it. So having a three-week update thing is it is good to see you see that progression. Seeing the movement, seeing you guys are aggressively doing something.
GVG
Well with that. Do you have a plan of like this is where we target to be the final release already or are you still waiting for, where you are now?
Luke Rideout
We have a roadmap that we're working towards which has, which includes sort of a very a reasonable amount of content. We've had sort of pre-planned that includes those three adventures which, you know, we're targeting once again so in the early half of next year. But it's going to be very much dependent on how community feedback continues to come through.
And you know, we do want to keep up this sort of three week cadence, but we're also regularly polling our players and also like checking internally about, you know, whether the game is feeling the way that we really want it to feel. Yeah. As we go. And you know, that constant evaluation and reevaluation to make sure that we've got the right product and that we are pushing towards like the game that we're all going to be really happy to call one point on when it gets to it.
Kael Nicholson
And then we'll try to give that cadence some texture as well because, you know, it's still fun to sort of like just one feature launches every four weeks and then you're kind of just done, you know, we want to have some exciting beats. So some of them are just really like a bunch of full length bug fixes, you know, one cycle, some new like character and a new weapon or some like that one cycle. And then one cycle is like the Halloween update or something.
GVG
The game is obviously co-op. So, there's less of this. "Oh, they really cry about this weapon. So now we've got to balance it"
Kael Nicholson
I'd love to say that no one is commenting on the balance of weapons. But, I mean, it's you.
GVG
Know, it's a little different, though, than multiplayer games.
Kael Nicholson
If it's for sure it is. People get so angsty about it.
GVG
Usually, the people that are fine with it, they don't say anything. So now it's people screaming, making you react to it...
Kael Nicholson
...And overcorrect.
Yeah, we talk about that a lot, it's sort of how do you balance sort of like a healthy feedback cycle and transparent development processes with artistic vision and sort of serve the sort of the pillars of the game, the sacrosanct stuff, right? And that's kind of I think how we've done it is if we really sort of focused around the vision, you know, Lucas is kind of the holder of and tried to marry, you know, our interpretation of the feedback because a lot of that stuff, as you guys know, is symptomatic, right?
There's some bad system here somewhere and really get results of this incredibly unfair situation with the character. But like "Oh the characters is O.P. ". Oh No, it's just that, you know, totally screwed up this thing over here. So we're trying to really understand and analyze, like what that is, what people are really worried about or complaining about, or we're loving, for that matter, and trying to sort of make sure they're growing the game in a healthy way in that space.
GVG
So obviously you have these plans, these three adventures, a continuation of that. Is that maybe having more adventurous or do you say now it is MythForce 2.
Kael Nicholson
That's a great question. I think I think so. That will depend on sort of reception, of course. Right.
GVG
I mean, look, this is not a game as a service, right?
Kael Nicholson
It's not. No. Yeah, it's a premium product. Yeah. I mean I think depends in what it is going is going to evolve into because if people really love it and want to keep playing, you know MythForce I don't see why we wouldn't want to just continue to add content to the game, you know, ad infinitum. And it's sort of, again, like a deep rocky like kind of model, right?
But then again, if people are sort of like, Oh, that was really cool, that come on, other stuff then. I mean, MythForce 2 could be a really fun thing to do too. Yeah. So I, you know, I don't think it's written in stone right now. What I would be really open to kind of either model if it's the community feels one way or another.
The gameplay you mentioned it's a co-op for four players, but I assume that's up to four players. So you said some people go alone, does it scale, so you have more people that it than scales up?
Luke Rideout
Yeah, there are a number of factors that sort of work into exactly how that difficulty scales. You didn't want to just make it like straight up more HP. We just, you know, meet walls. It is not like a linear gap, more sort of enemy aggression tuning and, you know, the population of enemies that you're fighting to kind of balance against a larger group of player characters and so on. But yeah, there's a number of things that we do for sort of scaling, depending on how many players are in the game. We didn't want to make solo impossible, although it is significantly more difficult just because there's also the additional factor of like, you have nobody to pick you up. If you die as soon as you're down, you're down.
GVG
If you're running solo, do you do not have the other characters in A.I. capacity?
Luke Rideout
No. You are truly alone.
GVG
And if you do down is there a way to get back up?
Luke Rideout
At the moment there is not. These are one of those things that we are like looking at from any feedback and sort of discussing internally how we want to handle that. So far the reception of the solo play versus the multiplayer and the way that players treat them as sort of separate objects has been relatively positive. But at the same time, we also don't want the two experiences to be so divorced from one another. Yeah. So we're looking at what our options are.
GVG
Yeah, that could be like me where basically my, my captive teams at home are going to college so like too bad. I have my wife to play with, and we don't like to play with random strangers. So now it is just the two of us, also because we want to be more relaxed and take our time and figure things out. And then it's nice that you got duo options and know that it's not impossible because you have to have a team of four, because now you have to look for the rest.
Kael Nicholson
Most of my co-op is two player as well.
GVG
Two player is like a real sweet spot. So many times, you miss out on so much of content when you do that and that is a shame.
GVG
What's your incentive for players who keep coming back? You have planned three adventures, four adventures. So is there a leveling, are there unlocks, are there weapons? What makes me coming back?
Luke Rideout
Yes! There is a metagame as well that you're playing towards. Every win or loss which gets you what we call Rank XP. You're growing your character as you continue to play the game. We didn't want to make it [a game] where like you had to grind to be viable. But we have this system called infusions where you get small bonuses or small gameplay tweaks to your character, the ability to modify the way that your special abilities work and so on, have a little bit more flavor and texture to the game as you continue to go along. And it also results in the unlocking of new artifacts, which are sort of slight gameplay changing items that you equip in a loadout which can do things as benign as start the game with a little bit more HP to as abnormal as you have three hit points every hit you take does one HP good luck!
GVG
But you need that endorphin rush a little bit. Once in a while you get a little. "Oh, yeah, that's why I'm doing it".
Kael Nicholson
The fun of those roguelikes is that kind of dealing with unexpected issues And that perfect storm magic right where everything just kind of clicks through your build and everything's coming up perfect and you just get that beautiful, smooth like run through the dungeon.
Luke Rideout
And as in, in the matter of a lot of sort of modern roguelikes, we do have sort of in session level ups with random additional perks and things like that that also serve to change the nature of every individual.
GVG
When you're saying like different builds, is it going to be an unlock or is it going to be like a loot drop?
Kael Nicholson
Good question. So right now it's both. They're sort of in session and out of session, We call them the inner loop and the outer loop. So right now there are things like loot is in the in session, so you can collect just a good drop of loot that's particularly powerful or synergizes particularly well with the character you selected. But the infusion system Luke is referring to and artifact selection. Some other components are outside the part of that sort of ranking up system. So you can tweak your build a little bit and say, I'm going to be, you know, a very tanky mage. Or I'm going to be, you know, have a very aggressive tank or something like that.
So depending on sort of your flavor, you can kind of tilt it a little bit one way or the other. But we wanted the characters to have a bit of flavor each, you know. So we've got sort of like a high single target DPS We've got a tank, we've got a mage that's a bit of a glass cannon, depending on the build. We wanted to give people a freedom to kind of nudge that in one direction or another so that they get kind of their playstyle and the dynamism of the session. Because sometimes you start off with the mage like "I'm going to be a powerful mage". And you just keep getting axe skills for some reason. "So I am an Axe mage today".
GVG
How long is a run through? An average.
Luke Rideout
A successful run takes about an hour. You beat the boss and you make it to the end. An unsuccessful run ends within a minute or two. But as with most rogue likes, you know, it's quite expected. The first few times you play the game you're going to be making mistakes are going to be learning from those mistakes, growing your skill, learning the enemy telegraphs and things like that, and sort of building your repertoire, learning the language of the game and then sort of going section by section and then getting further and further into the dungeon and we find that the average player takes about 10 to 15 sessions before they get their first complete player.
GVG
What is one of the features or things you have in there that you're most excited or proud about? Like, you know, like you're happy that you nailed this part of the game? What is that? What is that for you? If there is anything .
Luke Rideout
For me, it's the four distinct characters. You know, we really right from the get go, we had a lot of discussions about the sort of merits of bespoke, specialized characters versus like a completely player driven, where customized characters are absolutely a lot of fun. But we also wanted to make something because we were going with the 1980s cartoon esthetic that had a very obvious feel for the characters. And that when you create a character and then all of a sudden that character has their own personality that you don't control, that doesn't feel quite right. We definitely wanted to push towards getting four characters and each felt both useful to play, but also felt like they belonged in a 1980s cartoon sort of setting. So the way that we managed to pull those sort of four archetypical sort of D and D class type characters and also give them really strong personalities and have seen that through all of our community feedback, everybody argues about which is the best character and that's the perfect thing that we really want, right?
GVG
So who is the best character?
Luke Rideout
For me the best character is Victoria, because I am good at playing tanks. I'm terrible at range So like Hawkins is my worst character, but Hawkins is like the character that most first time players are clearing with. So obviously I'm different from them.
Kael Nicholson
But for the record, Rico is clearly the best character, Victoria's Fun but yeah. But in terms of features, you know, like the obvious one is, is the artwork super proud of the art! You know, the philosophical dedication these guys put into that is phenomenal.
Luke Rideout
And I think of that is just like the soul of the game, the feature itself. But yeah, yeah. Accomplishment wise, the art is definitely.
Kael Nicholson
That was certainly one of the fights you picked with Unreal too. You know, it's not lit and it's not rendered in the way that I really like to render things. There's a lot of post-processing on that stack. But I'd say the one I'm probably most proud about would be the first person combat. You know, that's a hard thing to get right to get good even. And we slaved over those frame by frame to try and make sure that like the weight felt right and the impact was there. The speed felt smooth. And yeah, I mean, that's one of those things I think we would love to see, you know, go into future games as well.
GVG
As a final question I have to ask, as a dungeons and Dragons animated series fan, when do we get a skin for that?
Kael Nicholson
You know, we have talked to some people in sort of a licensing world about options for that world. And one of the models that I really love is kind of the dead by daylight kind of licensing model, where they keep it to some kind of characters, to her beloved films and TV shows. And I think that's a really cool way to go about it and if people are excited about the game and we've had a lot of great reception so far with some of those license markers, I hope to be able to bring something like that to go on.
And that concluded our interview. Clearly the team at Beamdog is very passionate about their I.P. and is working hard to deliver a game experience to the public that they themselves enjoy as well. Community input will play a big part in shaping the game to its final form and what happens from there all depends. If you are looking to try the game you can right now find it on the EPIC game store in early access.
We had hands-on with the game under the guidance of Luke and Kael and it was a blast to play. It is quite remarkable how well it controls and how visually it stays committed to the look and feel of the cartoons it was inspired by. There was even a big Don Bluth vibe and Kael told me that he too was a big fan of those animations such as Secret of NIMH and the Dragons lair games.
We like to thank Kael and Luke for their generosity in the time they took to answer our questions. You can hear the whole interview on our YouTube channel or the embedded link below.
