A Coffee Break with: Niklas Borglund, Songs of Conquest
Electronic Entertainment Expo. E3, its little nickname.
Three times an “E” to have players shaking with anticipation, medias feverish with the task to come.
The biggest video game event of the year is so packed full of announcements — each shows gotta be louder, better, brighter than the previous one — that standing out is a difficult feat to achieve.
Now, if you’re indie, the task is Sisyphean!
Yet, sometimes, a game comes along and unanimously wows the crowds.
During the PC Gaming Show, such a thing happened: A short trailer of 1:24 got everyone talking — even Sean “Day9” Plott sang its praises!
That indie game, you’ve probably seen it, drooled a little in front of your screen, and been dying to know more!
A game of war, a game of pride, a game of songs for those fallen and those who survived: Songs of Conquest from Swedish studio Lavapotion.
We were very lucky to have an in-depth discussion with Niklas, co-founder & lead programmer, and learn more about this upcoming strategy game inspired by the beloved license Heroes of Might and Magic.
Grab a mug of your favorite beverage, and let’s hear him tell us a tale of heroic deeds!
Hi Niklas, and welcome to our Coffee Break!
Songs of Conquest was unveiled at E3, and instantly garnered a lot of attention.
You and the whole Lavapotion team must be so proud!
So, how does it feel, having so many people discover your game for the first time through the biggest event of the year?
It feels amazing! Showing our trailer at the PC Gaming Show was a huge motivational boost for us, especially after getting such positive response. A personal highlight was when Sean Plott said at the end that Songs of Conquest was the game he was most looking forward to. I did not expect that at all!
And our community is growing by the day, and getting to discuss, share content and finally talk about the game is absolutely wonderful. I mostly hang out on Twitter, but that’s also what’s so nice about being on multiple social media platforms — they all have different characteristics, so you can kind of pick one that suits you the most. The discord server we have is also a lot of fun. That kind of direct and instant communication is pure gold!
Songs of Conquest takes inspirations from games like HoMM and King’s Bounty, an aging genre that’s been in need of “fresh blood”.
What are the features that’ll make your game unique?
We’ll have a lot of features that will make our game unique, but I think at the moment the two biggest ones are our concept of build sites and “the essence”.
The build sites are a limited amount of marked places in different sizes around your town. On these sites, you’ll be able to build (and sell) structures. These structures will be used to grow and expand your army and kingdom. You’ll also be able to build the same building multiple times, there’s no cap like that. So, that’s a new element of strategy here where you need to think about build orders early on.
The essence is our magic system. Our wielders, which are the commanders of the armies, draw essence from their troops to gain access to spells. And some of the spells require a combination of troop types. You really need to think about what troops to bring in to battle. It’s not always the best choice to just choose the strongest troops.
If you lose a troop that’s a part of a combination during battle — the wielder will also instantly lose those abilities gained. There’s an interesting way of gaining mastery within the game in this as well: If you know what spells certain enemy troops can give, you can choose to attack them just to have them lose their spells. To me, that’s hugely interesting and gives an extra dynamic with quite a bit of extra depth.
Combats were not shown during the trailer.
I understood it’s gonna be turn-based, using troops and Wielders, magicians that are similar to Heroes.
Can you give us an example of how a battle will unfold?
Yes, with the help of the towns and buildings, you’ll build up these potentially huge armies that you use for battle. This is the part where you really get to see “the essence” in action, and the spells will wildly differ from each other. It’s all very exciting, but I unfortunately can’t discuss much about it just yet!
We are working on some features that we need to really test and see if they work and are fun enough before I can talk about the nitty-gritty details.
But just to explain the bare mechanics, the battles will be turn based and the order of turns will be based on the initiative stat. Although the right essence could easily flip that order!
One thing that we’ve had a lot of discussions about, and I think is very important, is the realization that we play the same games very differently from each other. Just by looking in the office, we have several different play styles using the same mechanics. So, defining target audiences becomes more important as well as seeing if we can enable players to play the way they want. The Level Editor will also be a tool that we can use for that.
Talking specifically about combat — quick battle would be one of those features that we are adding.
The game’s named Songs of Conquest, the trailer featured a battle chant. Which role will the songs play?
I like when a game gets the mood perfectly.
Music and ambience sounds is key components in making that happen. Because of that, we will have songs both with and without lyrics.
Mainly, the songs with lyrics will be our way of telling the story in the campaigns. In our world, these are the songs about the glorious deeds of the wielders and their armies throughout the ages!
The trailer showed what seemed to be a grim dark, somewhat pagan, fantasy universe.
Could you detail it a bit? What were the sources of inspirations for the setting?
Yes, we’ve been going for a bit of a darker look in our universe and we are planning four different factions for release.
First there’s Arleon, our faction of knights united with the Faey of the forest. We have Rana, the oppressed swamp frog people. Doneria, which is our gold loving mercenary nation. Last but not least,we have the undead faction of Barony of Loth.
We wanted to appeal to the feeling of the 80s and 90s fantasy, because there was something in the visual style that we really like. So we kind of started looking at art before we branched out to other places for inspiration. There’s one painting in particular that I love by Paul Bonner. I don’t know the name of it, but the painting depicts a band of creatures with a wagon entering a city, being stopped by a person right before.
I think that one embodies the raw feeling we’ve been going for. It’s not all shiny armor and heroic deeds, there’s a real world going on in there!
We’ve also been looking at history, old legends, games, mythical creatures as well as other fantasy universes for inspiration. Especially when it comes to mood and setting, I absolutely love some of the things they do in the early Settlers games. It’s a much more idle game than ours, but it had a magical ability to draw me into the world and it felt so alive :D
I’ve seen there’ll be at least local multiplayer for release, but what about the solo experience?
What’s in store for the campaign: Will you go for a strong narrative, or focusing mostly on the gameplay?
We will have a strong narrative for each of the factions. As mentioned before, the songs of conquest will be songs sung by troubadours and people all over the world about historical events. And over the ages, stories change and become legends and myths. The players will get to hear the songs and then see what actually happened. The campaigns will also work as a gateway into start playing other factions — since they will all have quite different mechanics.
We have a bit of two camps when looking at our target audiences, but equally important. On one side, how you defeat someone is more important than why and vice versa on the other side. We are aiming to create an amazing experience for both of them.
Time to get a bit technical now! Your 2.5D engine is phenomenal! And the lighting/shadows are otherwordly!
I imagine that having that kind of visuals is a technical challenge.
How much of it has been handbuilt? Did Unity make it easy?
It has been a challenge, and we have worked through and tested many different styles before we got to where we are right now.
Unity is a great engine, and has for sure made it easier. Especially given that is very easy to extend the editor and create tools specific to the game. But things like the auto-tiling, splitting up the pixel art into pieces that works with the engine are all created by us. As well as tools, shaders or just a well defined workflow.
We constantly work on improving things like this, and we are trying to be mindful to spot if a process is not working and fix it sooner rather than later. Generally, I’m not a fan of manual steps at all and I try to automate as much as possible. If you repeatedly perform a task that takes just 10 minutes at a time and you’re in a position to automate — you should do it. That kind of time adds up over time and you’ll be removing the potential of human error!
It’s truly beautiful and the retro pixelart assets mixed with 3D almost give it a “pop-up book” feel.
What motivated you to go for those unique looks?
We actually started with a pure 2d pixel art look, but in search for something that could give a more unique feel we decided on this new 2.5D style.
It’s been an organic process and it has just improved over time after creating a lot of different visual prototypes, and it just grew from there.
When we saw the early concepts and tests of this new style, there was really no question of doing anything else.
We fell in love with the style as soon as we saw it emerge!
Songs of Conquest already has a window for release: late 2020.
How far are you in development? What’s the next big milestone in the project?
We started developing this game in the beginning of 2017, so we’ve progressed a bit morethan half way.
The next big milestone is getting the game ready for a closed alpha. There’s no exact date for the alpha yet, but there are some key features we need to get in before letting people test and give feedback on it.
Our development methodology is basically textbook Scrum. It works really well for us, and alwayshaving a “potentially releasable increment” with a playable build reduces risk greatly. Out of our 6 fulltime employees, four of us are certified Scrum Masters, including me. Of course we have a long termplan, but we constantly prioritize our backlog in terms of what would give the product most valueright now and try to be adaptive.
Thank you for your time, Niklas!
Before you leave, bonus question: Coffee, Tea, or Beer? ☕🍵🍺?
I do drink a lot of coffee when I’m working, but since I’m an avid beer fan i’ll have to choose beer! :)
It was actually my colleague David who gave me a friendly push into the realms of craft beer when I moved here and we worked at the same company, prior to Lavapotion. It spiked my interest and Gothenburg is often called the ‘beer capital of Sweden’ so it’s a good place to live!
Thanks for having me!
Songs of Conquest is in development, but you can sign up for a closed alpha!
Visit the website here: https://www.songsofconquest.com/
Get the latest updates via the game’s Twitter: @songsofconquest or the studio’s account: @lavapotion
Songs of Conquest is published by Coffee Stain.
Find their full lineup here: https://www.coffeestainstudios.com/
And finally, follow us on @GOFIG_news for more indie games’ news ;)
