Kivi’s Underworld Price Dropped to $9.99, Developer Blog

Soldak’s casual hack ‘n slash title Kivi’s Underworld has seen a permanent price drop from $19.99 to $9.99. Steven Peeler penned a developer blog on the game with the discouraging title “Kivi was a mistake”, though the mistake was not so much in the game’s concept as in how well Soldak was set up to make it.

We made it – I know that’s a strange statement. What I mean is that it was a mistake for Soldak to make the game. It’s a game that would have been better for a different company to make. If you play the “which of these things doesn’t fit game” with our 3 games everyone is going to choose Kivi. Other than being an action RPG (sort of), it’s not very much like our other two games. It doesn’t have much randomness, it doesn’t have a dynamic world, it’s not a hardcore game, and it’s not very deep. It’s not really a problem that it is different. The problem is that it doesn’t fit what our Depths of Peril gamers wanted and the new gamers that we did bring in didn’t stick around because our other games don’t match their expectations either. Basically they are two very different crowds with very different expectations and we can’t really please both of them.

The other half of the reason why Soldak making Kivi was a mistake is that I personally don’t love this type of game. I love the rival factions in DoP. I love the dynamic world in both DoP and DC that doesn’t sit around waiting for the player. I love how in DC something new is always happening because of the dynamic events, monsters, NPCs, the incredible amount of randomness, and how all of this interacts with each other. Basically I love really deep games and Kivi is not deep.