Northern Shadow Interview

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has published an interview with the developers of builder-meets-RPG Northern Shadow, which offers some interesting details on the game’s development and design. Without further ado, here’s a snippet:

RPS: How will the gameplay work on a moment-to-moment level? What will players be doing? How will adventuring/exploring tie into rebuilding the kingdom?

Güneş: Players will be able to choose what to do to their liking. They can stay at a city and manage it, and their kingdom. When an event occurs, players can try to solve it by sending emissaries or soldiers. If they wish, they can take the matter into their own hands, and travel to different cities to negotiate agreements in person, or protect their realm by personally dealing with whatever threat that comes in their way. These could be anything from a damned soul putting a curse on your crops, to a rival kingdom increasing the cost of their food shipments to benefit from the situation at your expense.

RPS: How do you fit those systems together? I mean, the biggest fear I have after reading about your game is that building and adventuring might not work well together, or one/both might end up clunky. How are you avoiding that?

Güneş: How you build your cities will affect how you react to later situations. We put emphasis on solving problems by either staying at your kingdom, or by going adventuring yourself. One affects the other. Balance and harmony between those two is decided by the players themselves.

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RPS: What will ground combat be like? How complex will it be? It looked kinda like Skyrim in the trailer, but Skyrim’s combat was pretty so-so, I thought. Are you trying to make yours better?

Güneş: In ground combat you will be able to use spells, and/or variety of weapons. For melee, there will be a number of different attacks and defending options. Timing and planning will be crucial, rather than spamming same attacks over and over again.