SpellForce - The Order of Dawn Wrap Report

Driven by a lust for power, simple greed and their own over-confidence, 13 immensely powerful magicians dabbled with mystical forces that even they could not control. Through a series of dark rituals, they unleashed Elementals of unthinkable might. The outcome of this impudence was sheer disaster. During a span now called the Convocation, the world of Eo was thrown into utter chaos. Entire kingdoms were obliterated. The continents themselves were shattered, and the broken remnants scattered. Further destruction followed at the hands of immense, supernatural armies. In the end, only a few isolated islands were able to survive, linked to one another by a system of magical portals. However, only a few years later, the evil has returned, seeming stronger than ever. The only hope lies in a prophecy about a human bound to blood runes and damned to immortality.

In SpellForce - The Order of Dawn developer Phenomic Game Development casts you as the so-called rune warrior called forth to save the world from complete and final destruction. Dubbed a role-playing strategy game, it's the latest project of the studio's acclaimed Creative Director, Volker Wertich, who previously forged his reputation as the guiding force behind the successful Settlers series. Released in Europe by JoWooD Productions, the product shipped in that market in November before making its way to retail in North America during the early part of this year through publishing partner Encore. In both regions, gamers and critics alike have reacted favorably, so the recent announcement that an expansion pack, The Breath of Winter, is under way wasn't much of a surprise. In the interim, Project Manager Martin Loehlein agreed to tell us about the original.

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The Project SpellForce is a game that combines RPG and real-time strategy gameplay, and does so to a level that has never been achieved before. Call it an RPG where you can build and lead whole armies like you lead your party. Call it an RTS where you have heroes and an avatar with a complex character development. Call it and RPG/RTS, call it RPS (Role-Playing Strategy), or call it Hero-Based RTS.

In times where both genres suffer from a lack of innovation, SpellForce takes the tendencies of these two genres overlapping each other to its fullest consequence. The title SpellForce signifies this approach by combining magic, the archetypical RPG element, with Force, signifying the RTS element of armies and forces wrestling for victory.

The Team Phenomic is a German developer based in a small town called Ingelheim, which is close to Mainz, which is again close to Frankfurt, which finally might be large enough for you to have heard of.

The company was founded by Volker Wertich, game designer and lead coder on The Settlers I and III. He started off with only four people working on SpellForce, and slowly built the company around the project, mostly relying on people with strong experience in the game industry. SpellForce was a huge project, and so in the end, a lot of people were involved. Currently, we have 20 people working fulltime at Phenomic (if you want to take a look at the faces just visit our website www.phenomic.de). On top of that, 10 freelancers in code, content and art played a large part in the project, three specialized companies provided art assets, and Dynamedion provided the great musical score and sound effects.

High-Level Goals When we started the project, games from the RPG and the RTS genre were starting to discover some common elements and were beginning to approach each other slowly. WarCraft III shows some RPG-like elements while Dungeons Siege's controls clearly show an RTS heritage.

Now, instead making an RPG with some RTS elements or making an RTS with some RPG-like heroes, we decided to go all the way and prove that it is possible to create a game incorporating both parts to a significant extent. And we succeeded.

Development Timeline SpellForce took a little over three years to complete while we had set out to finish in two. Breaking new ground is always risky. Even though we had a lot of experienced people on team, quite a few things did not work the way we first envisioned them. Joining two genres without compromises raised a number of questions nobody had ever asked before.

Changes and Enhancements First of all, we changed the look of the game several times during the development process. Lots of people in our team, starting with our game's designer, Volker Wertich, were previously involved in the Settlers series. So initially, the game had quite a cute and funny look to it - sort of like Settlers in 3D, really - which did simply not fit the concept. In the next iteration, the graphics were quite grown up. They were realistic, but they still lacked style. But finally, we came up with something that was applauded for its looks around the globe.