SpellForce - The Order of Dawn Wrap Report

Areas for Improvement No "you lose" In almost any complex game, there is a "you lose", such as when your avatar dies, or when your bases are wiped, or whatever. Not in SpellForce. It seemed a great idea at the time, and it might be great for the player, but it is a nightmare to develop. And there is a steep price to pay when it comes to flexibility in quests and scripts. This is a feature we will evaluate very, very carefully before starting our next major project.

Third-person view and third-person controls The third-person view added a lot of value to the game. For instance, it makes SpellForce also appealing to lovers of Morrowind or Gothic, but to come up with controls that are useful for direct character control and RTS-like army control at the same time proved tricky. The current solution focuses more on the army control side. In future games, we will be experimenting with putting more focus on the direct avatar control.

The engine for SpellForce has to handle both third-person and isometric view and look good in both areas, which is hard to achieve. We ended up with something that is cutting edge in the isometric view and can stand its ground in third-person, although of course, we do not achieve the same level of detail as third-person RPGs, which do not have to render the clashing of two 50-strong armies in the background.

Lessons Learned Strong leads The problem in growing the company slowly is that in the beginning, the leads have to get their hands dirty themselves, while at the end of the growth, you want them to focus solely on supervising. The transition is hard but necessary. Otherwise, you have a very ugly bottleneck that slows down whole departments right there. By now, we have reached the point where the leads lead, and I recommend to any team to reach this point as fast as possible.

Don't over-feature A classic. When we started on SpellForce, we knew that we would have to embrace an awful lot of features. After all, we wanted the game to be 100% RPG and 100% RTS, and not something 50/50. Still, we resisted quite a few temptations to add even more features and focused on getting the blend of RPG and RTS right. We had a very clear goal there, and we achieved it.

Audience Response We are quite satisfied with the feedback we've gotten so far, especially from gamers. According to a survey done by one of the most important German game magazines, 93% of the people who played SpellForce would recommend buying it. Mirroring this, we have also received quite a few ratings of 90% and higher internationally.

Of course, we look closely at what was noted in positive and negative ways, and what has not been noted at all. Generally, the last category is of course the most disappointing.

You have quite a good idea of what is good in your game and what isn't. And generally, the compliments and criticisms are justified. But it almost always takes you by surprise which features are hardly ever or never mentioned in reviews or player feedback. I'll just take the opportunity to list a few: