Kult: Heretic Kingdoms Wrap Report

Major Challenges Chris Bateman: Speaking entirely from the design and scripting side, there were a number of major challenges. I've already discussed the Attunement system... devising that was one of the biggest challenges, as it was a non-trivial exercise requiring a lot of thought, discussion and even paper testing.

Another major challenge was the time budget - there wasn't much time to make the changes. It's not good for a game project to overrun significantly - even though we're all used to it happening! Developers, given half a chance, would always delay a project to make it better. I feel that with much discussion between all the teams that were involved, we struck a reasonable balance in the end. We had enough time to get everything together, and although there was much more that could have been done, it probably wouldn't have resulted in any more copies being sold at the end of the project. I'm sorry to say, that's the bottom line for these things. Nobody can afford to make games for their own sake - they have to turn a profit, or the companies that make them go under.

our story lets the player explore personal moral space rather than dictating what is right and what is wrong. That's a rarity in any game.

The other major challenge was QA - game testing. Though all three companies involved in the design (we at ihobo, 3D People, and the publishers, Project 3) worked hard on testing, the scope of the project was incommensurate with the QA budget initially allocated. Which is to say, the process stretched us all. I have to say, it was good practice for our team, as we aren't as experienced in practical testing as we are in paper design, and we all learned a lot. Tweaking is key to any game's playability, and without the efforts of my team, especially Neil, I wouldn't have been so happy with the end product.

Best Decisions Peter Nagy: The most important decision we made was to involve ihobo in the development. We didn't have a native English writer in the team, our game designers were inexperienced and not "living with the project". Consider that it was only six months before the game was expected to be released, and we really didn't have our gameplay working... This brought us into a very difficult position - all our financial reserves were invested and there was nothing left. This wouldn't be possible if we had a larger, older and/or "less familiar" team. The people would hardly work several months while receiving only a small part of their salaries. I doubt that any established development company would be willing to take such risk and invest everything into the project - relying on their employers to hold it together and keep it running. But on the other hand - I believe it was worthwhile.

We didn't have enough experience to secure a proper RPG design, and the game would have suffered terribly without ihobo's involvement. In close cooperation with them, we have been able to create Kult as is now - according to my opinion, it's a lot more interesting than your average RPG. Most reviewers share this opinion, thankfully.

Other important decisions were minor and usually always about money - we had an early offer to sign Kult's worldwide rights, but the conditions were not convincing enough - it was during very hard times for all of us, so denying even a small amount of money was very difficult, but again, it turned out to be a good decision; a few weeks afterwards, we were offered a better deal by Project 3.

Generally, I must say, we tried to focus on quality wherever possible. This is a major problem we always fight with - limited time and resources, but we want to push the quality the highest we can. We don't want to accept half-baked work - this was the thing we often fought about with our publisher - the same way other developers do, I think. The publisher needs to have the game in time (their jobs are on the line, after all), even if it means it will be of lesser quality - you can see this in a lot of titles these days. On the other hand, publishers focus on business - we focus on the development - so somewhere in the middle has to be the way to go.

Key Strengths Chris Bateman: I think Peter is reluctant to pour praise on his own team, but I really feel that they did an outstanding job - especially on the locations. I personally think they look fantastic, and I haven't seen an isometric game that was better looking.

I'm pleased with the design, but mostly in the fact that we achieved it all - design and script - in just three months. This has to be the fastest game redesign in the history of computer role-playing games!

And I'm also happy with the story. 3D People already had an interesting story, and once it was tightened up in the right places, I think it came out in a unique and interesting fashion. A story-driven RPG obviously depends on its story, and I'm pleased with what we were able to do with this one. As much as is possible in a sequential adventure, our story lets the player explore personal moral space rather than dictating what is right and what is wrong. That's a rarity in any game.

Areas for Improvement Chris Bateman: Personally, I'm not wholly happy with the way in which Attunements are acquired. It works fine in Kult, but it's not perfect... once you've got an Attunement from a cloak, for instance, there's no need to keep the cloak, except for aesthetic purposes. There's room for improvement here, and I think we already have several ideas for how we might take this in a sequel.

Also, obviously, this is effectively a linear game, although we've tried to give as much freedom as possible along the way, and we would all like to make something more open. But as Peter has already said, an RPG project is a tough thing for a first-time team to crack, and making it more open would have been essentially impossible for this project. Next time, it will be a different matter!