Kult: Heretic Kingdoms Wrap Report

Lessons Learned Peter Nagy: The most important is to have a good documentation and game design before starting to work on even a very simple game. Without this, a good game can never be created.

The other important thing we have to focus on in the future is workflow management. We have encountered a lot of problems with improper work management. Especially considering our expansion plans for the near future, this will remain a matter of great importance.

The Attunement system is where Kult rises or falls - it depends on how much players understand it and relate to it.

Additionally, the core team has become quite close, so I hope that there will be no more VERY major problems, and that we will be able to create projects of far larger scale than Kult. Every game is really about the people and the team that is creating it - get them to work on it with pleasure and the game will be twice improved. On the other hand, if the guys have to eat "bread with sugar", the work will be slow and never the best you can have. Essentially, always focus on the people.

Audience Response Peter Nagy: I'm pleased to say we have received mostly positive response - sometimes much better than we ever expected - a lot of reviews around and above 80 percent is a very nice result for a first project, and we have even had a 90-percent one, which is really great, because it shows there are gamers out there who still care about interesting gameplay, and not just shiny production values.

It does take some time to get familiar with the Attunements system... if the player or reviewer doesn't understand the point of the RPG system, they can be disappointed, but most have got into it. The most common points of criticism were more or less expected - character creation that's too simple, no mini-map, a bit too linear in the gameplay, and sometimes, too short a length.

Character creation is the direct result of our very limited budget and time frame. We were simply not able to create different characters in the given time and budget - we were aware that this is one of the major disadvantages of Kult. But this was one of the unavoidable compromises we had to make.

We are very happy about the reactions we have received so far - there are plenty of reactions on the official forums. Thanks must go to all of players who have shown their interest and have given us feedback on Kult!

I was surprised that some negative reactions were based upon incorrect information - it is very unprofessional not to even read the manual to understand the basic game principles, or to complain that doesn't use the latest Source engine. Fortunately, most reviewers have been more serious and asked whenever there were problems or misunderstandings.

We also had a big dilemma about what should be released as demo - the first parts were based on the oldest graphics plus, later in the game, the variability of the gameplay grows exponentially - the more Attunements a player has gained, the more variable the game becomes. In the demo that is available, only a few basic Attunements can be found. But if we had released some later stage of the game, it would possibly uncover too much of the storyline.

The Attunement system is where Kult rises or falls - it depends on how much players understand it and relate to it. It might be not to everyone's taste, I'm sure.

The criticisms of the gameplay length came as a shock - we were quite surprised that 20 to 30 hours was considered short. But the truth is that our audience is relatively hardcore, and the length of the game is taken in different measures here. We will indeed take care to make sure future RPGs support longer gameplay, if it's possible. At least complaints about short play time suggest another thing - that the game is good. People tend not to complain that games they hate are too short!

Personal Thoughts Chris Bateman: I have such fond memories of the development of Kult that I could prattle on for some time about my favourite points. So many times during the testing period, I discovered combinations of Attunements that I hadn't anticipated and were highly entertaining. This is always a great reward for a game designer - when the materials you created and balanced develop a life of their own.

It also seemed like every time 3D People provided another build, they had made improvements. We'd be asking for various minor fixes, and the next build would not only sort those out, but improve upon what was already there. It's at times like that you know that the people making the game are not just doing it as a job, but as a passion. You can't make great games without a certain passion for them.

Also, as a more personal point, it was really great to work with the legendary Tom Baker on the voice over recordings. When I worked at Perfect Entertainment, I got a taste for working with great voice actors... Robert Llewellyn - Kryten from Red Dwarf - worked with me on several voices in Discworld Noir, and he just blew me away with how much a good voice actor can add to a script, as did the other actors on that project. Tom was a joy to work with, not only because he really thought about how best to carry across the feel of the narrative, but because he occasionally launched into wistful anecdotes that had nothing to do with the recording session, but helped break the grind of an afternoon of recording.

Peter Nagy Team Leader 3D People

Chris Bateman Managing Director International Hobo

[Since introducing them in November of 2003 to offer post-release viewpoints from the respective teams, it has been our pleasure to publish Wrap Reports on a good number of other titles, primarily within the RPG, online world, action and strategy categories. A complete list of the previous ones may be found on the next page. - Ed.]