Avencast: Rise of the Mage Wrap Report

Avencast: Rise of the Mage is an action RPG that shipped in North America and Europe last month. It incorporates elements derived from the action and adventure categories. In the former area, combat is designed to favor adroit play over simple clicking, drawing upon the player's skill as well as the protagonist's attributes and abilities. Examples of the latter include undertaking many dangerous quests, exploring the environments for powerful and helpful items, deciphering riddles, and interacting with the denizens of the world to advance the story. Marking the debut of an Austrian studio, ClockStone Software, it's published by Lighthouse Interactive. The target audience is relatively broad. Grizzled grognards are likely to appreciate the varied possibilities and challenges presented by the available range of skill and strategy combinations, while novices won't be required to face and overcome a steep learning curve.

The player's journey starts out as an apprentice at the leading academy of magic in the kingdom of Aldgarth. This place of wonder and mystery offers a number of diverse quests that allow students to build up their knowledge of spells and potions as well as weapons and melee. However, this process is rudely interrupted when a horde of demons invades the school through a dimensional portal, their arrival posing a dire threat to the very survival of your world. Somehow, it falls to you to defeat these terrifying creatures. To assist in accomplishing this daunting task, you can acquire dozens of combat moves and spells, but it will still be difficult since you will also encounter unforeseen treachery and deceit. Tri Do Dinh served as Game Designer and Lead Animator while CEO Michael Schiestl was the project's Lead Programmer.

The Project

Tri Do Dinh: The game is an action RPG in which you assume the role of a young apprentice wizard who enters the renowned academy of Avencast to finish his education. Life there offers plenty of challenges, especially as some of them are unforeseen...

The idea arose roughly four years ago, mainly through the work of Michael Schiestl, who started to develop the engine on his own. At that point, we only knew that it would become an action RPG; the exact details were unclear. Story-wise, we drew influence from pen and paper RPGs, particularly one that a friend of ours developed himself. In terms of gameplay, the main inspiration came primarily from beat 'em ups, shoot 'em ups and other games that were heavy on action, rather than usual RPGs. The setting with the academy and the mages simply resulted from us having to cut the overall scope of the game, and this particular setting proved to be the one with the most potential.

As for what separates Avencast from other action RPGs, I'd say it's the fresh new combat system, the art style, especially with its 2.5D cutscenes and special effects, and the story, which has some unique details and interesting characters that you'll encounter during the campaign. The game started shipping in November 2007 in the US, Canada and Europe. Release is planned in other countries, such as Russia.

The Team

Michael Schiestl: Four years ago, when we started to make Avencast, the team was just comprised of a bunch of students. At that time, it was more a hobby project. Two years later, we realized the enormous potential behind the game and - reinforced by new, enthusiastic team members - we decided to go a more professional path by searching for a worldwide publisher and founding our company, ClockStone. The entire development was handled by us or, in a few cases, freelance partners.

High-Level Goals

Tri Do Dinh: We had two big goals concerning the design of the game. One was bringing a fresh twist to the genre by trying a new combat system. After all, you're spending a lot of time vanquishing evil, so to speak, so we wanted to create a system that is really able to capture the action and keep it interesting. The other was finding a design that would turn our weakness, our small team, into a strength. Rather than going for sheer scope and complexity, which wouldn't have been possible, we decided to make Avencast smaller, but at the same time as charming and interesting as possible, with real attention to the details.

In terms of art direction, we didn't want to go for the classic orcs and elves fantasy look, so we took a lot inspiration from unusual things... the Mayan civilization, things like that.

Technology

Michael Schiestl: Practically all the technology used in Avencast was programmed ourselves. The entire 3D engine including a world editor and a particle editor, a C-like script language, a special AI programming language, the sound engine, and even an importer / exporter for our own 3D file format. Looking back, we actually spent too much time on programming software instead of using third-party technology. On the other hand we have learned a lot from that, and we now have our own engine that can create over the top visual effects hardly seen in other games.

Development Timeline

Michael Schiestl: When you compare it to the initial plan we had before the founding of ClockStone, I have to say that we are one and a half years late. But, at that stage, the size of the entire project was intended to be much smaller. Compared to the schedule in the agreement with our publisher, the release was about three months delayed, which was only partly our fault. Localization, QA and manufacturing took somewhat longer than planned.