Fantasy Wars Wrap Report

Best Decisions

Max Bodrikov: Well, let's return to the map editor. As you can see, the landscapes play a very important role in Fantasy Wars. Different types of locations influence the units' characteristics. Because of this, the landscapes aren't just ground; they're a major instrument for building gameplay.

The actors tried so hard to perform multiple strikes, falls and deaths naturally that one of them broke a rib, and another wrenched his shoulder out. That's what it takes to make a good game!

Using the map editor, our level builders managed to create levels for three full-scaled campaigns in a short period of time. We put our shareware editor tool on the web. It allows players to build their own levels easily; one for North America just came out.

Level makers have a set of instruments that influence the landscape's appearance. You can set time of the year and lighting, and select the type of location. At the same time, it is impossible, for example, to set any mountains' height that you wish. This limitation influences the originality of the maps. The level makers had to work a lot with them, using unusual buildings, objects and special locations, and improving the visuals.

Key Strengths

Alexey Kozyrev: One of the key-features is gameplay and game mechanics that allow war game admirers to feel like they are home, but that won't scare newbies away from the genre.

The visuals comprise another important feature. They may not be the most up to date ever, but we feel we have the best graphics among war games. And the recommended system requirements are not high.

The third feature is the great variety of game content. Multiple units and different ways to develop them help players to create unique combinations of troops, and thus to make their own game style.

Areas for Improvement

Max Bodrikov: We need to pay more attention to game videos and special effects. The potential of the engine allows us to make them better, and we are now working on that. We also plan to enlarge the players' abilities; this is what we are now implementing in the sequel and mission packs.

I also think that we need to put more effort into promotion of the game. The genre is really unique, and there are only a few such games nowadays.

Audience Response

Max Bodrikov: We are very happy that both players and game journalists enjoyed our title. The feedback corresponded with our expectations for about 80 percent. : )

The target groups didn't let us down, describing their positive emotions and favorite features in blogs and forums. That is amusing, but I noticed that players pay more attention to gameplay, while journalists concentrate on graphics. I thought that it would be vice versa, but I was mistaken.

Some negative emotions were expressed about the videos made with the game engine. This was a little surprising for us. In our hearts, we assumed nobody expects visuals similar to modern action games in a turn-based strategy title, where models simply can't be as highly detailed because of technical limitations. It turned out we were wrong. Well, we learned that lesson. In our future projects, we shall focus on that aspect; we are now planning to release a sequel called Elven Legacy and additional mission packs.

Personal Thoughts

Max Bodrikov: There is a lot I'll remember, especially how we used motion capture technology. The actors tried so hard to perform multiple strikes, falls and deaths naturally that one of them broke a rib, and another wrenched his shoulder out. That's what it takes to make a good game!

Alexey Kozyrev: I am glad that I led the development of Fantasy Wars; we managed to release a high-quality game. It has a real chance to help bring the turn-based war game genre back to life, and to make it popular again. In conclusion I would like to say a few words about the map editor. We are now revising and improving it. I hope we will finish it soon, and promise that players won't be disappointed with its quality.

Alexey Kozyrev

Project Lead and Director, Fantasy Wars

1C: Ino-Co

Max Bodrikov

Game Designer, Fantasy Wars

1C: Ino-Co

Wrap Reports are intended to complement reviews by providing a post-release viewpoint we seldom see, that of the developer and/or publisher. Since introducing this format in November of 2003, we have had the pleasure to publish quite a few, primarily within the RPG and online world categories, with selected action and strategy games also represented. A complete list of the previous ones may be found on the next page. - Ed.