Witanlore: Dreamtime isn’t just a game; it's a love affair. Following two failed Kickstarter attempts for their game “Unwritten: Echoes of Twilight,” the Druid Gameworlds team scaled back their idea to concentrate on just one race - the Ursines. Now, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, lots of time, effort and dedication, the team is ready to release their first demo.
I got to spend some time with them today to have a chat about the game and how they have found the development process.
- Cole MacLean - Senior Project Manager
- Herb Ospina - Lead Level Designer
- Matt Bone - Quest Designer
Hi guys and welcome to Nexus Mods, would you mind giving us a quick rundown of who you are and what your role is within Druid Gameworks?
Herb: Hi there, I’m Herb Ospina, lead level Designer on Witanlore - I graduated from Full Sail with a Bachelors degree in game Design.
Matt: Hi, I’m Matt Bone, Writer & Game Designer.
Cole: Hi, I’m Cole MacLean, Lead Game Designer and Project Manager. I do what needs doing :)
Herb: He is indeed, “the man of many hats.”
Where did the name Druid Gameworks come from and how did you all meet / get involved in the project?
Cole: The name Druid Gameworks was sort of dual meaning, most of us have Celtic heritage and it was also a way of tipping our hats to the idea of old school game development. The company started out from my Oblivion Expansion project Reclaiming Sancre Tor, it was on that project that I met co-founder James Ford and several of our current team mates.
The folks who have been on the project the longest were all modders first, people whom we met through sites such as Nexus Mods. After they were on board we recruited and filled seats from freelance and student pools.
So if you were modders first, I presume you have been on the Nexus a while?
Cole: I think all of us have been Nexus community members a long time, I think we first met up on the official Bethsoft forums but Nexus is the go to for good mod hosting so many of our handles are probably familiar to Nexus users.
I’m Darkryder, we also have Zaldir, Arthmoor, jjc17, IonistheBear or Ionis, lilith, joshezzell and WindmillTilter. Between us we have created a number of mods that I hope are enjoyed by the community.
Your first game Witanlore: Dreamtime has just been successfully Kickstarted, making twice what you were after. Did you expect such a positive response?
Cole: I would say no, that was unexpected. We knew we had put together a strong campaign and the game Witanlore: Dreamtime resonates with a lot of folks, but I don't think we considered it would do that well so kept the goal fairly short.
Can you give us the premise of the game?
The premise is that Witanlore is a story-based RPG set on an island populated by humanoid bear tribes. We take a lot of influence from Native American tribes in their design, whilst throwing in a lot of our own flavour. As for the main story, you start the game as an ursine about to undergo the Chut'que, or Dreaming - a coming of age ritual, in which you travel to the Dreamworld to meet the Great Mother, goddess of the ursine, to learn of your destiny. Without giving away too much, I'll say that like all good stories, it doesn't go quite as expected.
Matt, the studio has obviously written all their own backstory and lore for the game, what were your inspirations and how have you found the process?
Matt: Fortunately for me, a lot of the world lore and the story specific to this game was in place when I came on board. But I have helped to flesh a lot out since, it made things a lot easier when it came to writing the dialogue and quests.
I noticed in the demo that there are a lot of books scattered around, many of which are readable, is there a team in place to write these?
Matt: I've written all the books currently in episode 1, though we definitely want to add a lot more, so will likely enlist a few others to contribute. And yes, that means I'm to blame for "Urg's poetry".
Herb: I love Urgs experiments.
Matt: He loves a bit of science!
Herb, the game world already seems large and very open. How big will the game be upon initial release and how are you going to deal with expansion through each episode?
Herb: The game world is roughly 11 x 10km, episode 1 will be a fraction of that. Each episode unlocks a portion of the continent and lets you progress through the story. Off hand their are roughly 3 or 4 large dungeons/caves to explore in EP1 along with other smaller adventuring areas. There are also points of interest to find.
With the game being episodic, a lot of areas will be bounded off until we release that episode. However, once all episodes are complete and the full saga released the game will be fully open world, to explore as you please.
How are you stopping the player from venturing into the next part of the game world, will it be invisible walls or is there some kind of blockage in the way (fallen tree etc.)?
We’re using invisible walls, though the fallen tree thing is a good idea for some smaller areas in the future ;)
I have read that the game will feature a lot of chaos theory/butterfly effect moments, make one choice and it affects something down the line. I played the demo earlier and in a conversation with Tuala (the female Ursine you meet at the beginning), I noticed questions leading in many different directions. Is this hard to plan out? I can imagine that the game is like a tree with a huge amount of branches the player can take!
Matt: Hah, it can be a nightmare when it comes to writing dialogue and quest outcomes. You end up with a final dialogue tree that has to account for a hell of a lot of variations. But I think it's incredibly important to do that. It makes the player truly feel like their decisions and dialogue responses matter.
Also, the voice actors hate me.
The female Ursine in the demo (Tuala) is actually a good example. There's some seemingly incidental responses in that dialogue that can lead to some big changes in the quest - and the choices she makes as a character - down the line.
Am I right in saying that your character could end up being ‘Evil’?
Cole: Yes that's definitely possible
What made you choose bears to be the basis of your Ursine race?
Cole: Dreamtime started as an alt start questline from our original Witanlore title Echoes of Twilight. the bear race, Ursines, were one of 6 playable races for that game. We felt their culture was unique and diverse enough to be central to a standalone spin off.
I love the character design sketches that have adorned your Steam Greenlight page, they look incredible. I noticed that there seems to be a number of different classes - will these be available for the player to choose at the beginning or do they become these through the choices they make?
Cole: The player can choose their character's class at the start of a new game, they can also piece together a custom class if they want specific traits.
Each class comes with a totem animal assigned, so if they want to pick what their totem is they will need to choose custom class and make the choices they prefer.
The totems look a really nice feature, do they act like a companion? How are they activated and utilized by the player?
Cole: Totems come in several incarnations that they cycle through as the player levels them up. At first they are a charm on the player's HUD, this represents the internal connection of player and totem. The charm glows when hidden items are near, when enemies are tracking them, or when a quest is close by. Reacting to these cues, for example talking to a quest giver the totem alerted you to, levels up the totem. When the totem levels up enough, and the player unlocks their connection to magic, the totem can manifest an ethereal spirit form. This spirit can be summoned but is somewhat limited. The final incarnation of the totem is a physical spirit guide, this works more like a companion traveling beside the player, following and dismissing at the player's whim.
Magic doesn't unlock until Episode 2 by design so in Episode 1, the totem animals are charm forms.
There are actually 14 totems in total and each has different buffs and bonuses. Wolf, Fox, Bison, Horse, Otter, Dragon, Hawk, Owl, Snake, Rabbit, Snowcat, Wolverine, Rat, and Bear.
You’ve said that most of you have come from a modders background, would you say any of your inspiration has come from mods you’ve used or worked on in the past?
Cole: I would say our time in the modding community gave us a good frame of what sort of extras gamers would like to see as part of the core game, like survival needs [hunger, thirst, etc] or role playing elements for example.
So have there been any games that provided you or your team with inspiration?
Cole: We definitely took some of our inspiration from the Elder Scrolls series, we are big fans of those games since at least Daggerfall, as well as games like Dragon Age Origins and the Witcher series. That said though, our approach has always been "This is what they did, what can we do differently or improve on?"
Matt: Inspiration-wise for me, it's pretty much any good, story-driven RPG. Witcher 3 is an obvious one, as it really represents a high point of the genre. Though on a more indie scale, games like 80 Days show how far great writing can take you.
Herb: I’ve been playing Elder Scrolls since Daggerfall and any other major RPG. My inspiration comes mostly from those games. I’ve always liked how Bethesda changes up the flow, in dungeons, to break up the linearity.
You’re introducing something you’ve named the RP menu, can you tell us a little bit more about this nifty feature? Will it be expandable / modifiable in the future?
Cole: The RP menu was my brain child and it actually almost didn't make the game because it was a really last minute addition. Basically, while playing other RPG games, it bothered me that I couldn’t sit down whenever I wanted. So I thought, what if we gave players the ability to call certain behaviors on the fly? It started with sitting anywhere, building a campfire, smoking a peace pipe, summoning companions. Working closely with programmer Filipe Tessaro we expanded the idea to include things like fishing, and building an actual tent, as well as adding buffs for performing these behaviors.
There were other behaviors that didn’t make the cut so I think some intrepid modder could certainly build on the idea :D
So the game is going to be moddable? Will you be providing tools?
Cole: We're using Unreal Engine 4 for development and Epic has opened a pipeline to make moddable games possible. We'll be following their guidelines for sure. We also have a toolkit of our own that we'd like to finish developing and roll out for our modding communities to use specifically for our games. At the moment the toolkit is on hold but once the core programming is finished for Dreamtime the programmers plan to revisit the toolkit and get it on its feet for distribution.
That’s brilliant to hear, I’m sure the community at Nexus Mods are going to have a field day expanding and modding the game! You must have come from working with the Creation Kit, how did you find the move over to the Unreal Engine?
Cole: There really isn’t a comparison between the CK and UE4, it's just a different animal. We spent the first 5-6 months learning the engine before any significant development even started and to date, there's still something new to learn with every engine update.
Herb: I personally jumped into the creation kit for about 5 minutes during my time in school for research purposes. Both engines are so different that if you work with one it’s hard to pick up the other, The workflow is so different.
In terms of the entire process, what would you say have been the highs and the lows? Did the Steam Greenlight process go smoothly?
Cole: There are definitely highs around every milestone, like meeting our kickstarter goal, greenlighting, showcasing the first time, etc It's been really good for the team to hit those marks along the way. We had a solid plan going into greenlight but I would say it went better than we could have imagined. We were in the top 100 in the first 3 days and had just a really positive and gracious reception from the Steam community.
Matt: Although I wasn't there, showing the game for the first time at Orlando IX recently was a definite high for me, as I think it was for a lot of the developers. Seeing the photos and getting constant feedback from our team there was a blast, and made our game suddenly feel a whole lot more real. I remember Herb telling me how a guy was poring over every single dialogue choice, which definitely made my day (and reassured me that there were other people who played rpgs like I do...)
Cole: That's not to say we haven't had lows, our team has hit all of the usual hurdles, budget gaps, employee turnover, we've been ripped off a couple times where freelancers required upfront payments and walked or didn’t complete the task as contracted. A lot of people will try to prey on an indie startup, we've learned some hard lessons about vetting the people we hire or work with and about sticking together to move forward after any set back.
Herb: Indie development is hard. You have so many different people from so many different places working on their own thing. Sometimes people get crazy because of deadlines. With everyone working remotely it can be hard to interpret the tone of what people are trying to communicate with you.
The biggest high for me was releasing the demo. It really hit home with me that it was finally out and available to EVERYONE to finally play. I left my day job to work on this full time, needless to say i got a lot of skeptical looks about it. But it's finally paying off.
You’ve been updating Steam Greenlight with your progress. I noticed that the Character models were proving difficult to nail down and your Kickstarter funding is going largely towards character artists. How problematic were these and do you have any other characters (such as enemies) that have had similar issues?
Characters have been a huge challenge, we've been through 8 or 9 different artists now, and several thousand dollars from concept art to game version and the player characters still aren't finished. When we enter Early Access only the Blackclaw tribe will be playable because we actually have to sell units to raise funds to finish the other tribes.
Our in house artists have done a great job picking up the mantle for things like creatures which saved us from facing the same challenge with our fauna, but the enemy wolven model is still in the pipeline as well. Fortunately, the wolven don't appear until Episode 2 so we have some leeway there.
So you need some money thrown at you to assist in the process. Can you give us details of your pricing structure, where we can pre-order/support the game and what your release schedule is please?
Cole: In Early Access, each episode will retail for $6.99 if purchased as they release. Alternately, Players will be able to purchase the full game for $34.95 which includes all 5 episodes as they release PLUS all future DLCs FREE for buying the full game early!
After Early Access, when all the Episodes are complete the full game will retail for $39.99 with DLCs priced separately based on their content.
You won’t ever see a Druid Gameworks game priced at $60, ever.
Ha ha ha, can I quote you on that!?! :D
Yes, yes you can LOL :D :D. I just think that price model industry wide is a little steep. Fair pricing and quality content are two of our major business models.
So where can people go to follow the development of Witanlore: Dreamtime?
The best place to follow development is on our Steam Greenlight page.
We also have an FAQ for some of the most common questions folks may have.
I also tweet quite a bit if folks want to most up to date news, following our twitter feed is the way to go.
We have a great article coming out on greenlight soon detailing Early Access and specific goals and release dates so that's one to watch for.
Awesome, thank you ever so much for your time, it’s been great chatting with you all. Is there anything you would like to say to the Nexus community before we sign off?
Cole: As modders the Nexus community was always behind us giving us support, feedback, cheers, etc. We need them now more than ever as there are a lot of naysayers who think modders just can't make games. We aim to show them what modders can do :D
Matt: Also, keep making backpack mods. Our composer is weirdly obsessed by them…
Cole: Haha quite.
Herb: ROFL
Thank you to all you guys for giving us your time tonight, it’s been hugely appreciated and we wish you all the success with the game.
Herb: Thanks Paul!
Matt: Thanks Paul!
Cole: Thank you for chatting with us, it was fun! :D
If you missed the link earlier, you can now try out the demo of the game!
So there you have it, hope you enjoyed the second of our Sunday Discussions. We have plenty more lined up for you with mod authors, respected people in the industry and much, much more.
If you’ve enjoyed it, please feel free to social media the heck out of us. We’re now on Twitter and Facebook!
37 comments
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A moderator has closed this comment topic for the time beingBecause it doesn't run well at all on my computer. And by at all, I mean "horribly, less than 30 fps".
Sad because I wanted to give it a go since I love your mods. :/
1. the system menu with a background light brown texture looks cartoonish - which is OK for a cartoonish game, but your game looks more realistic, and with a realistic nature around it looks unpolished. So it would looks better for me without a textured background or with a more dark brown colour.
2. the minimap and health bar are too big - I cannot see much around them.
3. key mapping is trying to be innovative, but it was more chaotic for me - I would prefer to have standard menu: north = w, west = A, etc with an optional keyboard layout.
4. the bears look like teddybears and also they speak like teddybears, which would be ok again, if the game would be cartoonish, but if you want a more realistic game I would prefer models of werebears - more like human, but in the shape of bear - like in skyrim or like this: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Seventh-Son-WereBear-529902132
with a lower, more animal like voice.
- Fov is too low? cant adjust.
- sensitivity MASSIVELY LOW.. cant adjust.
- fps low.
- popups at 50meters, 25meters, 10meters, 5 METERS away..
- cant skip dialog always.. sometimes you are allowed to skip them
- mouse doesnt work on buttons, dialogs, cant quit dialog with mouse and keyboard too
- welp.. might try again.. on weekend with fresh patience..
Just stating that there are people who get these issues.
Now, a silly thought.
Say Wu Tang Lore really fast.
...
I have uncovered your secret, Ghostface Bear.
Good luck with your endeavor either way.