Crimson Alliance Interview

Esperino recently chatted up Certain Affinity founder Max Hoberman about their newly released action RPG, Crimson Alliance. Topics include the team’s decision to make the game free but charge for the characters, where they drew their inspiration from, the possibility of a sequel, and more:

Jess: Crimson Alliance feature three unique characters; The Wizard, The Assassin and The Mercenary. Yet the game has been designed as a co-op game for four. Was there particular reasoning behind this design?

Max: We originally envisioned 4 characters. As the project progressed we realized that we were going to have to scale back to keep the scope under control (we went over by more than 6 months, and on our own dime, as it is). We considered only supporting 3 players in co-op, since we only had 3 classes, but figured we let you play with any combination of classes anyway, and we already supported 4 players in co-op, so why put an artificial limit in place? Ironically we took some flak from reviewers for this, and probably wouldn’t have if we’d gone down to 3 players, but I’m very happy that we didn’t put an artificial restriction in place.

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Jess: Despite being reminiscent of the hack n’ slash games of years gone by, Crimson Alliance has a wealth of features to discover; Score multipliers, challenge maps, secret areas, co-op puzzles, collectble heart containers, throwable objects and revives are just a few of the features to be found.

Were there any particular games or even experiences that inspired the team in the creation Crimson Alliance and the bountiful features available within?

Max: We found inspiration all over the place. This started, of course, with our FPS experience, which led to designing gameplay mechanics and spaces where cover matters and you sometimes have to take a tactical approach to encounters. Beyond this, however, we were inspired by Zelda for collectable hearts, by Geometry Wars and Trials HD for our presentation of leaderboards, by old stand-up arcade games for our approach to high scores, and by Left 4 Dead and pen and paper role playing games for our approach to reviving downed teammates.

Everyone comments on the similarities to Gauntlet, and of course that series was hugely inspirational. Beyond this, however, I often pointed the team to a less well-known game called Hunter: The Reckoning and their approach to supporting co-op and linear encounters, as well as both melee and ranged combat for their characters.