Sorcerer King Journals and Interviews

In addition to two new journals penned by Stardock CEO Brad Wardell that cover the beta roadmap and Dwarven allies on the official Sorcerer King website, there are new interviews for the fantasy strategy/RPG hybrid up at VentureBeat, Strategy Informer, and GameRanx. Samplings from a couple of the interviews:

Gameranx: Neat! So, first thing I noticed upon booting up the game, was that there were spell books beneath by playable character class, harkening back to Master of Magic’s spell books.

Wardell: Oh, I have no idea what you’re talking about there. Master of Magic, is that a game? (Laughs)

Uh, well let’s see. In this game and in the course of it, you choose a wizard and then with that wizard you choose a number of spell books, which determines what spells are available to you and you choose a special ability and when you go in you can capture shards you get magic which you then spend between mana, skill, and learning new spells. Now, I assure you that is wholly completely new concept that has never been in a game called what’d you call it, ‘˜Master of Magic?’ (Laughs)

Gameranx: Yeah, I wanted to ask about the extent of the influence Master of Magic had on Sorcerer King.

Wardell: Yeah, well one of the ironies is that when we were going and making a game, I brought my Elemental design that I had wanted to do years ago that was a complete turd when it finally came out, and there’s bunches of screenshots of Master of Magic and I think, ‘˜I want this game make me a modern version of this game,’ of course it didn’t turn out that way.

So, this time I’m on the game day-to-day and making sure, ‘˜Alright, look. When I go into a battle, I want every guy, I want it to be about the cool abilities my guys have versus what their guys have.’ I want to have each race be very different. No, I don’t want to be a bunch of humanoids, as that look basically the same just with different clothing. I want there to be giants, I want there to be goblin men, I want there to be stuff that look very different on the screen. I don’t want my dwarves to look like fat humans, I want them to be dwarves. Actually, if you look at the user interface of Sorcerer King, right, it’s the thing on the right side: here’s your units, here’s your mini map, here’s your main menu. So, it’s definitely taken a lot of influence from that.

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Strategy Informer: It sounds like there’s a bit more of an RPG focus here than in other 4X games, is that right?

Brad Wardell: I would say that’s true. Remember Star Control? If you remember the plot for Star Control 2, when you talked to the different aliens, you’re trying to gather them all on to your side to go deal with the Ur-Quan, so in this game the Sorcerer King is essentially the Ur-Quan. Expect in this case you’re having these very similar conversations with those minor races, and they’ll send you out on quests and things to win their favour. Early Access is totally gimped on that side of the game, just because there’s so much content we’re going to put in there. But that’s the essence of the game.

Strategy Informer: So the world’s already been conquered and you’ve lost. Does that change the way typical 4X empire-building works in Sorcerer King ?

Brad Wardell: It does. You know in Civilization you have the bandit mechanics? In this game since civilisation has basically been wiped out by the Sorcerer King, all the good spots in the world are being squatted on by bandits and monsters. You don’t even get the nice places to build in, first you have to go out and deal with these enemy mobs. We’re still debating whether to let you go in and try and bribe or persuade them to leave, or whether you just have to kill them. In the Beta you have to kill them.