Adanath: Interview

 

1.What got you into gaming?

I was very into games from my childhood. I can remember when I was at primary school, I was drawing some game scenes in my notebook (literally notebook). And it was  in the early 90s.  But somehow i haven't started to create games until the pandemic. That tragedy gave a  space to focus on game designing and learn how to use game engines.  So that helped me to follow my dreams. 

2. What were your favorite games back then?

I really like playing many different genres.  But there are 3 special games for me,  Prince Of Persia-Warrior Within. I can remember when I first played the game with my PS2, the ambiance shocked me. The mechanics of the game was really good and the music lifted me up .  Assassins Creed 2 - I think it is called "2" when we met Ezio.  I think the architectural approach of the series and the story of the game have caught me up . And the last one is the Witcher-Wild Hunt.  I know there are many games-also RPG ones- that make players connect to them. But in Witcher, I usually find myself thinking of moving to Velen or Novigrad or talking to some characters of the game, maybe  Triss :) And after beating the game, I always feel sad. An interesting experience for me. 

3. When were Ancient Gears Studios formed?

When the Pandemic started, when we had to stay at home; I started to design the game. And after I started to develop the game. I was both working on the game and learning the game development. After I honestly confessed to myself that I can not complete this game without any help , I reached some people who may consider joining this project.  Last year in July (2021),  3 members joined.  and in 2 months we were over 10 people in the team. 

4. How or who came up with the name?

We voted on possible names.  One of our friends came up with the name idea, and we all thought the name fits the game concept and we became Ancient Gears. 

5. How many are employed there?

We are now 15 volunteers and as volunteers usually we can not work as much as we expect, every member does something else for living. 

6. What is Adanath all about?

Well, Adanath is a 3D side-scroller action-adventure game that has a deeply mythological background and fantasy elements.  We are playing as a hero who lived a long time ago, I can say the first ages of humankind which was created by a superior kind, Leariths. Adanath and his wife Ninna, are the first entities that are created and they live in their isolated garden.  But somehow Adanath finds himself in a conflict and Ninna disappears. Adanath is a story about finding Ninna.  

7. As far as the story go are there any cutscenes or still to progress the story?

We are working on that, but sorry at the moment there is not. 

8. For the gameplay was there any inspirations for making this game?

Yeah, as a sidescroller, we tried to analyze some awesome games like DeadCells and Ori. But in that case, we don't want to use the platform mechanics and we thought the combat may be a little bit slower than DeadCells.  This is an action title so we watched and played the great games in this genre, God of war is a treasure, however, we couldn't implement what we wanted recently but we are gonna add something fancy. 

And again DeadCells has a good camera feature and we implement something similar by improving our game design. Our quest system is similar to The Witcher and I can say these are the best examples in which we get inspiration. 

9. What was the benefit of using the Unreal engine?

The reason why I am developing a game is that it is free to use very powerful engines. They don't want anything if you don't earn money.  I think the first benefit is that an Unreal engine is a free tool with a lot of great tools. The first days of Adanath development, I was working on Unity and Adanath had a 2D perspective but then I discovered Unreal Engine and which is a side scroller template which is a great start for a project prototype. And instead of 2D, you can use a 3D map (this feature helped us create a mechanic that allows Adanath to move deeper through the map) , and shaders are really good.  You can demonstrate a  level very fast and it saves time for focusing on the other features.  And the Blueprint System is very easy to understand and our team members can easily use it to implement their work inside the engine.  But as a developer I don't believe in a "best engine" idea, I believe in "the best engine for a game design". Adanath is a 3D side scroller with semi-realistic visuals; so we are very happy to develop with Unreal Engine for now. 

10.Other than being on Steam, are any plans to put Adanath on consoles in the future?

We are looking for publishers who can help us to make the studio solid.  We want to run a Kickstarter campaign to have financial resources and we want to have an Xbox port. But why not, a Switch port would be awesome and if we can get enough financial resources we are going to port Adanath to these 2 consoles.