Herocraft has announced a tactical “bagel” World of Dungeons

Hi! We watched the promotional trailer several times and we were very intrigued by it. The fact is that, on the one hand, the project is positioned as a classic “bagel”, on the other hand, what is being demonstrated visually resembles more step-by-step tactics. So what are we really going to be dealing with?

 George Yerkhan

Hi! It is quite correctly noted that World of Dungeons is a hybrid of a “bagel” and tactics. To understand what is more, and how it is used in the game, let’s remember the sensational Banner Saga last year. Or another example – the last X-Com. If you don’t go into details, then the mechanics of the battles of these games and our project are very similar.

Both there and there the characters act in turn, you need to think about what skill to use, in what sequence to deal with opponents, etc. But, by the way, the heroes move in real time, step-by-step mode is only for combat.

Unlike a typical bagel, the player controls several heroes at once, which is typical for classic RPGs (from Baldur’s Gates to Dragon Age). In other components, World of Dungeons is a real rogue-like. Our dungeon levels are procedurally generated every time a player sends his team in search of new trophies. Players strive to knock out better things and weapons, collect sets for their heroes, the coolest items of course need to be knocked out of bosses. I.e. everything we love Diablo for, all this is also in World of Dungeons.

I want to note that we paid special attention to the content, I can’t even say exactly how many weapons or things are in the game right now, the score has been in the hundreds for a long time, at the time of launch, each hero has 7 sets available for assembly. I also can’t help but brag about our web of skills – in the video you probably saw a circle with a lot of skill points. All these hundreds of skills can be studied by any of the heroes. We really liked the skill system in the iconic indie RPG Path of Exile, we tried to do something equally impressive and interesting.

“Bagel”, as a rule, implies only a single game. A single-player game about a team of adventurers, designed at the same time for hardcore players, this, it seems to us, is certainly not free-to-play. Have the team decided how much the game will cost, and based on what they accepted (will accept) is this the solution?

But you didn’t guess, we are going to distribute our World of Dungeons completely free of charge. As with our previous hardcore game, Strategy and Tactics, we are trying to adapt complex genres and mechanics for a wider audience. Or let’s remember our Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf – it is distributed on the f2p model, and I can’t call this experience unsuccessful.

By the way, since we’re talking about Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf. One of the advantages of the project was the excellent three-dimensional graphics. Why was it decided to return to sprite graphics in a relatively similar project?

I wouldn’t call it a comeback. Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf and World of Dungeons were made in parallel. The choice is due to technical reasons, we used one of our 2D engines. We do not make only 3D or only 2D games, we have a variety of games for a variety of different categories of players in development at the same time.

And the last question: when to wait for the game?

The release is planned closer to the summer of 2015, the game will be released on iOS and Android at the same time. Now the game is in preliminary tests, along with this we are finishing the balance and working on optimization. In April, we really hope to go into beta testing. And there it is already very close to the soft launch.

Thanks for the interview!

Also on the topic:

• Analysis of Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf
• Interview with Herocraft about Strategy & Tactics: World War II

Herocraft is a Russian company specializing in the development and publication of mobile turn-based strategy games. Founded in 2002. The company’s headquarters is located in Kaliningrad.