Ash of Gods authors on project development and crowdfunding

Nikolay Bondarenko, founder of AurumDust

Ash of Gods is one of the brightest Russian projects under development today. But the game suddenly appeared on the horizon. Can you give a brief digression into the history of the project?

Nikolay Bondarenko, founder of AurumDust: In 2007, my then employer TvxMedia gave me the opportunity to make my game based on my then team. Sergey Maskinskov and I (a game designer) managed to prescribe a basic synopsis – menhirs, relationships in the world, a mixture of step–by-step combat with maps (I was unreal at that time in KKI) and write basic mathematics. Then 2008 happened and there was no money at all. A year and a half ago, I was faced with a choice – to leave Russia for India to work with my friend or to do something of my own.

And you chose your project. Do I understand correctly that, having formed the concept, you assembled a team for it from scratch?

Nikolay: Yes, but there is a nuance. I have worked with all the key people in this team at different times and in different capacities before. I have close friendships with someone. We were looking for part of the team together and this is probably a very difficult part of this game. I made a big mistake in people several times.

How do you actively involve autosource?

Nikolay: This is our everything. Animation, music, sound engineering, drawing, website, programming, administration in places.

What was the initial capital for the pitching?

Nikolay: A little over $100 thousand.

Sorry, I can’t help but ask about the source of capital. A non-core investor?

Nikolay: Let’s assume that non-core.

You wrote in your diaries that you wanted to do a project in a year. Is the deadline due to economic reasons?

Nikolay: Mainly by the release window. If you do not have time to do this before November, then you will have to wait for the end of February or March until all the whales of the industry “shoot off” on Steam and people will have money again. Or compete with all those projects that will be released from the end of November to January.

Do you fit in a year?

Nikolai: Eh….

Do I understand correctly that the game is a bagel in which the plot is served in the manner of a Japanese narrative quest, and the fight is turn–based battles in the spirit of Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf?

Nikolay: Yes. Between and during the narrative quest there is a world map on which the player plans to move between key points. The physical time it takes for him to get from the place where it all started to the place where it all ends depends on this. Battles, most of the quests – all on the road.

Can you describe how the game cycle works approximately?

Nikolay: History – battle – map – quests – history.

You wrote in a blog that the history of the project arose from your interest in the ethics of good and evil. But at the same time, you are not the screenwriter of the game. Why?

Nikolay: I am not a writer/screenwriter. Yes, I’m a graphomaniac for friends and family, but still not a screenwriter. I believe that someone who knows how and wants to do it should do the job (and do it well). Sergey Malitsky (the screenwriter of the project) is both able and willing. I already have enough opportunities to influence the script and how it is written.

Both in the Kickstarter video and in the diaries, you say that the game remembers every player’s choice. To be honest, it sounds like a marketing mantra in the spirit of Telltale Games. How much does the choice affect all subsequent content? Is there such a thing, for example, as in Tyranny, when one or another step determines your enemies for the whole game?

Nikolay: The choice of finales and key branches is built around how each of the protagonists “behaved correctly”. Thorn – as a person, Feng – as an eikonets, Hopper as the player himself chose.

In each dialogue and quest there are markers that add up to the piggy bank of this characteristic of each of the heroes. And the actions of one of the heroes – Hopper – affect in real time the degree of complexity of the game, which determines how quests, mathematics, enemies behave.

The video on Kickstarter says that the game is an honest rogue and, moreover, it is easy to die in it. But death in a story game is not fun. No one wants to read or listen to dialogues a second time. How did you get around this problem?

Nikolay: We try to make the dialogues not boring and not too long.

Until the playtests started, whatever I say will be marketing shit.

The game has 7 endings, 2 lines of characters, 46 quests – how much is it in words? If we compare, for example, with “War and Peace” (110,000 words in it)?

Nikolay: Now – 140,000 words. When we finish, it will be around 240,000.

Ash of Gods is constantly compared because of the visual style with The Banner Saga. Doesn’t it infuriate you? Do you regret that you chose the current graphic style?

Nikolay: No, I don’t regret it.

Your style, according to your own words, is a synthesis of Soviet animation and Bakshi’s approach. You said that The Banner Saga showed how to modernize this style. And a little more detail is possible? What was wrong with the one-on-one approach to using the style of the same “Scarlet Flower”?

Nikolay: If you’re asking about Atamanov’s 1952 cartoon, then it’s even more “banerse” than what we have now.

Seriously, that’s what we do. Our whole character is a “Scarlet Flower”: a closed contour, a thin line, simple fills, realism. Already in the second and third passes, we added semitones and more details. The backgrounds in the cartoon are very complex if you draw them not in 360p, but at 1080p for large wide monitors.

By the way, your style reminds me much more of the approach of the authors of Masquerada: Songs and Shadows. Played? What do you think about the project?

Nikolay: I watched the video, bought it, but haven’t played it yet.

Ash of Gods captivates with rotoscopic animation. It looks really cool. How expensive is it compared to traditional animation or 3D?

Nikolay: Mmm…

Rotoscope is probably the most traditional animation possible. The actor and his movements are only the basis for the animator’s work.

It is difficult to compare with 3D. I’ll explain. If you have 40 characters, each of which does not have a change of clothes, and there is a clearly fixed number of animations that should move realistically – 2D is cheaper. But it is worth mentioning about clothes or about the fact that animations need to be added or quickly changed – 3D will immediately break ahead.

You also have absolutely fantastic cartoon videos. Is this also done by the internal team?

Nikolay: And yes and no. We work with wonderful guys from Mirball Studio (Tomsk). On our side is the plot, coloristics (light / color), refs, work with faces. All the drawing, mixing, editing, animation is on the side of the guys. In total, during the period of work by our team, we made 836 overs. This is a little more than 600 man-hours.

Announcing the Ash of Gods crowdfunding campaign, you stated that you had been preparing for this for a year. What was the preparation?

Nikolay: Understand what we are doing, as well as how much more money is needed. The preparation itself – art, texts and design took almost 3 months. I know now that it’s all very complicated.

Where did the sum of $75 thousand come from?

Nikolay: (Amount of content * cost of production/productivity) + taxes.

You have a lot of additional rewards for generous backers. The coolest reward for a donation is access to the Slack team. How is that at all? They will interfere.

Nikolay: There are a lot of awards – because I wanted to do for myself. I am now walking around with a keychain on my keys (it appears in the list of awards) and I pushed it to get a bracelet, which I also plan to wear.

I don’t think that if there is someone who wants to become part of our team, it will interfere. A person who has an “extra” $7,500 and who plays games is simply obliged to give good advice. After all, it’s a cool experience to pay $7,500 to work for free. Seriously, I hope that an interested and motivated person will help us make the game more interesting.

What happens if you don’t type?

Nikolay: Let’s cut out the third protagonist, rewrite the ending a little, since he plays an important role there. We will not bring to mind part of the road quests.

Why do you publish yourself, and not go to publishers?

Nikolay: So we walk. So far, every game is being offered, taking into account how much we ourselves have managed to do for our hard-earned money.

What’s your history with Square Enix Collective?

Nikolay: They got us! We noted this case and sent them the final materials for publication. And… they sent us to fuck. We’re too much like The Banner Saga for them.

The last question is simple: plans. What to expect from you in the near future?

Nikolay: Silence. We are just now starting to assemble our disparate prototypes of everything into something solid, and I have already hung my director’s cuffs on the hanger and got out the programmer’s gloves.