Both Arik Helman and Adrian Tache have answered more than a few interview questions in their time together developing Legends of Ellaria. In that time they’ve covered plenty of topics.
Here are some of the things Arik and Adrian have had to say so far about Larkon Studio, Legends of Ellaria, and its development/progress.
- What led to the founding of Larkon Studios and (Legends of Ellaria)?
Arik: “Me and Adrian worked together in a Digital Art company. We are good friends and developed all sorts of video games (and played even more). The idea for Legends of Ellaria came in a discussion about video games where we shared opinions about Skyrim, Total War series and other games. Eventually we reached the conclusion that you can combine several genres into one just as long as you focus on the things that makes a video game fun to play.
This idea came at around 2012 and developed into a full game design. Since then our team grew in size as other developers joined Legends of Ellaria’s concept. Today we're past the technical difficulties and have reached the Early Access with a gameplay that rose beyond our expectations.”
- What was the hardest part of development for Legends of Ellaria?
Adrian: “The hardest part was developing the main game engine. We had to create an environment with multiple areas, both indoor and outdoor, along with the ability to switch between first person view and real time strategy. In a way, we had to develop two games and combine them. It was a challenging part of the development but we pulled through.”
- If you had unlimited budget what would you add to Legends of Ellaria?
Adrian: “Multiplayer, obviously. At the moment it’s in our “to do” list, but we’re delaying it until we’ll polish everything else. Other things, such as modding and voiced NPC’s are a must and we’ll add them during Early Access.”
- If you could get any celebrity for a Legends of Ellaria advertisement, who would it be?
Adrian: “Probably the cast of Lord Of The Rings. We actually have a main story character that resembles Saruman, and we are working on underground dwarven cities.”
- If you weren’t developing games, what would you be doing?
Adrian: “Developing games. We don’t see ourselves doing anything else. It’s the best profession to include technical thinking and art.”
- What do you think of the current state of RPGs?
Arik: “RPG games have always been our favorite genre as it gives the best connection between the game and the player. Over the years, we noticed a shift from the complexed RPG classical games, such as Never Winter Nights, to the more casual RPG's, such as Skyrim. However, todays RPG offer superb graphics, lore, and are usually played in open worlds which let players focus on their own gameplay.”
- Can I finish the story by just sticking to one of the views?
Arik: “For the most part, yes. You can play the entire game on FPS and let your advisors develop your kingdom. You can fight battles, take quests and focus on your character while your kingdom grows by itself. On the other hand you can play the entire game on RTS and build your kingdom while conquering other kingdoms. As part of your RTS gameplay, you can hire heroes and send them to quests on your behalf. These heroes can be killed or captured, so you'll have to be sure to send the right ones.
Except for switching from RTS to FPS so that you will move between locations, you can very much finish the game in either mode. We assume that type of gameplay will be a rare thing to do since CivCraft's concept was to include the best from both worlds.”
While there is still progress to make in taking Legends of Ellaria to the heights it deserves to, and plenty of more interviews to have, these are some of the highlights of that so far. But Legends of Ellaria is far from being at its best, and that’s saying something how great it already is. Steam Early Access is on the way, and every day is more progress. Thanks for coming along for the ride.