Nick Horth talks with Dungeons 2 Art Director Viktor Linke

Realmforge did a decent job with the dungeon management sim inventively called Dungeons back in 2011, but there was a nagging sense that it was missing something. There was a lot of waiting around in your subterranean fortress for bands of roving heroes, idly twiddling your heavily-armoured thumbs. You also couldn’t slap your minions around. The developers are hoping to fix both those issues with Dungeons 2. I managed to track down Realmforge’s art director Viktor Linke recently, and quiz him on the upcoming sequel.

GameWatcher: What did you learn from the first Dungeons game that you’ve brought into the sequel?

Viktor Linke: I think a lot of people expected the first Dungeons to be another Dungeon Keeper, and it really wasn’t. It was more like a tower defence game. So we knew we wanted to have more management for the sequel, like you have to manage your dungeon, build up your creatures, care for your creatures. That’s one of the reasons we’ve actually worked on the art style – everything’s chunkier, bigger, more cartoonish, so the player has more connection to these creatures.

This reflects in the gameplay as well, so we have much more simulation, and we learned that we had a lot of downtime in the first game, when players were basically waiting for things to happen. They built their dungeon, they built their defences, then they just waited for things to unfold. A lot of players companied about that, so we added the concept of the overworld. So you have to think about those two layers, keep switching between them, and you always have something to do. The first Dungeons had mostly indirect gameplay, and we wanted to give the player more control this time. That’s the reason for the RTS gameplay, and the more hands-on dungeon management.

GameWatcher: With the RTS gameplay on the overworld, you’re kind of developing almost two games at once. Is that quite a tricky thing to do?

Viktor Linke: Of course, you have to balance both and it’s hard enough to create one good simulations game and one good strategy game, so making both together is very difficult. To get them both running together alongside each other. Someone asked me if it’s hard for the player not to confuse both gameplay styles, but I think after a short amount of time you get used to it, and it becomes almost second nature. You’re flicking back and forth, you don’t even think about it any more. But it’s hard for us to balance things so it’s like that.

GameWatcher: How big are the maps in the game? We played a couple of singleplayer missions, and it seemed like you were limiting things in terms of size to keep the player focused.

Viktor Linke: The missions we showed were on the smaller side, they’re missions three and four and we have around ten mission in the singleplayer game, then we have the multiplayer mode and the free-play mode where you can just build up your dungeon at your own pace, make it as big as you want to. The maps you played were on the smaller end of the spectrum.

GameWatcher: I noticed there were some areas I couldn’t mine through because the rock was too thick, is that something you can research a solution for, or is that to stop the player expanding too far?

Viktor Linke: Yeah, the granite is there to keep you from expanding forever. Since you were playing an early mission, a tutorial mission, we have these pre-defined paths where we use the granite to block off certain paths. As you progress in the game it becomes harder for you to guess where’s a good direction for you to dig.

Also, we have this areas that you can uncover that are dangerous, it’s not just the armies of good that can hurt you. You might find a hidden cave with some enemies in there, so you always have to be careful when expanding.

GameWatcher: So with the strategy aspects of the game, how many units do we control? How complex does it get in the bigger battles?

Viktor Linke: Ideally it’s around 20 to 30 units, it’s not like Stalingrad or something where you have hundreds and hundreds of units. It’s one of the reasons why your creatures have names, we want you to be attached to the creatures. They can level up and get new skills, and even get new perks. For example if one of your orcs kills a unicorn, he becomes known as Roglosh the Unicorn Slayer or something like that. So you don’t want to have those faceless, huge hordes of troops. You want to have the same 20 or so creatures you’ve been using since the start.

GameWatcher: Are there any visual changes? Does Roglosh the Unicorn Slayer get a new hat for his hard work?

Viktor Linke: No, it’s actually because we want them all to still be recognisable. You can upgrade each of your units into a better version, which does change what they look like. The basic five units – orcs, nagas, goblins and…other ones, I don’t want to reveal them yet, each of those can be upgraded. And it’s not just one race, either. Later on you get a second race with new creatures, new rooms and everything. They’re a dungeon race, but from a very different kind of dungeon.

GameWatcher: Does the storyline follow on from the first Dungeons game?

Viktor Linke: There are certain things, like the Dungeon Lord is the same guy, but it’s not so connected, because we wanted to add in so much new stuff for the sequel that it’s basically a new game. We just have some references, so you don’t have to know all about the first game to know what’s going on in the second.

GameWatcher: Can we expect a lot of new traps and toys for our dungeons?

Viktor Linke: Yeah, in the version you just played we only had the two traps, the spike floors and the bomb chest, because we’re at an early point in the game, but in the full game we’ll have around fifteen or so unique traps. The second playable race will have their own traps as well, so there’s a lot of different trap types to play with. Also with rooms, right now there’s just the crystal room, the brewery, treasure chamber and workshop, and there’s going to be more rooms, with upgrades for each room.

If you gather enough ‘evilness’, which you gather for controlling the overworld, taking the sectors or doing quests, you can upgrade your dungeon. That will change the look of your dungeon and give you new buildings to construct.

GameWatcher: In terms of difficulty I was sort of surprised how tricky it was. Is the full game going to be roughly as difficult as the levels I played?

Viktor Linke: Yeah, we’re still balancing because we’re in a relatively early stage of development in terms of polishing and finalising, but we want it to be a bit on the harder side. The target audience likes a challenge because they want to master a game. They don’t want it too easy, but there are still balancing issues we will have to iron out.

GameWatcher: How long will the solo campaign last?

Viktor Linke: Around ten to fifteen hours. It depends on whether you go for a slower pace, and try to build everything in your dungeon, do all the side-quests and explore your dungeon completely, or if you just go straight for the win. But yeah, ten to fifteen hours, and then you have the multiplayer and the free-play mode to play around with.

GameWatcher: Talking of multiplayer, how does it work? Do you get the choice of versus and co-op modes?

Viktor Linke: Yeah, so you have up to four players and it’s all versus, but you have various different modes. So you can do free-for-all, or capture the hill, where you have to control a certain area in the middle of the overland map, or you can create your own objectives. That’s possible as well.

Many thanks to Viktor for chatting to me. You’ll have to wait until Dungeons 2 is released in 2015 to get your inner bad guy on.