We chat to the team behind the biblical brawler

16 November 2015 | By Nick Horth

Kingdom Games’ very first title, Five: Guardians of David is an action RPG that for once doesn’t take place in a fantasy world full of orcs, wizards and dwarves. Instead it tells the biblical story of King David, from the perspective of his five elite bodyguards. Yes, it’s a game about biblical history. No, I can’t think of any others either. I tracked down Kingdom’s director of development Mike Madden, lead designer Brian Lucas and combat programmer Brandon Bauman to get some more info on the game, and discuss the challenges of bringing Bible stories to a modern gaming audience.

GameWatcher: So this is Kingdom Games’ first title as a development studio. You started up in 2013, but you guys aren’t new to this, right? You’ve got a lot of industry veterans in the team.

Mike Madden: We do, it initially started with our studio head being approached by a family friend who had an idea for a certain kind of product, and approached the family knowing that (studio head) James Parkman had around twenty years experience in games, and would be able to help him with that idea. Ultimately that resulted in his investment, along with a few others, to create a board. We started out with around six people who James had worked with, myself included. Most of us were industry veterans who had come to Austin, Texas to work for the multitude of studios that are in the area. As you know, game dev communities are pretty tight knit, so when there’s an opportunity like this, people tend to get hold of friends, spread the word. So in the course of two years we’ve built a studio where the average experience of the industry is around ten years for the development team, and from the directors and management it’s more like around seventeen years; everything from MMOs to casual games, consoles, PCs.

GameWatcher: Why did you decide to go down the action RPG route for your first game, Five: Guardians of David?

Mike Madden: We felt that with the story of the game, it was a good, proven platform for what we wanted to do. We weren’t trying to recreate the wheel; we wanted to innovate and build a fun experience, but at the same time we want to tell a story. In telling that story, we felt this genre gave us all the tools and systems we needed, and felt like it would help us reach the most people.

GameWatcher: You mentioned there that story is a main focus in Five, and to that end you’ve got comics artist Sergio Cariello on board to fill the narrative out with illustrated cutscenes.

Brian Lucas: Yeah, were we can we’re introducing story and dialogue within the game itself, so we’ll have some story scenes and cinematic moments in there along with recorded dialogue to really hammer those moments home. But yes, we’re also using Sergio’s well-known comic book style to tell the parts of the story that don’t lend themselves well to an action game. He’s put together a good number of comics panels with certain important events and action scenes, and we’ll add voice work to that as well. We’re trying to tell the story as best as we can, both in-game and through the comics, using voiceover and tonnes of voice actors.

Mike Madden: We did take some elements… I don’t know how familiar you are with the story of David, but there are some passages where it’s a single line that is giving the background to an entire war. So the story also gave us elements where we could be creative within it, while still sticking to the overall storyline. So that was attractive to us. As you go through these cultures, in the Bible they might be explained or described in a single line, but we’ve kind of expanded on that.

Brian Lucas: To extrapolate on that, the story of David is that he’s basically bringing together the holy land – Jerusalem and the surrounding geography – and there are a bunch of local tribes that he’s trying to unify in that area. So there’s a bunch of different cultures clashing that you’ll see in the game, and you’ll encounter them as you fight through the game and interact with people. It’s basically a war game at heart, but we have also gone through the bible and various historical works to try and figure out as much as we can about each culture and to recreate them as accurately as we could. At the same time there’s not exactly a whole lot to go on, so we have used some creative license here and there.

GameWatcher: How does the game progression work, then? Presumably we’re looking at quite a linear narrative, rather than a big, open world?

Brandon Bauman: For the most part it is very linear, yes, the storytelling portion in particular. But we do also have a couple of things set up where you can go back and replay any level that you want. Encounters might be a little different, but you’re going to play through the same storyline, so for the most part it is a linear experience.

GameWatcher: Do the five hero characters that you play correspond to familiar fantasy RPG archetypes? Tank, rogue, ranged character and so on? DO they have their own skill tress, moves, that sort of thing?

Brandon Bauman: Yeah, one of the things that is quite cool about the Five is that you’re not stuck with any one class or any one playstyle. You have five different characters you can switch freely between, and each one has their own specialty; for instance, one guy uses a bow and has several abilities tied to his archery skills, while someone else uses a two-handed hammer, so he’s more a close combat kind of guy who can knock enemies back and stagger them. On the fly you can switch, and we also don’t restrict you in terms of abilities, so we don’t make you choose between two options where if you pick one you can’t use the other. We want you to experiment with a lot of different abilities and playstyles, find out what you want to do. Me personally, I usually just pick a class, play it through, and it’s kind of fun to switch between being a tank and running around shooting guys with a bow.

GameWatcher: Does the game have other familiar action RPG mechanics, like looting and gear-hunting?

Mike Madden: We are. One of the other things I’d like to add is that you’re only leveling you as the player, so it’s not like you can get off-track where you play one guy more so he’s over-leveled. There are some missions where only three of the five characters are available, so when you’re leveling you’re really only leveling as a base, and all of the characters gain the benefits of that singular structure. In addition we are following what players demand and expect from the genre, so things like equipment and looting will be in there too.

We are trying to do things a bit differently, though – in games like this it’s usually collect, collect, collect, and you’re hoarding all this stuff, whether that’s weapons or gold and items. We’re trying to change that a bit. We added a donation system, so within the world we’ve added what we call ‘Spy Networks’. These represent different parts of the society as whole, ranging from shepherds to beggars to merchants. As you give away to these different sections of society, you’re uplifting society as whole. That’s reflected in personal rewards that you receive, but we’re also reflecting that with various story elements as well, to kind of show the results of your actions and give players a different sense of purpose for that junk that most of your bags get filled with numerous times during a game like Diablo, Van Helsing or Torchlight. It’s just a different behavioral change that we’re trying to introduce.

GameWatcher: I find that quite interesting, actually. If you look at the systems behind the action RPG, it encourages a very nihilistic, and, umm… possibly morally dubious attitude from the player. Kill everything, loot everything, make money, buy bigger weapons. That must be a very tricky thing to overcome when you’re coming at the genre from a more faith-based approach.

Brian Lucas: It was an interesting idea that we kind of fell into, like why are we promoting the idea of stealing and pillaging, the whole idea of the taking things from people and using that to build your empire. The donation system, through the Spy Networks, makes a lot of sense in that case, because generally speaking the whole idea is to donate, give away and help people out. As you’re playing these five guardians, fighting and smashing a lot of people, it makes sense to also dd a system that’s less nihilistic and less selfish, and turn that into a question of “how can we help the people that are being most affected in this region?” That’s where we decided to go with it, you’re giving things away rather than hoarding them for yourself.

GameWatcher: Straightforward exploration of religion and biblical history is something you just don’t see a lot in mainstream video games. It must be hard to explore those ideas while still trying to maintain a broad appeal.

Mike Madden: It is, and one of the parts to that answer is that we always felt that the offerings that come out that cover these things are sub-par. Whether it’s a hobbyist group that’s coming up with them ow whatever, they generally aren’t products that stand on their own or achieve what they set out to do. That’s the second part; we want this game to be a great game regardless. Regardless of belief, or any aspect of the story that may question, you should still find the game enjoyable. In as far as layering in the story, we’re not trying to indoctrinate anyone, we’re not tracking a number on the website, like “souls saved!” (laughs).

But we do find that these are great stories of phenomenal heroes, whether you believe in their historical relevance or not. That’s for others to determine, and if we get people who want to find out more about them on Google after playing, that’s great. If not, and they just had a great time playing, awesome! The idea is to tell these stories at the level people are at these days. That comes back to the company directors and investors’ original goal, which was, “okay, where are the kids these days? Okay, lets put these stories at their level, rather than trying to rip them away from what they obviously love”. You ask kids about their favorite game and they’ll be able to tell you all about the world, the lore, the characters. Well, we feel these stories will grab them the same way.

Many thanks to the guys at Kigndom for chatting to us. Five: Guardians of David is out this November 24 on Steam.