Interview: Blackland Games – Developer of Mythos The Awakening
David Gelmini
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Any adaptation of the works of HP Lovecraft will get horror fans excited as hell, so the new game Mythos The Awakening is certainly something to eagerly anticipate.
The developer, Blackland Games, was formed in 2013 and are located in Finland. Help them bring their vision of the great author’s work to life here and check out the interview below.
Dread Central: So are you all big Lovecraft fans?
Blackland Games: Majority of the team are big Lovecraft fans. But we all love sciencefiction and good quality horror. So the combination of these is great in Lovecraft stories.
DC: It’s such a shame that he never received recognition for his work during his life, isn’t it? He was unknown and impoverished at the time of his death.
BG: Yeah that’s true and what a big loss it was when he died at such a young age. It’s a shame that during his lifetime the world was just recovering from worldwide war and people wanted to see more positive stories. But certainly he was one of the major influencers to horror stories and his influence can be seen today probably stronger than ever. We believe that he was the first “open source developer” in the world, and we thank him for creating these stories. Without him the Mythos game wouldn’t be here.
DC: How long has the game been in development?
BG: Game have been in development for around ten months now.And we are currently in prealpha phase.
DC: Can you talk about the gameplay?
BG: Mythos the Awakening is a turnbased rpg with rogue-like elements. You control up to four investigators through the world from a topdown perspective. Your mission is to solve mysteries which are bound to the current ancient one. Those mysteries can contain different types of missions, for example locating cultest rings and preventing them from opening portals to other dimensions. Managing resources and the chaos around the world while solving these mysteries is important and the player has to constantly make decisions about what to deal with and how to use their resources to deal with the problems at hand. These problems include gates to other dimensions and all sorts of different monsters among other things.
While dealing with these tasks around the world, the player has to manage each investigator’s sanity, health, gear and money, as well as each major city’s sanity level and the global sanity level. If player fails too many of these tasks and the global sanity level goes to zero, then the ancient one awakens and starts to annihilate the world city by city. After every turn there are numerous things that can happen, these can be good or bad for the player. For example spawning new monsters or even police forces dealing with some of monsters.
Combat in the game is card based, weapons, items, skills and spells act as your cards which you collect throughout the game. Each investigator has their own skill set so cards handle differently depending on which investigator is using them. For example spell casters aren’t great at handling firearms and the weak-minded might be driven mad if they try to cast spells.
The encounters, except for the monsters are text-based multi choice tasks, where every choice can lead to different outcome depending on the investigator handling the encounter. Your choice can lead to another encounter in some other location or you might gain an item, regain health, suffer sanity loss or even meet your untimely death.
DC: What about the visual style?
BG: Stylized and bit cartoony, but still grounded in reality and true to the period the source material is set in.
DC: How are you capturing the essence of Lovecraft in the game?
BG: Main feature of game is mini novels and multiphased quests. Also soundscapes is key to creating a mysterious and unsettling feeling. Ruthless Eldritch monsters are one aspect aswell and the struggle to maintain one’s sanity is also important.
DC: Is it a challenge making games with such a small team?
BG: It depends, if you got good team of talented people like we do, you can make quality projects. One key point in a small team is versatility and quickness, you don’t have to go through huge queue of people and wait for the messages to go through. In small teams you can discuss with other people over the table and handle the issue right away. But yes it could be a challenge if you are not up to it. In small teams everyone has to know multiple aspects of game development, you simply cannot be a onetrick pony
Of course making a Skyrim type of game is almost impossible to make with such a small team or it would take too many years to develop for it to be reasonable.
DC: Lastly, I just have to ask, will Cthulhu appear in the game?
BG: Depends how successful the player is on their mission on preventing the awakening, but of course, Cthulhu will appear before the end when almost everything is lost. We also have 3 other ancient ones planned for launch and hopefully more released as DLC later. So be sure to follow and support us at IndieGOGO and Steam Greenlight.
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