A new studio is preparing to dive deeper into its debut title,Raiders of Blackveil, at June’s Steam Next Fest. That studio is Wombo Games, which brings together developers from a wide array of franchises that are household names among gamers. Based in Copenhagen and Budapest, Wombo has a small, dedicated workforce led by Janos Flösser, Square-Enix West’s former creative director and Wombo’s CEO.
Game Rant spoke with Flösser andRaiders of Blackveildirector Christopher Nelson ahead of their studio’s announcement, discussing what brought Wombo together and whyBlackveilwas the game the studio crafted as their first project.The following interview is edited for brevity and clarity.
Introducing Wombo Games
Q: Can you please introduce yourselves?
Nelson:I’m Christopher Nelson, the game director at Wombo Games. I’ve been working with Janos for quite a while now, I think eight to nine years at this point. It’s my first time in the role of game director, but previously, I’ve worked as a game designer and as a product director and building software rather than games. I have an educational background in game development, and I’m excited to talk about the game with you.
Flösser:I’m Janos Flösser. I have a long background in gaming and, before that, in television, radio, music. Produced music for 10 years. My education is in music. Basically started doing games in 1997-1998, establishing IO Interactive as a studio in Copenhagen. We did a couple of games–the most renowned,probably theHitmanseries, but we also did theKane and Lynchseries,Mini Ninjas, andFreedom Fighters.
At some point, we sold the studio to Eidos Interactive in the UK. They sold further to SCI STI, sold to Square-Enix, a big Japanese corporation, and Square Enix established Square Enix West, taking care of the studios in the US and Europe, and asked me to step up as chief creative officer. So I worked with them for almost eight years, and then went on my own, doing a little bit of everything, and ended up starting this fantastic indie studio with Christopher and a couple of guys from the original team from Hitman.
So we are a mixture of people with a solid background in gaming, some of us going all the way back to the 90s, and then some very young, very talented developers from Scandinavia, Christopher being one of them. We have two studios, one in Copenhagen, one in Budapest that is much smaller. I’m Hungarian of origin, so we’ve been working with these Hungarian developers for ages now, and three of them joined the team, so it’s working very well. I’m sitting in Budapest at the moment. Christopher is in Copenhagen.
Q: You were just talking about your history and the history of some of the people at Wombo. Wombo has veterans from a lot of well-known franchises. How does the studio leverage all this diverse talent?
Flösser:The important thing for me is to let talent exercise their talent. So the group had this idea about a roguelike game, and we started prototyping different concepts very early. Christopher’s main thing, and I totally agree, is developing as you go, and having hands on very early on, so you have something to watch and something to play, and to develop it with your audiences, if possible. So we kind of gravitated into this game, so to speak. So every time I wanted something, the team wanted something different, and the team turned out to be right about it.
We ended up with a rather special version of a roguelite game Christopher will tell you about. And I think the mood and the feel of the game is pretty much what inspires the talent at the studio. They love concept arts, and love those mood boards and stuff. So we just went with it and said, ‘how much can we realize out of it’? So what is the real game feel of what we do and constantly having the game playable, that was the main purpose. And I don’t think Christopher will let it go before it’s massively entertaining. So. I think the purpose of doing an indie game is to get back to the joyful things in gaming. Focus on the right stuff. Focus on the enjoyable part of it and the social part of it, and it’s ended up like the game we’re doing today.
Q: How did your studio come together?
Flösser:Well, I said some of us, we’ve been working for ages - our CTO, and a few of our devs, they’ve been with IO, three of us from the founding team. We founded the studio, actually, and the rest of the guys, you know, it’s like, yeah, I’ve worked with maybe a thousand more people in my career.
Copenhagen is a hotbed for very talented game developers. We have plenty of game education courses in Copenhagen, combining the fine arts and, you know, the creative schools with the universities. IT University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, and the Animation Workshop in Viborg, and you have the National Film School of Denmark in Copenhagen teaching gaming. And we have something called DADIU (The National Academy of Digital, Interactive Entertainment). This is the combination of all these institutions doing games, and we just match up as we go.
There are a lot of sessions and a lot of friendships across everything, and you have your preferences working with other talented guys. I’ve been working with these guys for a long time. So, at some point,we decided to form an indie studioand make this very specific game, mainly because I think Christopher needed to do something with other people that was the right type of the roguelite. Seeing this game and seeing it develop, I have to admit that there’s space for improvements in roguelikes also, and this is what we’re trying. But I think it was pretty much about having fun working together and having the same vision for what a game is and how it should be created. So the mood and the sentiments match up very well.
We do not have that many people in the studio, but there are a lot of strong profiles in terms of art and animation, visual effects, special effects, audio, music and everybody has more than one profile, so to speak. So Christopher is doing a lot of level design. Also, much of the game direction. And our art director does a lot of audio also, and audio artists also do a lot of music, and you know, the social profiles focusing on the business part, while also doing the level design and mixing. So it’s like your typical indie studio at the moment, and it feels right. I don’t want it to be much bigger than this - I’ve been managing some very, very big studios, and as much fun as it is, at some point, it’s more about people management and less about the games. And I also needed to get back to something more humble, so to speak, but also more honest. And this is what Wombo is for me.
Q: You’ve mentioned how this first game,Raiders of Blackveil, is really inspiring the team and bringing them together. Why is this the perfect first game for you?
Nelson:So I’ll give you my five-minute introduction to the game, and that also answers your question, I think. So we were a group of colleagues and friends that were working together, and we just so happened to be religiously playing this exact same three genres over and over, and that was the MOBA genre, the action RPGs and the roguelikes, and we’re talking, and we wanted to take our favorite aspects of these various genres and blend them togetherinside of an original IP- so a world that we could create on our own from scratch.
We ended up taking the dynamic rougelike genre as the framework for the entire game and then the tactical combat that emerges from mobile champion design and then, mixing in the engaging itemization from action RPGs, and that basically became the initial concept forRaiders of Blackveil, and we call itRoB. AndRoBis an action packed roguelike where mastery of your champion and deep strategizing through hundreds of synergistic perks and thousands of items create a deeply satisfying game with a lot of challenge and a lot of thrill and tension. We’ve been told many times that the game is just really fun to play moment to moment, and you may play it alone or in online multiplayer in groups of up to three people.
The game takes place in a light-hearted but also dystopian fantasy world called Wildguard, where humans and anthropomorphic animals live together. They don’t do so harmoniously, though, because this human industrial mega-corporation called Blackveil has enslaved nature and oppresses animals for profit, and the player is part of an animal rebellion fighting back against this. The player will take on the role of one of the rebellion’s champions. This could, for example, be the armor-clad rhinoceros called Ironhorn, or the bumblebee druid called Beatrice. The rebellion’s mission, and the player’s mission, is to infiltrate these Blackveil operation sites across the world and sabotage or destroy as much as they can and smuggle out items and resources that can help fuel the rebellion’s efforts. And ultimately, maybe you get to take down the big bad CEO of Blackveil.
So, in a nutshell, the premise for the game is animals fighting against greedy industrialism. And the core loop of the game is pretty straightforward. You choose which of the Blackveil operation sites you want to engage with. Initially, select your champion, Gather your team or friends or play solo, select your difficulty, and then you fight your way through many combat arenas where you constantly get to choose between how much danger you think you may handle as a team. You then scavenge and loot items and resources, and you have to smuggle those back to the rebellion, because if you die, you lose everything that you did manage to get back. And, of course, it’s a roguelike, so you have to draft your own build, and you can do so by selecting many different perks that have a ton of synergies with each other and create the overpowered builds that we’re all looking for in roguelites.
Raiders of Blackveilis offeringmemorable champions with distinct play stylesand personalities, and cooperative gameplay where champion roles matter. So you can play as a tank or as a healer or as a damage dealer, enjoying tight combat with an emphasis on game feel and flow state, as well as gameplay-altering power progression and an innovative perk system with deck-building-like mechanics. And of course, it’s all set in a unique world that balances dark and whimsical humor with awesome fantasy. We are set to release the game in early access this summer.
Inside Raiders of Blackveil
Q: There are a lot of different genre influences inRaiders of Blackveil. How do those different genre influences come together to create a harmonious whole?
Nelson:Yeah, it is a roguelike game at its core. So the entire framework is very much a roguelike. You have one life. You have to get as far as you can through as many biomes as possible until you die. And if you die, you do have to start over. And you have to make a lot of choices. The arenas are modularly generated. The ammunition counters are generated, the items you find are generated, the perks you pick up, all generated. So that’s very much, you know, the roguelike format. And we love that because it’s accessible, it’s easy to get into, and it’s dynamic, and it changes every time. The MOBA part of it is very much on the champions. So each champion has five abilities and a passive trait, and they’re all, you know, super handcrafted to give you this very particular play experience and for and to fit a very particular role inside a team, for example.
So you have the big guy with the shield, you have the stealthy assassin, you have the mage, you have the healer, etc. Of course, these characters can be taken in any direction you want, depending on the perks you select and then, finally, the action RPG element, or the more like RPG element, is the fact that you have an entire inventory system going on. You have your stash in your base, and all enemies drop items and loot and trinkets and resources, and they’re all put into your inventory - even the currency that you spend on a raid is it takes up an item slot in your inventory, and you have to constantly evaluate, what am I choosing to keep on this run, and what am I choosing to extract back to the base.
Q: Can you introduce the game’s champions?
Nelson:Yeah, for sure. So right now, we have four champions, and we have one that is a tank by role, one that is a healer or support by role, and two damage dealers. So, for example, the tank, he is a massive rhinoceros character. He’s quite a lot bigger than the rest of the champions. He’s fully plated and clad in armor, and he wields two rocket-propelled shields as weapons. So he’s very much a brawler, but he also has some really capable defensive abilities. He can taunt enemies, forcing them to attack him. He can absorb their damage and shoot it back against them. He can spin around like a whirlwind. He has a lot of stunning abilities, and he can stun enemies, he can drag them around the battlefield. So he’s kind of a melee brawler with a lot of defensive capabilities that can protect the team, and is also obviously a very capable solo player.
Then we have Beatrice.She is a bumblebee. All of our characters or champions, basically we take an interesting fantasy archetype, and we mix it with an animal. So, in this case, with Beatrice, it became a bumblebee mixed with a druid type character. So she can summon roots from the ground, she spawns seeds that she can awaken and turn them into turrets, and she can heal her allies and provide them with armor and buffs.
We have the stealthy assassin. That’s a chameleon assassin wielding two daggers. He can go invisible. He can use his giant tongue to leap towards other targets. And we have a cheetah fire mage. She’s very agile. She jumps around the battlefield, burning her enemies and making them explode.
Q: How do the single-player and co-op experiences compare?
Nelson:One of our big design challenges for this gam, is to make something that is, to a large extent, centered around the cooperative experience, but has a fully viable and equally as fun (or even more fun, for some people) single-player experience. So it’sa couple of issues that we had to tackle. The first one was “how do you make a healer that can play solo, without anyone to heal?” And it’s going to be a little bit nerdy and detailed, but we had to come up with some creative solutions. For example, health in the game is fully restored after each combat session. That means that when you’re done with a combat arena, everyone is healed back to full, but depending on how much damage you’ve taken, you will accumulate injury. And injury makes your health pool smaller. And that means that having a healer in the team means that you can prevent this injury from accumulating, but not having a healer in the team means that you need to find another way to prevent this from accumulating. So this healer is fully viable in single-player, but it’s a great benefit to have in multiplayer.
The same with a tank, for example, a tank is just super beefy in single-player, maybe does a little less damage, but just has greater overall survivability. And the damage dealers, of course, you have to play quite a lot more carefully, or you have to - this is getting to the perks of the game–you have to choose the perks that can kind of substitute for the lack of a healer or of a tank. So you may choose very defensive perks, or you can choose perks that allow you to mitigate this injury mechanic or heal yourself up during combat. Other than that, I would say that it’s very much like the same experience, actually, single-player and multiplayer. We made it a goal to do that.
Q: What are some of your favorite perks inRaiders of Blackveil?
Nelson:My favorite perks are the dual perks. So we have eight classes in the game. Each of the perks are centered around eight classes, and they’re traditional fantasy classes. So we have the mage class, the warrior, the guardian, the priest, the druid, the monk, the warlock. And each of these classes have their own mechanics and their own status effects. So the assassin perks, they’re the only perks where you can acquire critical strike and poison, the ability to poison enemies. The mage can freeze and burn, and the warlock can curse and summon enemies and such.
Acquiring perks means that you get a lot of triggers for these different status effects. You get a lot of mage perks, you will have the ability to set everything ablaze. But the really interesting part of the synergies are in the dual perks. When you mix and match them across classes, you get these beautiful synergies and effects where, this is why I said, like, it’s deckbuilding-like almost because every time I set someone a place, there is a chance that that enemy will be stunned. And every time an enemy is stunned, there is a chance that he will shoot fireballs in all directions.
So, for example, meteors raining from the sky is a great, legendary mage perk where you’ll constantly have frost and fire meteors raining from the sky. you may get another perk with an effect where every time that an enemy is set ablaze by a meteor, he shoots a fireball at a nearby target. But the true magic is actually in the combination of perks and the way that you construct your build.
Q: Can you dive a bit further intoRaiders of Blackveil’s setting?
Nelson:You’ll find yourself on the airship of the rebellion called Liberator, and this airship is hovering above a planet called Wildguard, which is where you interact with the rebellion. This is where you enocunter the merchant and the smuggler and the mystic, who can unlock new perks and perk classes. You’ll also interact with the rebel leader who sits on his throne and can upgrade various parts of the rebellion for you. So that’s where you’ll be hanging out in between sessions - on this very relaxing, very warm location, with live fire and nice music. But eventually things do get serious, and you have to go into one of the sites, or one of the operation sites of Blackveil, and the first one that we will be showcasing inthe [Steam] Next Festwill be the meat factory.
So this is a place where Blackveil are creating fairly low-quality food for the entire world of Wildguard. So it’s, of course, industrialized, so it’s super mass production, which lowers the quality of everything, and they’re not doing it in a moral or ethical way either, I should say. It’s a dark place. It’s nasty, it’s very dirty, but it’s very - how do you say, ‘focused on production’? So there are a lot of conveyor belts and a lot of big machines. You’ll be fighting against employees of the Blackveil corporation, and be fighting against their robots. They have a horde of robots that do their bidding and produce their food here at the meat factory, and you’ll also encounter some of the heads of the operation. You’ll be dealing with the kitchen head chef, which is the final boss of this meat factory biome, and other key members of the Blackveil organization.
The Future for Wombo and Blackveil
Q: What does the road from now to release day currently look like?
Nelson:I think it’s going into Steam Next Fest, the next one here in June. We’re really, really excited about putting the game out there and wrapping it up. We have a deadline coming up very soon. So it’s full steam ahead in the studio these days, and then it’s just about testing and polishing, really working toward Early Access, adding in a little more content, some more perks, and another mini-boss while finalizing the content that won’t be in the next test build.
Q: What are your plans beyond the early access launch?
Nelson:Yeah, so we’re really approaching early access as early access. So we’re inviting people to be part of the ongoing development of the game, and we want totake community input, like, that’s how it should work. We want to listen to feedback and adjust the game, of course, and take it in the direction we think is right, combined with the feedback we get from the community. And then we want to add content, so we have a very, very effective perk system where we can add a lot of perks very quickly. We want to add new biomes, the remaining biomes of the Blackveil operations, and eventually also a final,finalboss. And we want to add many more champions as well. The Champions are a super fun part of this project to design and construct.
Q: Is Wombo working on any other titles?
Flösser:Not at the moment.
Q: Is there anything else either of you would like to add?
Flösser:After being focused on brand building, it’s nice to meet the world out there, as getting to hear from audiences is always super exciting. You never know if you hit it right, despite being super excited about, you know, the game as it develops. But, yeah, I mean, be a bit humble about expectations, because you never know. We’ve seen all of it, but it feels - it feels right at the moment. It feels right. And just focusing on getting it to a place of quality where it will entertain, that’s the focus, I guess, and we can take it from there. You know, it’s easier to make plans once you make real money and are successful. Until then, it’s one big dream, which is totally what we go for.
Nelson:I think I would just add that if it’s not apparent - and I know this is a very common thing - butit’s such a passion project for us. We’re just so happy to be where we are now, where we get to release it. We’re super passionate about the world we’ve created, and that combination of game mechanics that I think is fairly unique and brings something new to the table.
Flösser:I think the fun part of it is watching testers and people we invite, and groups of people in an audience, taking the game and giving it a spin. And some of them sitting there for four or five hours straight, you know, as something must be right. So it’s really, really fun. I have actually tested it. We even have quite young members of our audience - and these kids keep mailing me to let me know how excited they are for the game, actually - and it’s fun to see that they really, really want it. So I can see something is right, and it will be out soon for more people to test.
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