An Interview with Bendik Stang

Valenka: Tell me a bit about the team – how did Snowcastle Games form?

Bendik: We formed Snowcastle Games 6 years ago. Back then we were only 4 developers of those 3 are still with us. The team has since grown to 7 people on full time and 5 on part time. In the beginning we did a lot of work for hire, but it never paid enough to finance a game production in reasonable time. We finally decided to only focus on completing Earthlock or die trying. We did this knowing that we could be bankrupt in about 6 months. That was now 4 years ago and we now have enough money to complete production and then some. It’s been a rough ride, but very much worth it!

Since the beginning I have pledged that we only use paid labor and that we only hire people that are better than us. This is really easy to say and very hard to live up to when you constantly run out of money. Yet, I am proud to say that we have managed to stick to this pledge. The team has grown with really talented developers.

Valenka: What are you ultimate goals as an indie developer?

Bendik: Make games that we can be proud of, games that people remember – in a positive way. And equally important: have fun making them.

http://i.imgur.com/23V8PYm....

Valenka: Earthlock: Festival of Magic originally started as a Kickstarter campaign – can you talk a little about that experience?

Bendik: Kickstarter can make for a fantastic opportunity. That said I would never go there if I had other alternatives. It is an emotional roller coaster and extremely taxing on the whole team. I barely got out on the other side without burning out.

We originally made an attempt about 4 months earlier, just between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was epically bad timing, so we cancelled it. Rule number one for a kickstarter campaign is do your research.
We found that March was the perfect month and so we postponed and launched again – a lot better prepared and with 1000 backers on day one. Fortunately we succeeded with the second attempt and that bridged the gap in our budgets.

Valenka: Could you tell me a little about Earthlock: Festival of Magic – the inspiration behind it?

Bendik: Earthlock: Festival of Magic takes place on a world called Umbra. Long time ago, Umbra stopped turning in a cataclysmic event leaving one half of the world in shadow and one in light. Completely unaware of what has happened in the past, Amon is living in the desert town Zaber making a living as a desert scavenger. Amon and his adopted Octi uncle, Benjo, get by right on the edge of the desert. One day a messenger from the capital, Suvia, arrives in Zaber and Amon volunteers to help him deliver his message. From here the unlikely team is soon pulled into a story that takes them across the world and sees them learning about what happened to the world, and how they are directly connected to it.

Earthlock is an adventure RPG with turn-based combat. We sort of missed some aspects of the more classic turn based combat in recent games and set out to bring that into our own game. We're trying to streamline experience to make it feel like a 2015 version of classic turn based fighting though! We're also fond of exploration and adventure gameplay as well as good stories so the blend of those things kind of make up the DNA of Earthlock.

http://i.imgur.com/n5BDNvv....

Valenka: What was the development process like?

Bendik: After we finished up our little iPad game for kids, Hogworld: Gnart’s Adventure we sat down with the whole team and talked about what we wanted to do next. We all knew we wanted to make a bigger game for gamers, and everyone pitched in with what they wanted tin the game. All the common denominators have made it into the game really, and are the three main pillars or DNA of Earthlock today.

Sometimes development can be the greatest thing in the world, other times it is frustrating and tedious. I think this is true of any creative endeavor; you go through these cycles of creativity and "blue sky" where everything is fun, and then comes budgetary restraints and time restraints. It forces you to pack those ideas into a framework that makes them doable within time and budget constraints. This is true both on a macro and a micro scale. It can be applied to anything from looking at the game as a whole, to a piece of environment art that needs to make it into the game at some place. Game development is a lot of hard work, but it is so very much worth the effort!

Making the game universe, the game play, lore, monsters and puzzles is so much fun. It’s easy to forget the world outside while doing that kind of creative work. This is the essence of why we want to make games.

Unfortunately, there are quite a lot of other tasks that tend to take up a lot of time. One of these tasks is raising money to produce the game. Since we began the production in 2012 I think we have spent almost 30% of the time on this project on raising funds and surviving. That is definitely the flipside to being indie.

Valenka: How has the pre-release reception and successful Kickstarter campaign affected SnowCastle Games and Earthlock: Festival of Magic?

Bendik: The pre-release reception has been fantastic and made a huge difference to us! It has made the project survive beyond what otherwise would have been possible. At the point where we did the Kickstarter, we were genuinely exhausted from spending most of our time on fundraising and too little on actual game making. The Kickstarter process and the Steam Greenlight process before that gave us the needed moral boost to soldier on. They also both helped us secure more money to the project. It is easier raising money when you can prove that people want the game and are willing to pay for it.

http://i.imgur.com/QYCUARs....

Valenka: What’s next for SnowCastle Games?

Bendik: Well, we have our work cut out for the next few years making the next two games in the trilogy: Earthlock: The Final Memory and Earthlock: The Awakening. After that, who knows? I know we have team members cooking up ideas for other games and genres so maybe we'll try our hand at something different a few years down the line!

Valenka: Has there been a release date set for Earthlock: Festival of Magic and for what platforms?

Bendik: The release date is not yet set in stone but we are targeting submission for certification at the end of October this year. We have been told the certification process normally takes up to two months. After that I guess it’s just a question of marketing strategy that could influence the final launch date.

We will probably be launching on one console at a time. The order has not been decided yet. Once we have launched on at least 2 of 3 consoles we will release on Steam. Unfortunately this is the only way we can launch on multiple platforms at the moment.

Day 19 | SnowCastle Games