RhinoGames

The original interview is available on the igrotop.com.

Darya Guseva: Good afternoon! Well, you can be congratulated with the release of The Lords of The Earth Flame on Steam Greenlight and with the opening of the campaign on IndieGoGo. And the first question: why exactly IndieGoGo, and not, for example, Boomstarter?
Rhino Games: Thanks! A campaign on IndieGoGo – it’s rather a pen test, than a real hope that everything works out and we collect the claimed $5000. Why exactly IndieGoGo? I think that the experience of placing and supporting a campaign on IndieGoGo will be more valuable for our team. There was another option with placing the game at Kickstarter, but it seemed to me that the release on IndieGoGo will be easier.

D: Honestly, I don’t remember releases of text quests in recent years, and the time of such games has long gone. Don’t you think that because of it the game will be popular only in a very narrow range of players?
R: Yes, it is. This type of games cannot be called popular one. I do not cherish the illusions of wide popularity of our game, and that’s not the goal. The goal is to release a good game with good story for the players, which are in the loop. And maybe some newbies will come, that are imbued with the idea and the spirit of the text adventure… Personally, I think that now there is the lack of such games, where you can, on the one side, to relax and rest, and on the other, the fascinating story attracts players to monitor for the duration of the game and won’t let you go until you finish it. And don’t forget that there is many endings in the game, so you can pass it again, adjusting your decisions.

D: Where did you get the idea to create The Lords of The Earth Flame?
R: It’s our author Arthur. His fertile imagination and a good knowing of Russian language made the game from the idea. In addition, everybody in our team feels certain nostalgia for suck games, so his idea was supported unanimously. The result can be seen in Steam.

D: The visual component of The Lords of The Earth Flame is a kind of book. At least it’s seems at first glance. As I understand, you want to create your project that looks just like that?
R: Yes, exactly. This book, ancient book. How and why it came to a player – behind the scenes and this is not so important. The player opens the book, and before his eyes opens a fascinating, and sometimes even creepy story in which every decision, every choice can affect the further development of the story. And from the very beginning it is not clear how it ends. With the interface of the game we want to convey the atmosphere that takes player away when he reads the real, “paper” adventure novel, flipping through the frayed by time pages, touching the story.

D: Why as a game setting you have chosen the Middle Ages?
R: The choice was predetermined by storyline. Exactly in Europe during the Middle Ages there is some sort of a mystery: witches, wars, alchemists, who are looking for the philosopher’s stone – all this terribly fascinates us and puts us into a fantasy world.

D: Special attention in The Lords of The Earth Flame deserves drawings on the pages of the book. Who is their author, if not secret?
R: We have great artists! It may seem that the graphics are very simple and primitive, black-and-white colored, but it’s not. Make stylized ancient engravings cannot be done by every artist. It’s important to grasp the balance of quality, modern techniques and a certain primitivism, nativity of medieval figures. There are 2 artists working on the game – Vasiliy and Catherine. Vasiliy did all concepts and general graphics and Catherine drawn miniatures in engraving style.

D: The project is planned to be translated into several languages. At this moment page in Greenlight says about five planned languages. Considering, that The Lords of The Earth Flame has so many texts, translating something like that is not the easiest job to do. At your disposal, probably a dozen of translators, right?
R: Claimed support of five languages – our maximum plan! We have a very good translator in English, good translators in German and French. Spanish translation is not so good, but we hope that we will also make this translation with high quality. Actually, the translation process is divided into three stages. First – the translation itself, second stage – proofreading by a native speaker and refinement, the third stage – the final adjustment of the text.

D: “Book” interface of the game clearly disposes to release The Lords of The Earth Flame on mobile platforms. Are there any plans like this in the future?
R: Yes, and this will no matter, will the game be successful in Steam or not. Mobile version of “Lords” we are planning to release in early summer, in June.

D: If successful, The Lords of The Earth Flame will be whether to develop their ideas in further branches or sequels?
R: Of course, now there’s a material for a sequel and prequel of the game. We already have quite well planned lore and even ambitious plan to do non-text RPG in the “Lords” universe.

D: Well, thank you for your time! I wish you to release The Lords of The Earth Flame in Steam as soon as possible!
R: Thank you! I hope that our game will appeal to the fans of this undeservedly forgotten genre.