Odd Gods - Interview @Turn Based Lovers

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The devs of Odd Gods were interviewed by Turn Based Lovers.

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2nd Turn) Odd Gods comes out of the usual patterns of role-playing games, no dragons or knights, but only teenagers from the 90s who travel through time. How come to this choice? Have you been influenced by something in particular?

The best CRPGs, I think, transport you and immerse you - and the 90s was a very influential period for me - it existed at a strange point in time, caught between the end of the analogue era, and the dawn of the digital one. Music was the dominant medium - not the net. What you listened to, how it made you feel, and why - it's more than drugs, sex & rock and roll - although the 90s had plenty of that. Music spawned subcultures, with their own myths, dialects, rituals & societies. It's was a weird time - like a mirage world you thought you saw through a drug haze in that weird soft light that could be dawn or dusk. That anachronism is ripe for a crack at a time travel RPG if you ask me.

Music, as much as Time Bandits, influenced the space-time travel aspect of Odd Gods. Have you ever listened to a song and felt time stand still? Or heard a guitar riff and felt like you could almost travel through time to when you first heard that melody?

My first RPG - in fact, my first computer game ever - was Ultima IV Quest of the Avatar, played on an Apple ][e. That game spoiled me forever - and I compare everything else to it. Odd Gods is a kind of cultish, satirical, and wild homage to Ultima, and the culture, games, music, books and cinema I have lived & loved: Ultima, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Time Bandits, American Gods - the list goes on and on.

The combat system is a unique (as fast as I know at the time of writing) 'Same Phase' system - I'll go into detail in a question or two, but its influences are: the genius in simplicity of Napoleonic era tabletop wargames, the rhythm & equipment archetypes in Dark Souls, Fallout 1 & 2, the battlefield tactics of Gold Box games and yes - X-Com/Fire Emblem/Ultima/Baldurs Gate... The adaptation of strategy games and RPG system goes back a long way, but with OG's system, I believe we've found something very special.

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