Shardpunk: Verminfall - Interview

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The developer of tactical turn-based steampunk game Shardpunk: Verminfall was interviewed by IndieGraze.

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Interview: Shardpunk: Verminfall's Slawomir Bryk

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on December 1, 2019
A tactical turn-based steampunk game, Shardpunk: Verminfall drops players into a capital swarming with invaders. Survivors make hay while the sun shines, emerging from an airship to scavenge limited resources, and I chatted with Slawomir Bryk, lead designer and developer, on the nuances of his pixel art, speculative fiction journey.

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EM: You reference Darkest Dungeon and XCOM as influences; when it comes to turn-based tactical combat, what mechanics do you see as key to keeping play interesting, and where do you see older titles coming up a bit short? As devs, how do you balance the need to have parity and challenging fights with the need to keep larger battles from slowing down and losing excitement?

SB: Yeah, I spent a lot of time playing Darkest Dungeon and the latest XCOM games, and I liked different aspects of both.

I fancy the approach XCOM has to combat. The cover/flanking mechanics are somewhat simple but generate a lot of gameplay options and plenty of cool moments.

Darkest Dungeon, on the other hand, has a great atmosphere of hopelessness. This, combined with the stress/quirks mechanism creates a very deep experience. I mean, XCOM has negative traits, as well, but I believe it is not using them to their full potential.

I wanted to combine these two pieces together - that's how the idea for Shardpunk started.

The problem I had with the late game of XCOM is that the player becomes very overpowered, and the thrill of always being under pressure is gone. I really wanted the "hopeless" vibe to be present in the game. The best example of this is the board game "Pandemic", which I played a lot. In most of the playthroughs, I was never entirely sure (all the way to the end of the game) whether I would be able to pull off the strategy I was aiming to achieve. Such thrilling and tense gameplay is something that got me going.

That being said, this does not mean that the game should be unfair or prevent the player from creating any kind of plan. I don't like frantic gameplay - I just want the game to mess my plan up a little from time to time so that I don't feel too confident that I will be able to make it.

What is more, there are moments in Shardpunk when the player can feel overpowered - for example, when they manage to kill off a large chunk of attacking rats by some good positioning of characters and/or using some AOE attacks. These moments are necessary but will not appear too often. I definitely do not want the players to feel like everything is going according to their plans.