Spanish video games are experiencing an incredible moment, with a constant number of powerful releases such as Gris, Narita Boy, Metroid Dread, Aeterna Noctis, Blasphemous, Call of the Sea or the title we bring you today: Souldiers. As usual in recent months, at SomosXbox we give a voice to projects born in Spain, chatting with developers like Aeternum Game Studios or Catness Game Studios and now we bring you an interview we did a few weeks ago with the good people of Retro Forge, creators of Souldiers.
In this retro forge interview I was accompanied by my colleagues from Project Spencer, the weekly current affairs program that Andrés, Aoshi and Kenzo carry out weekly and that will return in September after a well-deserved vacation. As you can see, the conversation is very relaxed and we were able to ask about all the topics, from pure and simple development, the time of work during the pandemic, the problems of being an independent studio and how lucky it is to meet a publisher.
What exactly is Souldiers? Well, as its creators tell us, “it is an epic metroidvania-style adventure and it differs from the rest thanks to its charisma, script and characters that we will not find anywhere else.” Another aspect that stands out is its class system, since each class will make us live a completely different adventure at a playable level. Although they confirm that the story is the same, the experience and progression with each character is different. Even so, they also told us that there is no character that is “OP” and that they consider that it is very balanced in that sense.
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But another of the aspects in which Souldiers stands out a lot is in its devilish difficulty, imitating the style souls-like. One of the first things we ask them is about the tutorials and the way the players learn. Initially, from what they say, the game did not have many tutorials but they were iterating and gradually introducing tutorials or ways to learn the movement set in a more organic way. Continuing with the theme souls-likethe guys from Retro Forge also comment that the story is told in a similar style, with hints of lore that are obtained with books, documents and conversations with characters, although the main plot is more guided.
As for the idea of ​​Souldiers, we asked them about its beginning, when did this group of developers start thinking about creating such a game. «Souldiers is a game born 10 years ago«, although obviously the idea has been changing over the years and they didn’t start working on it then. In fact, the guys from Retro Forge met at another studio and tried to work on making Souldiers there, but development fell through. Some time has passed when they decide to resume the project, this time independently.
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Regarding the experience in the independent world, initially they wanted to launch the project on Kickstarter and finance themselves, but they told us that there came a time in the development when they realized that they could not cover all the fields and “Not only money to make ends meet, but also QA, marketing and so on. We did a pitch where there were people who backed down, we did the math right and we found Dear Villagers with whom we had previously spoken».
As far as platforms are concerned, initially Souldiers was a game conceived for PC but it was changing and adding platforms with the development, since as they tell us “As it develops you can see if it is worth opening up to other platforms. Without knowing if the game is interesting or not, you cannot define the platforms you want to reach». On the topic of porting to consoles, they confirmed that they did not develop them themselves because it was something unfathomable (just there are 6 developers) although they were on top of the development at all times, so that the result is faithful, in addition to providing support.
As usual, I also like to ask about Xbox Game Pass, since these types of titles are the ones that most often benefit from Microsoft’s service. From Retro Forge they confirmed that including the game in Game Pass is something that depends on many parties and not simply on the interest of the developer to enter, although it is obviously something that they do not rule out.
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So, if you want to know these and many other topics that we cover in the interview with Retro Forge, you have the full video at the beginning of this article, as well as in the SomosXbox YouTube channel. I take this opportunity to remind you that although the Project Spencer colleagues are on vacation, in September they will return with their batteries more charged than ever and you can follow them on the We are Xbox’s Twitch.