Spiral Knights (Action MMO published by SEGA) - Goes live April 4th

[Groovebox]

Free MMO published by SEGA and designed by Three Rings. It definitely has the look and feel of a classic SEGA game. Phantasy Star Online Junior, anyone?

http://www.spiralknights.com/



Interview from www.segabits.com

Spiral Knights is Three Rings and SEGA’s upcoming free-to-play game. You probably heard us gushing about how much we like it. Right now it’s still in beta, but you will be able to play on April 4th.

We had the chance to get some of our questions answered by the lead designer of the game, Nick Popovich.


SEGAbits: How did you guys end up teaming up with SEGA for this title? Who approached who?

Nick Popovich: I believe we approached them when we were looking for a publisher for the project. Three Rings is an independent developer, and we normally publish our own games, but with Spiral Knights we thought a publisher would be a good fit and Sega seemed like an obvious choice given their rich gaming history (of which Spiral Knights draws much inspiration).

Sb: Where did you guys get the inspiration for the art direction?

NP:The art direction was lead by my good friend, Ian McConville. Early on we established that the look of Spiral Knights was going to be a 16-bit era game come to life in 3d. However, in order to preserve that look and feel we developed a series of rules that characters and environments must adhere to, such as how even though the environments are 3d, the tiles that compose them are arranged in the same manner as a 16-bit era sprite sheet. We have spent a lot of time perusing vgmaps.com for inspiration!

I’m also a huge admirer of Dragon Quest’s ability to use their monsters as both enemies and friendly characters when they choose. So for the monsters in Spiral Knights, we wanted to be sure to have a nice range of really unfriendly types as well as a host of monsters that a player might be able to have a drink with in a monster bar. It’s an oddly specific requirement I know, but I think it makes a huge difference in how a player feels about the characters in the world he is inhabiting. If even the slightest bit of character is added to a monster it can really change them from being perceived as fodder, or a source of loot.



Sb:Since you are working with SEGA, any chance that you will be using SEGA IP inspired items?

NP:No plans have been announced at this time.

Sb: The game feels like it was made for consoles, any plans on porting it to PSN or XBLA? Maybe even mobile devices?

NP: We haven’t announced any plans for anything outside of PC/Mac/Linux, but I think that Spiral Knights would be a great fit for consoles. I play it all the time on my tv at home with a gamepad and it’s great!



Sb:What’s involved in running a free to play game?

NP: It’s very complex, but fortunately it’s an area that Three Rings has a lot of experience in. With Spiral Knights we’re trying something really new, both in the payment model and with the game itself. It can be very challenging to balance giving players players enjoyment for free and still cover the costs of development, server operations, customer support, etc.

Many free-to-play games limit what you can do in the game as a free player. Spiral Knights is unique in that everything in the game is available to a non-paying customer. There is no ‘cash shop’ outside of the game where we charge real money for in-game items. Instead, we have a secondary currency in-game called ‘energy’ that allows players to do things like power elevators to the deepest depths of the Clockworks, build turrets in battle, alchemize unique items or even power up mechanical knights to aid you in combat. The best part is that all players are given a chunk of energy to do as they please every day!

Sb: Does the large number of pay to play MMO games going Free to play effect how you develop titles like these?

NP: The more free to play games out there, the more potential players will come to understand them. In our opinion, anything that helps grow the market is a good thing. A great example of this is Steam. Before Steam really took off, there were plenty of gamers out there that were really uncomfortable with the idea of not owning a hard copy of a game- I was one of them! But Steam did so many things right and was so convenient that now it’s hard to imagine a world without digital versions of boxed games and dlc to go with them.



Sb: When playing the game, it constantly reminded me of Phantasy Star Online. Is that a title the team has been influenced by?

NP: Phantasy Star Online is one of my favorite games, so yes I was very much inspired by it! I think PSO is still a very unique game to this day and I was always baffled that no one other than Sega ever tried to evolve it. Sure, there were a few games that were similar, but nothing to the scale of PSO. It was offering an MMO experience with real-time combat on a 28.8kbps modem back in 1999! Why is it that in 2011 with a broadband connection that most of my options for MMOs feature slow, simulated, stat-driven combat?

When I was given the opportunity to design our next game at Three Rings, I knew I wanted to do something that involved cooperative action and exploration like PSO. But I wanted to take it a step further and make the whole thing a real time experience. Thanks to some amazing net code, what you see in Spiral Knights is what you get- there are no hidden dice rolls happening behind the scenes to determine your fate. The only way to dodge a bullet is to move out of the way!

When we had the chance to work with Sega I couldn’t help but smile at the notion that the company that made PSO was going to publish our game that was clearly inspired by it. It was an honor!

Sb: Is there anything that was cut out of the final release because there wasn’t time to get it to work properly?

NP: Yes, we’re going to hold off on releasing any kind of PVP until after launch. The version in the Preview Event was an early experiment in that space and we learned a great deal about what players like and how they play the game competitively. We’ll be cooking up something really nice for the official release of PVP some time in the future.

Sb: The game is coming out of beta soon, is the team satisfied with how the beta went?

NP: Yes, we are very pleased with how it all went. A great deal was learned and our Preview Event players did an amazing job of helping us shape the game into what it is today. And I’m not just saying that- we made a point of listening to our players throughout our development. We read every single post on the message boards and even had an in-game suggestion box where players could offer up ideas as they played. It was a very satisfying experience to see both our game and community grow over the last couple of years and we can’t wait to greet all the new players when we open the doors to our world once more on April 4th!

SEGAbits: Thanks to David Beavers from SEGA for setting up the interview and thanks to Nick Popovich for answering our silly questions. Make sure to download the game on April 4th!

[The Blackrose]

And suddenly it makes sense why Three Panel Soul slowed down.

About damn time Ian got some recognition.

[Scythiroth]

Well, comparing it to PSO definitely has this interested. Going to try this out later today (whenever they actually let me, even though it is already April 4th!).

[sade3437]

Been playing for about a month now and i can say gameplay gets a bit repetitive do to the limited amount of floor variants that are actully avalible. The dungeons dont change up nearly as often as they should. New players may find it hard to actully play the game without spending money on energy their first days. Given the amount of energy you get in a 24 hour period, it'll take you somewhere around an hour and a half of dungeoning to use it all up leaving you with pretty much nothing to do untill it recovers or you give in and buy more via "crowns", the money used ingame, or actual money.

Though saying all that the game is quite fun if you get 2-3 other buddies to screw around with you and after you have your whole energy supply worked out. Honestly the very first thing i would work out if i had to do it all from scratch again would be secure a stable energy supply via dungeons. You can make around 4-5k "crowns" with 8 floors of tier 1, tier 2 though will net you around double that so once you get going you can maintain a decent balance between crafting and energy costs. Each floor costs 10 energy and current energy prices as i write this is 1800 "crowns" per 100 energy, so its certinly going to be a very uphill battle to begin with for anyone wanting to play the game even a little bit seriously.

I still say its worth a try though the art design and snes zelda nostalgia feeling alone are worth it

[Kiarax]

Welp, interest lost. Might still give it a shot later but fuck shitty pseudo-stamina systems in a cash grab attempt. Gotta be the biggest offender for killing "free to play" games.

[sade3437]

On a good side of it though if you put in 10$ through paypal you get 3,500 energy with decent management you'll never have to spend any real money ever again. That's what i did back in beta(they carried it over to preview players) and I'm still able to not really worry about running out of energy anytime soon even with marathoning it with a bunch of friends over the weekend. I'll admit i'm far more happy with that purchase then I would be if i were to buy say a XBLA game I'd only play for most 10-15 hrs.

Still try it out, if you end up liking it with the free energy they give ya, I'd say toss them 5-10$ to support the small developers. It makes them happy, and you'll be able to play as much as you want afterwards manipulating the "energy for crowns" auction system

[Purrrfect]

Welp, interest lost. Might still give it a shot later but fuck shitty pseudo-stamina systems in a cash grab attempt. Gotta be the biggest offender for killing "free to play" games.

"Nothing good is free" is still applicable.

[Groovebox]

I was able to create an account and login, but the servers are going down for the official launch... I think it's going to be up around 12PM CST. I played the first couple dungeons with a random party, was a blast. The graphics, sound and music are all pretty fantastic. The game plays really well with a gamepad... and it DOES remind me of PSO heh. I think this game would be fucking huge on PSN or XBLA.

I don't have a problem with a free to play game having a fatigue or stamina system, they need to make money somehow.

[Kaisha]

Was in the private beta, and disliked it for the issues sade described. I'm in a beta, let me test the content, not buy my way through. That said, I was hoping the game would be more like Four Swords Adventure Online, but it ended up feeling simpler than that after 6 hours of play, which is where I started to lose interest.

Perhaps it gets more diverse later in the game. Regardless, it didn't pull me in to see what's next.


I also couldn't tell if it was because it's using java or not, but the game hiccuped every time a new model had to be displayed, which got annoying when playing with three others and things got busy.

[Rokku]

I dunno, it seems pretty amusing to me so far. But I'm not really looking at it as anything more than to kill a little bit of time here and there.

[Insanecyclone]

So it's pay to win? It's becoming hard to find any f2p mmos that aren't that way.

[Kiarax]

Pros: 2 minutes to download
Cons: Fun for about the same amount of time.

[Akiyama]

Pros: 2 minutes to download
Cons: Fun for about the same amount of time.

lol'd

[Kurokikaze]

^ pretty much.

It's literally PSO n00bed up lol. I'm enjoying it sorta cause I look at it like Castle Crashers without the extra attacks. ;x

[Kiarax]

The only similarity this has to PSO is that it has SEGA slapped on it. Ya'll niggas is crazy.

[Akiyama]

Yeah.. this looks nothing like PSO outside of SEGA not giving a shit.

[Kaisha]

It's more like Four Swords Adventure, but with less elements that involve actual co-op, at least earlier on anyways. Not sure where PSO came up.

[Kurokikaze]

Go to counter > Get ported to dungeon > run through it with boss at the end.

Then again that sounds like... everything. I supposed Four Swords is a better comparison. lol

Mindless slashing without concern to victory.

[Akiyama]

Yeah... PSO may have done the counter > dungeon > boss thing, but so has a shit ton of other stuff, lol. That and you didn't have to go ot the counter to fight the boss!

[Kurokikaze]

All this talk about PSO is making me want to play it.