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Warhammer: Arcane Magic

Capturing Warhammer: The story of Arcane Magic

How a two-person development studio ignited a local games industry and captured the interest of Games Workshop.

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On March 26th, Norwegian development studio Turbo Tape Games announced it's new turn-based strategy game for iOS: Warhammer: Arcane Magic. Landing the rights to the Warhammer universe was a huge win for such a small development house, one that'd been only been formed in 2008, and through a series of coincidences.

Two oddballs marking the map

Back during a time when Norway's game development consisted almost exclusively of Funcom, Fredrik Sundt Breien faced a choice. He could follow his employer, which was moving its operations to Oslo, could continue working on his doctoral thesis in Bergen, or he could do something completely different.

He choose the latter, and the city of Bergen got its first game development studio. "I actually wanted to work for a game developer," Breien explains on coming to the decision. "But since there were no game developers in Bergen, I had to create one."

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Warhammer: Arcane Magic
Fredrik Sundt Breien and his friend Jan Haugland created Turbo Tape Games in 2008 (Foto: Kenneth Flage)

In February 2008, he and his friend Jan Haugland created Turbo Tape Games, and immediately started working on real time strategy title Naval War: Arctic Circle. With help from investor Dave Spilde and a sizeable grant from the Norwegian Film Institute, they were "good to go".

But, with video game development a relatively unheard of career move in the city, the duo found themselves having to start everything from scratch.

"We had Funcom in Oslo, and I knew those guys well. But in 2008 we were just two guys in a small office in the middle of Bergen, and almost no one here had even heard about the possibility of creating computer games there," Breien reflects on setting up shop in a remote part of the country. "We were probably viewed as a couple of oddballs back then."

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The rest, as they say, is history, and in 2012 they launched Naval War: Arctic Circle, with Paradox Interactive as the publisher. Since then game developers have popped up all over Bergen, with Dirtybit's Fun Run has been downloaded 45 million times, and Rain Games' Teslagrad recently picked up by Square Enix for a Japanese release.

Warhammer: Arcane Magic
Naval War - Artic Circle was their first release, in 2012.

Ready the Workshop

With the release of Naval War, Turbo Tape Games had the momentum to keep building games, which resulted in two cycling titles, Velocipede and Full Cycle. But it was a game they made together with the black metal musician Demonaz, called UHR Warlords, that got the attention of Games Workshop. They had installed the game on their iPads, and loved it.

"They recognised the dark fantasy setting, the kind of evil setting that they had been doing themselves since 1983," explains Breien. "Then, about a year ago, they contacted us to see if we were interested in making a game from their Warhammer licence. Primarily for iOS, since it was there we had proven ourselves with UHR Warlords."

Games Workshop was founded in 1975, and has since grown to become one of the world's biggest board game manufacturers. They have specialised in miniature figures, and are well known for their Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40.000 series. They have also had dozens of games made through licensing their brands to third party developers.

Warhammer: Arcane Magic
The black metal-themed UHR Warlords caught the attention of Games Workshop.

"Unlike many other licence owners, Games Workshop is really committed to the games," Breien continues. "Warhammer is a universe that was born as games, in contrast to most other brands where it is the other way around. So both the style, the feeling and the game mechanics were a really good match. They were interested, we were interested, and things just clicked between us."

Black Metal and... X-Com?

Fredrik emphasises that they are creating their own game, with their own game mechanics and rules. Nevertheless, he promises that the game will still feel very familiar to fans of Warhammer.

"We have demons from all the Chaos Gods except one. We have the most awesome figures from the board games, and the environments are true to the games. The spells are also really important to the Warhammer universe, and we are trying to stay as true as possible to the lore here. You can't see it on the figures, but the spells are described very figuratively in the books. So you are able to really visualise them as you read."

Fredrik goes on to say that they gathered inspiration from a number of sources, but two really stick out - their own UHR Warlords and the 2012 remake of Xcom: Enemy Unknown. The Xcom series are strategy games where the player command squadrons of soldiers in their fight against aliens, and are, by many gamers, considered one of the better strategy games made.

"I'm a bit sceptical about calling this a Xcom game," Fredrick admits. "But we have learned a lot from the things that Firaxis has done right when it comes to movement, signalling and turns. When you explore the game world of Warhammer: Arcane Magic, it is an adventure game where you control a party wizards in their search for Arcane Fulcrums."

Warhammer: Arcane Magic
Xcom has been a huge inspiration for the tactical aspects in Warhammer: Arcane Magic

The game will launch with campaigns that span The Old World, The Empire, the deep Woods of Warhammer and the icy northern areas called the Chaos Wastes. While we are exploring these worlds, we will encounter monsters. These can be everything from trolls and demons, to Exalted Blood-thirsters and Lords of Change. That happening, we then enter what Fredrik calls Battle Arena Mode.

"The game board shrinks, and the game becomes turn-based. You can now move around in the tactical space, attack, cast spells, and so on. In this sense the game becomes a series of board games, with different monsters attacking from different angles."

They have also taken the resource system from UHR Warlords, where all of the units share a common pool of energy each round.

"Everything you do costs resources. In most strategy games you can move each unit a couple of spaces, and attack once. Here you only have a limited amount of energy divided on all the wizards, and you need to carefully decide how you divide it between them."

Warhammer: Arcane Magic will launch some time during 2015, and we are looking forwards to see what this young Norwegian game studio has been able to do with the Warhammer licence.

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All the wizards share their resources
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