Frozenbyte on Has-Been Heroes, Switch & Nine Parchments

Over the last 15 years Frozenbyte has gone from being a small indie developer whose first commercial project was top-down shooter Shadowgrounds (2005), to a studio with multiple teams and a successful trilogy of games in the Trine series under their belts. However, 2017 may be their biggest year yet, and we caught up with marketing manager Kai Tuovinen to learn more about their plans.

Frozenbyte seems to have grown a lot in recent years. How would you describe where the company is currently and where you are heading?

We are in a great place at the moment, looking to hire new people for several projects, and set to release two games this year - Has-Been Heroes and Nine Parchments.

Has-Been Heroes was just recently unveiled and is launching in March. A short turnaround. But what has the development of this title been like? When did it start and what was the original vision?

We started developing Has-Been Heroes about 2.5 years ago and it started out pretty small, with a team-first approach. We made some designs and built a number of prototypes with the goal of making a challenging roguelike game.

After a few tries we knew we had something when the team was hooked on the mechanics. It's what we've been building on ever since, and that feeling has lasted throughout the development and we are still having fun and are challenged by the game!

At some point early last year we partnered up with GameTrust as our publisher and they've helped us immensely in fulfilling the vision we had for the game. It's a multiplatform title coming out simultaneously for PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC and that means it's our most multiplatform project ever, so very busy but also very exciting times!

What inspired the game concept and its story/characters?

Mechanics-wise, Has-Been Heroes has drawn a lot of inspiration from games like Binding of Isaac and FTL, and roguelikes in general, but the starting point was always a lane-based strategy game that we started building on.

The story and characters are based on the game's lead designer's ideas - He's got a special style that's basically to take a humouristic approach to character and world design, because his game will be so challenging and tough to beat! It all started out with the setting of a King giving out the quest of escorting his daughters (The Princesses) to school, and it seemed like a fun idea to make the hero characters old and past their prime. We then came up with the name Has-Been Heroes, and things started to fall in place after that.

Our writers have also done a great job with building on the personalities of all the heroes and their biographies, I hope we get to reveal more about those soon.

What has it been like developing a game that will be out at or at least near the launch of Nintendo Switch in March?

Exciting! We've loved working with Nintendo ever since we did Trine 2: Director's Cut for the Wii U launch, so we are looking forward to this one. Development has been smooth, our own engine has been very flexible for this project, and the Switch has been a pleasure to develop for.

Has-Been Heroes makes use of the concept of permadeath. What is the significance of that in this sort of game?

It's what really gets you hooked on the game. Games like Civilization have the concept of "One more turn" and Has-Been Heroes is pretty good at getting you to try "One more run". If you die you start over, but because everything is randomised, you'll want to try again because it's a fresh experience with new spells and items every time (there are 300 spells and 200 items in the game), and will have to adapt your play-style accordingly. You acquire those quickly as well.

You're not completely at the mercy of permadeath however, and there is a clear way to progress and be rewarded. On your first play-through of the game, you have a world map with two regions. If you manage to beat the boss at the end of the second region, you've completed the game for the first time and unlock a new playable character.

You then start a new game with all items and spells wiped, but your next run is on a world map that is now three regions! If you beat that, the next map is four regions, followed by five etc. until the massive final map with eight regions.

Is there also some procedural element to it as well or will you progress through the same enemies, paths/room on each run?

Everything is generated from a random pool of possible enemies, and the regional maps are also randomised, so the locations and paths you travel through will be different. Same thing with spells and items you discover, all are from a random pool (which also grows each time you die or make progress).

Each run is unique so you've got to adapt your strategy based on you what you get!

Will things like spells and loot carry over between runs?

No, all spells and loot are reset on every run. If you die you start over, and if you beat the final region of your run, you start the next game on a bigger map with a blank slate. However you unlock new characters as you complete the runs, so you can swap some of the three characters you start with. Each character will have different starting spells and stats in addition to their unique looks.

Speaking of roguelike elements, that takes us to another 2017 release, Nine Parchments. What can you say about the concept and vision for this game?

At its core, Nine Parchments is a twin-stick shooter with spells, where you control one of several wizard apprentices who've dropped out of the academy in search of the Nine Parchments - The spells you typically spend years of rigorous studies, training and safety practice on. They are now in the hands of a bunch of rookies.

We're making it an accessible and fun co-op game with some beautiful visuals. And a lot of chaos! Friendly fire definitely plays a key role in Nine Parchments, and even your own spells can be quite dangerous to your own character. Magic is not to be taken lightly!

At first glance it reminds us a bit of Magicka, which had a very special way of dealing with spells. How are spells handled in Nine Parchments?

We've taken a slightly more accessible approach to spell-casting, which is to have cooldowns for each spell and use a system for swapping between different ones. It's something you pick up fast.

You seem to enjoy making the characters in your games slightly out of norm. It's in the title of Has-Been Heroes and Nine Parchments is a game about dropouts from a wizard school. Why is this and what goes into designing characters for your games?

We do enjoy putting a bit of humour into our characters and it's what's been working for us since Trine, so we've kind of stuck with it ever since. Usually the character designs are a mixture of three things, gameplay design, artists and our writers, who all work together in creating them, but the ideas could spark off from anyone.

For example we could have an artist sketch up a cat wizard and then our writer would pitch in and work on creating a personality, and work it into the overall story and setting. For Nine Parchments we started off with a premise of wizard school dropouts. That limits the characters to people with magical abilities, but everything from there is pretty much up to what the creative people consider cool.

In Has-Been Heroes, the characters and story got the humour treatment because the game is hard!

We also noted that you're recruiting for something you call your "space program". Can anything be said of this project at this point in time?

Not much more than what you can dig up by looking at the recruitment post. I can say we're exploring a lot of new tech. We'll reveal more about this at a later date.

Frozenbyte is mostly associated with the Trine trilogy of games, but it seems you're now looking towards new original games rather than a fourth game in the series. What is your position on a potential fourth game?

We've had a break from Trine for a while now with quite a few other things in the works. We'd love to return to the series at some point, and I think we will once the time is right. There's at the very least the deal with the lost Nine Parchments - once they've been found and the Astral Academy has been restored, perhaps a familiar wizard can get back to action! No promises yet though!