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We chat with Mila "Yuuki" Undro about MuHa Games' latest RPG, taking their fantasy world to a futuristic wasteland.
"Hello everyone, I'm Alex here at Gamescom. I've just been chatting with Mila, we've been checking out Project Thayer.
It is a very, very interesting tactical RPG slash card builder slash sort of strategy game.
You can definitely tell what it is better than I can, so please give a little elevator pitch to people who might not be aware."
"Yes, we'll do. So basically it's a strategy survival role-playing game card battle.
Oh, see, I messed that one up.
And it's all set in an urban fantasy post-apocalyptic world. It's inspired by Slavic mythology.
So you basically wake up in a world that has collapsed and you have to defend the project, the titular project."
"And basically you do that through exploring, resolving various challenges and the stories that you find in the wastelands.
And the card battle comes from all the fighting. So you need to find the enemies.
Roaming enemies will basically try to destroy, constantly try to destroy your project.
And so you need to seek them out, kill them off and explore the land."
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't the first Thayer title that we've seen.
The rest were fantasy, I believe you told me before. How does this match up with them?
Right. So, well, the important thing to note is it's a spin-off.
So for people that loved the two previous Thayer, so we had Thayer The Awakening and Thayer 2 The Shattering."
"Those were the previous titles. So this one, it's set in the same world, although a thousand years in the future.
But the gameplay is different. So it's like you will see a lot of familiar aspects like the Slavic mythology and all those kind of weird mix of the fantasy creatures like a Baba Yaga, but also dwarves and elves.
So that kind of mix. And there are similar elements in the gameplay in that you have your base that you have to protect."
"You have the hex map, you have the card battles. So, yeah, we're kind of sticking with the same, but also playing with something new.
A bit old, bit new. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about the Slavic folklore sort of inspirations.
How do they come about? How do they play into the gameplay?
Are they just sort of like more enemies for you to fight or how does it also root itself into the story?
Yeah, no, it's very much the whole. So the world has become basically humans and the non-humans kind of living together in big mega cities."
"So the character you actually play is an alloy, which is called that because it's a person of mixed heritage.
So it can be a part beast or a part elf or a part something else.
And the Slavic mythology, well, I guess it comes from our own heritage because we're Polish.
So with our first games, that's how it all started."
"And yeah, we just like to mix that is the question of what would a Baba Yaga look like in a modern city?
What would she now do? So in our game, she sells ice creams from an ice cream truck.
You know, that's that kind of fun questions to be asked.
Are there more twists on stuff like that that we can expect to see?
Oh, yes, absolutely. So it's like, you know, you've got sprites like the tooth fairy, for example, comes to mind."
"So the tooth fairy in the modern city has become going into dentistry because obviously being a tooth fairy.
But now that the world is layers.
So it's like what they did in a city when it was a big functioning city and now the post-apocalyptic world, you know, what do they do now? So now they're becoming vicious again."
"So you mentioned enemies before. Yes, a lot of these kind of folkloric demon types are becoming more aggressive again and are feeding on the humans instead of living side by side.
So there's that dynamic of like humans dominated before.
Then something happened. We don't know what yet at the start of the game."
"And now the non-human, the creatures are starting to be aggressive and wanting to dominate again.
With something like this, as we talked about before, there's a lot of different gameplay mechanics and ideas crossing over.
How do you make that approachable for players without sort of holding back, I guess, on what makes these types of narrative RPGs so engaging for the people that really want to dig in?
That's an excellent question."
"Well, I hope what we do is what we did with the previous games.
We try to balance each of the genres that we have in equal measure.
So we don't want to leave one of them being just a little bit.
So it's like there's a lot of role playing elements."
"There's a lot of strategy elements and survival elements and the card battle is important.
So that's our approach, to not leave any of them behind, but instead try to kind of gel them together.
And the problem, of course, is, yes, there is a kind of...
When a new player comes into our world, I think they are usually quite baffled at the start."
"But hopefully, yes, that's because we try to keep them all at an interesting level.
Hopefully, as you play along, it all kind of starts to make sense.
That's the hope anyway. We're only beginning now.
We just had the demo out, so we'll see."
"As well as sort of the old player games and the Slavic folklore inspirations, what other inspirations do you take when you're building a game like this, which, as we've said, has so much going on within it?
Well, in terms of the world and stuff, I always say it's a kind of Shadowrun, slash Fallout kind of vibes, that sort of thing."
"In terms of gameplay, that's a big topic.
Again, because there's so many genres.
I guess with this one, our previous Thea games are now our main inspiration.
But anything like a bit of Civilization games, which a lot of us are fans of Civilization."
"I don't myself play card games, so I couldn't tell you which ones inspired the design team.
I hear Magic the Gathering was an inspiration. Yes, that one for sure.
We'll skip the combat question then.
We'll move to talking about the role that you play as a player within this narrative."
"How much can you influence the world, certain characters?
I noticed that when I was selecting a character, you get a different group dependent on that.
Is it sort of like a party builder in that way, or do you see more of the player as a lone wolf, and the people that they meet are NPCs fixing their locations?
No, it's definitely a party game."
"You can attempt to play it on your own, but it will be much more difficult.
The idea is you begin with a small group, and as you build up, you can recruit more people from your project.
The more buildings you build, the more interesting characters you can recruit from the colony."
"Also, when you go out into the wastelands, depending on how your quests go, you can get recruitment from that.
The more you go into the game, hopefully you get the party that is more interesting."
"They can also give you some personal quests to resolve.
It's definitely a party game.
The character creation, you get the choice of different types of alloys, so a different mix of the fantasy races."
"In the demo, you get two different classes, but in the main game, you'll get four different classes to begin with.
You, as the player, the core of it is, for some reason, you don't know why, you've woken up from a cryomagic sleep prematurely, you don't quite remember what is happening, you've got a little AI interface attached to your brain and on your hand, and this kind of AI tells you slowly what your adventure is."
"As you will discover, you're actually essential for the colony to survive, only you can find special energy shots, which then will allow the colony to rebuild.
Perfect."
"Mila, I've just got one more question to ask you.
Well, I suppose it's two in a way, where can people go and check out the demo which you've just released, and where can they expect to hear more about Project Thayer?
Well, go to Steam, and the demo is out today, so it's literally fresh today, so go on Steam, play it on there, and we hope to have it out in early access later this year."
