Orcs have a clear cultural concept seen in titles ranging fromElder ScrollstoWarhammer. Their might-focused society can easily evoke the image of charging into battle with the familiar cry of “Kill them all!” But an upcomingindie gameasks the orcs a simple question: What if theyDon’t Kill Them All?
Don’t Kill Them Allis an upcomingstrategy roguelike game following in the hoofprints ofCult of the Lamband comes from Fika, the studio that developedShip of Fools. Game Rant sat down with Fika co-founder Antoine Grégoire-Slight who explained where the concept of a more mindful, but still truly orc, culture came from and how not killing them all ultimately benefits orc society.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Where Don’t Kill Them All Came From
Q: Can you introduce yourself for our audience?
A:Yeah. I am Antoine Grégoire-Slight. I’m a producer and also co-founder of Fika Productions,the studio behindShip of Fools. I was also the creative director ofShip of Fools, our first game. We are based in Quebec City.
Q: Where did the idea of teaching orcs not to kill come from?
A:It came from one of my colleagues, co-founder and CTO Francis Beauchemin. Three years ago, he woke up every night at 2 am, and he had one of those flashes where he asked himself the question, “Why do we always see warlords shouting or crying ‘kill them all!’ when they go raiding villages and battles in every movie and video game,” and it came with some questions on why they are saying this. Is it the adrenaline rush that pushes them to those limits? Someone who is a bit more human and has empathy would say that it’s probably not the best economic and political decision to go on raids and kill everybody in sight. That was like the first step in the idea of maybe creating a game, and the orcs came a bit later, one year ago.
When the same co-founder of the studio was entering therapy–he is someone who was taught that you need to appear strong and not show your emotion in society–that was changed with therapy. He thought about the orcs, creatures that don’t have the right to appear weak, to always be brutal, and the orcs were like the perfect creature for this idea. Like, what if those orcs were allowed to feel emotion and passion? Would they be able to just quell it or still decide to kill them all on the battlefield? That idea made us laugh a bit because seeing orcs doing all kinds of unusual activities like going to the spa, going fishing, yoga class, gardening, things like that, was really funny and exciting. We thought it could create a cool concept where we see those orcs in those kinds of situations, so they need to embrace other parts of themselves, discover what they truly are, and show that side to gamers all around the world.
Q: What are some of the other inspirations behindDon’t Kill Them All?
A:I think we are big roguelike fans and tactical games fans, so I suppose the gameShip of Foolswas created because we really liked roguelike games and wanted to play them in co-op. This is why we have created that first game, and we still have some roguelike bits inDon’t Kill Them All. It’s a bit lighter on the roguelike side, but you’re still doing expeditions and the environments are procedurally generated.
Those gameplay loops are really important for us because we feel like there’s always something new that you can discover every time you go out on an expedition, but we add to that different kinds of games likeDarkest DungeonandInto the Breach.Baldur’s Gate 3was also one of the inspirations with all that tactical gameplay in there. I wouldalso say thatCult of the Lambis an inspiration for the game because it’s split into two phases: there’s the build-your-own cult aspect and then going on raids and exploring dungeons with the roguelike phase. It was also a kind of loop that we feel really compelled to play and wanted to have a game that could have the thrill of building your own things and going to explore dangerous environments.
Q: You actually have a tiny collaboration withCult of the Lamb, don’t you?
A:Yeah, it’s mostly related to the Kickstarter campaign that we are having right now. We have created a couple of campaign goals that are a bit different than the usual stretch goals that we’ve seen a lot of Kickstarter campaigns have. Our goal was not just to go extra with the funding amounts that we were trying to reach–our goal was also to announce that too and share the news all around the world.
One of those collaborations is having the team ofCult of the Lambbacking our projects, so they have done it. We have said a big thank you to them, and we have their main character. We have created our version of the Lamb that we have posted on social media–we had quite a lot of fun doing that. We have done that as well with other game studios, and we will continue to do that on social media. We’ll decide later on if we put some of those skins in the game or not. It’s something that’s yet to be decided just because we still want everything inDon’t Kill Them All, and not chill them out to the end in lore. We just want to make sure that it fits with the characters and the environment that you are exploring in the game. This is mostly for fun, but we had fun with that collaboration.
Check out theDon’t Kick Them Allkickstarter, ending June 6.
Q: What can you share regarding lore forDon’t Kill Them All?
A:I think I will not go too much deeper into the lore right now–I think we will keep some of those things secret for now as we have just announced the game. But what I can say is that inDon’t Kill Them All, the orcs are broke, so they don’t have any money left because they are killing everybody on the battlefield. They reach out for help because their kingdom is in a really bad state right now, and their clan is going into ruin.
They reach out for help and one of the orcs that has ventured far around in other lands comes to the orcs as a self-proclaimed life coach, and that character will help them to discover new tools and passions that they haven’t explored yet. They will use it to become better in battle and understand themselves more. It’s really a journey of self-growth. As for the orcs, I would say the big warlord of the orcs is a bit of a skeptic at first about this solution because it’s not the way that they are doing things normally, but he will experience some character development and and become more understanding about himself and his clan throughout the campaign.
A Lesson on Orc Mindfulness
Q: Tell me about the inner feelings of orcs?
A:The inner feelings of the orcs are really something special because we are not changing the orcs. It’s not the goal of the game. The orcswill stay the orcs, they are their own folk with their own culture, and that’s something really important in the game. They are just more receptive to listening to their own inner feelings. Now sometimes, they’re going to go in full Rage Mode, and it’s okay as long as they acknowledge that they are in this state right now. They can use it more effectively on the battlefield if they want to go to battle and use all that violent energy inside of them, but sometimes they will have other types of emotions that they also need to acknowledge. It can be shame and sadness, happiness, and all of those factors, all those moods that they are discovering and learning then how to handle. They will have all their use in battle and at the camp, as well.
Q: How do those translate to a gameplay feature?
A:Yeah, so I was thinking about raging.If an orc is really angry, it will do more damage, and it will be able to hit more enemies at the same time. It’s going to be a powerful war machine, but at the same time, the goal of the game is not to kill them all. You need to protect things on the battlefield, and you need some time not to kill the enemy. It will be useful in a situation where the risks are really high for your team, and you need to defend yourself well to survive. But it’s not going to be the most optimal move to use when you need to protect a lot of things on the battlefield. In those cases, other moods can be more important. On the opposite of the angry mood is the calm mood, where an orc is going to be less efficient in doing damage on the battlefield, but really, we will be more precise and be able to strike accurately in order to make sure that this orc is not creating too much damage on the battlefield.
Q: And that forms the basis of what you call mindful combat?
A:Yeah, we say mindful combat because that’s the goal. It’s never going to be to kill all the enemies because there will be objective-based tactical combat. We say it’s mindful because the big aspect ofDon’t Kill Them Allis to be aware of your surroundings, of the mood of your orcs, of their passion, their motivation, like a lot of factors to take into account in deciding what’s the best action to do with your orc. If you want to keep them happy, you just don’t want it to be a win at all costs. There’s always a cost to everything you’re doing, so you need to choose and decide what’s the best for your orcs.
Q: On Kickstarter, there is this really cute illustration of the core gameplay loop. Can you walk me through that loop?
A:The first part of the loop starts at the base camp. You start in the morning. We have the standard calendar system where every new day you start at your camp, and you can decide what you want to build and where you want to assign your orcs, so they can discover new passions in the game. They can recover from the wounds in combat so you can manage your combat in this phase, and decide what you want to build next. Depending on the different goals that you have, you will open the expedition map to plan the expedition for the afternoon.
During the afternoon, you need to choose which orcs are going with you and where you want to go because each biome is full of different resources that you can gather. They are not the same resources depending on the biome, but also the kind of enemies and other types of things that you will encounter will vary based on your choice of territory. For example, if you’re going to the forest and there are a lot of big spiders in the forest, maybe it’s not a good idea to bring Bob along because our orc Bob is afraid of spiders. It will not be the most efficient orc to bring to that. Maybe you want to bring another orc and this one is completely devastated right now, so it would be better to stay at the camp and make sure that you can recover during your expedition. Choose your battles!
I will say that it’s two to four orcs that you bring with you in combat. You go on an expedition, youexplore procedurally generated environments, you encounter NPCs with quests for you, you can find some loot, you can recruit new orcs for their camp, and you will still stumble across different enemies and combat encounters, where you need to maximize the amount of resources that you can gather, to bring back to your camp. Your goal is to gather those things during your expedition and make sure that your orcs are staying motivated! We have replaced HP with motivation, so when you are taking hits, they become less and less motivated.
Your goal is to decide when it’s time to go back, you build some things, you assign your orcs to some kind of activity, you help them discover their passions, you talk with them, you make sure that everyone is at their best, and you are ready to start a new day and continue. You are driven like that, with bigger objectives in the game. That’s pretty much the game loop.
Q: You mentioned orcs discovering their passions. Are we going to see orcs becoming painters and musicians?
A:Yeah, exactly. The way it works, you are creating those structures in your camp, so you can build a painting workshop in that camp. Once you have that, you will see that some of the orcs will become curious about this new structure. When you see that spark of curiosity, you can show them, “hey, this is the place where you can express your emotions in painting.” The orcs will discover painting at that point, and this will start their journey to discovering a new passion. We have replaced the traditional skill tree that we see with a lot of ARPGs, like warrior or wizard skill trees, and we have replaced that with different passions. We have musician skills, we have the baker, the painter, and a lot of others!
Kickstarting the Orcs' Emotional Crusade
Q: What’s your experience with Kickstarter like during this?
A:It was a lot of preparation, a lot of work. You cannot underestimate how much work it is to create a Kickstarter campaign because we needed to decide how we’re going to present the game. We need to create the presentation video, all the materials, decide what will be the new rewards, and find partners to fulfill those rewards. It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of marketing.
It was a great, great experience. We learned a lot. Now we are pretty happy that the campaign has been funded, so we can say that we have reached our objective and now we are trying to extend that campaign as much as possible in reaching different kinds of achievements and increasing the amount of funding that we can get for the game.
Q: What are some of those achievements that you really want to hit before the campaign runs?
A:We have some of the achievements that are based on the number of followers on the different social medias, so that’s really in the hands of the backers and future players. I’ll just say that on those followers–something that we really want to hit is those that are based on Discord channels. We encourage our backers to join our Discord, and even if you’re not a backer, you can still join our Discord and be part of our community.
We encourage them to create fantastic fan arts and also share their passion with us, because we are taking a lot of inspiration for creating this game, and we are still two years from release. I don’t know, maybesome of those passions that are shared with uswill be inspirations for creating passions in the game for orcs. So that’s those two goals of 100 backers that post art and 100 backers sharing some sort of passion would be really incredible to get.
Q: What is the road from when the campaign ends to when you release into either an early access stage or full release? What does that roadmap look like to you?
A:The first thing that we can say is, that once the Kickstarter is over, we have a lot of work to do. We will go underground for a couple of months, just focusing on working on the game and making sure that we are implementing everything.
Our goal will be to come out next year with a closed beta that is available at first only for backers, to be able to get feedback. Once we have that early feedback, we will be ready to do more and also have a demo release on Steam. Icannot confirm any plans yet for Early Accessand other things next year, but our goal is to get our feedback from the players, so we will decide in time–what is the best way to improve the game with the community?
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A:The Kickstarter is not over yet, so if you’re interested in learning more about the game, we have currently a Kickstarter campaign that is live. It’s not too late to pledge and help us in making this project as great as possible.
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