"We’re gonna try to tap into some types of players that enjoy specific things." Interview with HoMM: Olden Era devs

The new “Heroes,” subtitled Olden Era, is not yet out in early access - we still don't know the specific date of this release - but we've already had a chance to play a little. At the end of February, we met at our editorial office with two members of the Unfrozen studio, which is developing the next installment of the HoMM series.

Michal Manka: How much influence on the Heroes: The Olden Era does Ubisoft have?

Katya Prikhodko: It’s a partnership. As developers we have creative freedom. All the risks that we are taking in the game are mostly our risks and our decisions. Ubisoft has the visibility on everything that is happening on the project, but the structure of our collaboration and partnership is that they don’t really interfere a lot. Everything that is in the game is mostly the vision of our team.

MM: What is the starting point for Olden Era in terms of how you were designing the game?

KP: If we’re talking only about Heroes games, that would be Heroes 2, 3, and 5. Generally speaking, King’s Bounty was also a big inspiration for Olden Era in terms of mechanics and hexes, of course.

MM: Are fans of Heroes the target group of the game or do you want to cater to both new players and the hardcore fans? From what I’ve seen, it is a bit overwhelming for a newcomer, but there are so many options for the pros.

KP: Answering the first part of your question: Yes, of course we want fans and the people who’ve been following the series for many years to enjoy the game, but we also want to tap into the new audiences and show people that Heroes is a really fun and interesting franchise. With that, we were thinking about easy-to-use mechanics. There will be a tutorial. We’re working very hard for it to be very elaborate, so people who are not familiar with the franchise can enjoy the game. We introduce the level of difficulties. For multiplayer, there would be a matchmaking system that will be based on the rank, the skill of the player. You won’t have to fight with pros if you’re just a newcomer. As for difficulty levels, people can start with the impossible modes or with very light ones. We have five levels for now.

MM: What can you say about difficulty level? What they influence?

KP: It’s in development, so some things will be tweaked, but there will be more than three difficulty levels at least. Easy, normal, and hard. Within them there will be more tweaked versions of each one.

Bartholomew Podress-Leszek: The primary things that change with the difficulty level are your certain resources like in Heroes 3. For example, if you were to start on the easiest difficulty in H3, you’ll be starting with lots of gold and rare resources, but when you were playing on the impossible difficulty, you have none, unless you were playing PvP. There you had a separate rule that allowed you to start with enough gold to hire an extra hero. We have a sort of similar system here. Difficulty that you choose defines how many certain resources you have. From what I recall, it also affects how many creatures there will be among the guards that you fight against for resource hubs and dwellings.

MM: Since we’re talking about this - you’ve mentioned that we have a new resource in this game, but our colleague also noted that one of them is gone. So what can we actually use in the game?

BP-L: We have the two basic resources that have been in the game since Heroes 1, wood and ore. They’re like bread and butter when it comes to building structures. From rare resources we have gems, crystals, mercury. And we have alchemical dust which replaces sulfur. It’s a special resource that we use for upgrades of dwellings, items, spells, and so on.

MM: In terms of upgrading and progression – is there anything new?

BP-L: In a sense, yes. When it comes to absolute novelty that wasn’t in previous instalments, I can point to faction laws and our spell upgrade system. From things that return and will be familiar to people are definitely the alt upgrades. That was an ability from Heroes 5 to choose between one of two upgrades and switching between them whenever you want to.

MM: Okay, so what about spells? I know, there are four schools of magic, so I need to know EVERYTHING about that!

BP-L: Yes, we have the Daylight School, The Nightshade School, The Primal Magic School, and The Arcane Magic School. Each of them has their own spells that do various things depending on which school you’re specializing in. We also tried to make magic heroes feel more enjoyable to play and make a little bit more unique compared to might heroes. Magic heroes are capable of casting two spells a turn if they have a unique skill that is exclusive to them.

MM: One thing that I absolutely need is an explanation for the faction laws. How do they work, how do you upgrade them, and are they actually unique for every faction? Or are they universal?

BP-L: Every faction has its own set of laws that do different things and affect the specific faction in different manners. The best way to describe them will be something along the lines of a unique tech tree for your faction. Whether you’re playing Necropolis, Dungeon or something else, you have your own set of laws. All you need to do is essentially play the game, because to get faction law points, you just have to clear the map with your heroes. As they gain experiences, they will generate those points. Some of those points are also passively generated by your town halls.

MM: Do you add new units to existing factions, or do you refresh the ones that were already there?

BP-L: It depends on the faction, it's hard for me to say exactly. We try to make sure that classic cities, such as Dungeon, are as people remember them, but with new aspects that we have introduced within the faction laws.

MM: Okay, so can we talk about a campaign a little bit? What can we expect at the start of Early Access?

KP: Early Access will feature campaign, but not as rich as a final 1.0. release. The campaign is non-linear. There will be dialogue branches like in RPG. With your choices, you can affect what is happening in the campaign and also in the mission as well. We’re trying to give the player some kind of freedom and individuality. This is the story, and campaigns are the thing that really catches people. They have their hooks, emotional attachments. We’re trying to give every player a pay up for what they choose.

We’re working in the game development, so everything can change at any point. However, we want to have a piece of the campaign that will have its story. It won’t be the finished one, because this is not the point. As a player you will be able to enjoy the story even if it’s just a part. We have a strong multiplayer component, so if campaign is not for you and you like to interact with other heroes and units, you can just go to arena or classic mode. We’re gonna try to tap into some types of players that enjoy specific things. I hope we still succeed with that, but we’ll see [laughs].

MM: What’s the idea behind developing the game in Early Access? Are you looking for some community feedback?

KP: Of course, we have our internal timeline of the features we want to add to the EA. We want to talk with people and try to understand what the ideas are, what the needs and preferences are. We want to start the conversation. We will be updating the Early Access game with patches. I can’t say how often at the moment, but really often. We will release our plans once we launch EA or some time afterwards. Some things can change based on the feedback that we get, but it’s also important for people to understand our direction as well.

MM: Do you know how long you want to stay in Early Access if all goes well?

KP: I’m not sure I can share it, because, well, game development.

MM: Yes, I get that. So what’s the general idea of the support of the game in the long run? Do you consider making a large expansion?

KP: I can only say: “yes.” [Laughs] We have some ideas, but it’s too early to talk about DLCs.

MM: Can you tell me, what you’re working on right now?

KP: From what I stand, we’re polishing multiplayer, because this is the trickiest part.

BP-L: Our testers are focusing on our network stability and ensuring that it’s going to be an enjoyable experience. We very much want the game to be delivered free of today's common issues with connectivity, network instability, etc.

MM: People often ask about the mobile version of the game. What is the studio thinking about that? Is there actually an idea of going multi-platform with this?

KP: At the moment we don’t have such plans. We want to release the game on Steam. Of course, we were thinking about consoles but making UI adaptable and digestible for consoles is really something different. At the moment there are no plans of releasing Olden Era as a mobile game.

MM: How recent is the version of the game, which we played today? Is it a current build?

BP-L: Yes, it is.

KP: The last patch was yesterday.We have a lot to do, but a lot of things were already done. The icons are the least troublesome to install in the game. Mechanics are the really complicated things to manage, to tweak, implement, and make them work properly. Icons and UI are not polished at the moment, but this is why we’re collecting feedback. They are the primal objective of internal tests, but yes, work in progress icons are there.

MM: Can you tell us more about the music, who’s involved and what to expect?

KP: Paul Romero is involved in creating music for Olden Era. There’s also Chris Velasco, very renowned maestro, who’s composing some themes and other stuff for us. The third part of the mix is the Heroes Orchestra. They will be orchestrating all the music and they will be responsible for the final sound of the game. Music is a very good highlight of our approach generally, because we want to have this mix of old and new. We want to have some legacy, some new tunes. The Heroes Orchestra will be helping us to glue everything together. The music will feel consistent and all of the people that I mentioned are absolutely massive professionals. We’re really excited that we managed to do such collaboration and we’re very excited to share our results when the game is out.

MM: We will read again that “astrologers proclaim”?

BP-L: Yes. In fact we do have an interface set up for this in our current build. Right now there are no effects, but the interface is prepared for “week of something.” We’re also thinking about adding a “month of something,” for instance: “a month of progress,” that would allow you to build one more building a day than usual. We also had the idea for the “month of plague,” which no one likes. If you’re a pro player or if you’re playing Heroes and you have a tendency to not recruit your units immediately, you’ll know how hard that month hits, because it usually takes all your creatures away from the recruitment dwellings.

MM: What can we do in a game apart from the campaign and PvP matches?

BP-L: For PvP we have 3 modes. First one is the classic mode that everybody knows and loves from Heroes 3. In HoMM3, you could recruit up to 8 heroes, in Olden Era you can recruit 10 of them. We will also provide a single Hero Mode that fans are familiar with from HoMM3; if a hero dies, you immediately lose, because you don't get a new one. Next we have the Dual Mode from Heroes 3, but also a new mode based on suggestions from the community - also with one hero. The last mode, with roots mainly in Heroes 5, is Arena. You skip the whole economic part, then get to choose your hero, you pick your skills, spells, army, and then just go straight into battle against another player.

MM: What are your thoughts on modding support?

BP-L: We are aware of the penchant that people have for modding in general. While we do not have plans to do that during the Early Access, once the game goes into the 1.0 version, we will be thinking of how to approach modding.

MM: If you had to point one element of heroes of the Olden Era that you’re most happy about or proud of? Is there something that you think players will like the most?

BP-L: We work with the Heroes Orchestra! I’ve been following their success and progress for many, many years. I’m a very involved person, when it comes to music in general. Having them here as part of our project, as a group that we talk to and share memories with – is like fulfilling the wish that I have when I was younger. When it comes to the game and gameplay itself, the most interesting bits to me are the faction laws. We’ve seen those things in other strategy games as technology trees and upgrades, build paths, and so on. Having this implemented into Olden Era is really refreshing, because it’s another layer for the player to realize themselves as they play and specialize in what they want to focus on. It adds another tool for people to express themselves as players.

KP: The first for me is music as well. We are absolutely honored to work with Paul Anthony Romero, because his music was the heart and soul of the Heroes games for decades. This is a massive success for us that he accepted our offer to work with. Character of Romero’s music is a bit different to what we usually expect from the Heroes games, which is also very exciting for us and for me. Having people from the community actually working on the game – that’s something I also consider a massive success. The second thing is that… for some of the Heroes games it wasn’t super obvious for newcomers how to start playing. I think that our game is really adapted to new players. Even if you’re not like a super hardcore and Heroes fan. This is the thing that makes me believe in our game. It will be for people who know how to play Heroes games, but also for people who like strategy games or turn-based games. It is not super over complicated even though it has a lot of deep systems and mechanics.

MM: Thank you for the interview.