Zoria: Age of Shatteringis an upcoming turn-based tactical RPG with real-time exploration. It also features surprisingly rich lore for players to dive into as they explore its myriad environments, completing quests and perusing in-game books strewn about the land of Zoria.
Game Rant spoke with Tiny Trinket Games producer Stefan Nitescu who weighed in on Zoria’s unique combination of mechanics and systems. He also discussed how the team steered the game away from commonRPGtropes that they’ve come to dislike as veteran gamers themselves.The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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Q:Zoriaentices players to return to previous areas with new party members to open up new paths and secrets. Was this feature inspired by roguelike games?
Nitescu:We’re pretty old gamers. Back in the early 90s, we were playing on the Romanian communist version of the ZX Spectrum. I could name a few big names as influences, but to be 100% honest, I wouldn’t know all the influences. What I can tell you is that this has been part of the core design of the game from the beginning. We have all these classes, and usually, you just add them to the game to make combat different, but classes should be a bit more than that. Starting from that, we got to this point where we thought “Yeah, we could play with this, and it would incentivize returning with another team.”
I’m a big fan oftheXCOMseries. I played all of them, including the bad ones. One of the core things that happens in those kinds of games is you have like 20 or 30 characters, but you end up playing with four guys that you really, really like. You’ve leveled up and that’s it.
I was thinking, “Look, this will help you see things, see classes, see part of your squad that you maybe didn’t really want to try, and you take it out, maybe you discover a new playstyle, and maybe you like it.” I’m an all-guns-blazing kind of guy, so I don’t really have much of a healer stance in my combat. But I discovered that the battle clerics can actually do quite a bit of interesting things. There is influence and there is an intention in it. From a combat perspective, we’re trying to be somewhere betweentitles likeDivinity: Original SinorBaldur’s Gate 3. It’s really good, deep tactical combat, but it’s a bit on the slow side. There are lots of decisions to make and stuff like that.
At the other end of the spectrum would begames likeDiablo, so you get somewhere in the middle where you still retain your tactical feeling. It’s still turn-based, but at the same time, it feels a bit quicker and more fluid in combat. At the same time, the party management is more inspired by games likeXCOM. So it’s not two or three companions that you meet and you play the game with them, now you’ve got more than 20. So play with them, try them, all of them.
Q:Zoriahas an almostDiablo-like approach to loot, offering players a generous amount of drops from enemies and chests. What was the team’s thought process behind the loot and gear system as opposed to other approaches?
Nitescu:You don’t feel that in the demo. That’s a bit of an oversight we had because you don’t understand the need for that loot in the demo. In the demo, you’re like “I got five chests and I got three guys. What’s the point of all that?” When you get to the outpost, you get three more followers really quickly. Then, if you do your exploration correctly, and if you upgrade the inn and you upgrade the outpost correctly, you get a few more followers.
When you get to a point where you have seven or eight really early in the game,a lot of lootalready makes a lot more sense. If you work the other way around, you get a piece every two hours, and you’ve got eight guys, you’re going to start switching pieces. Then you have your classes and your gear types like light, medium, hardened, and heavy. We don’t believe in limiting playstyles through artificial scarcity of loot, like, “We’re not going to give you much loot, and you are going to be so happy when we do.” The point of a game is to enjoy it, it’s to explore. It’s an RPG, you want to explore the story, and you don’t want to do advanced economics to just be able to get through mid-game. I don’t see the point in doing that.
It’s never going to be overpowered because that just gets boring if I get the number one pick, so it’s not going to be like that. But I don’t want to have your playstyle limited because you couldn’t find the piece for your wizard, so now you’re not taking the wizard because he’s butt naked. So that’s the approach, that’s the reason behind all that loot, but you don’t really see all of it in the demo. It’s actually the first scene of the game. It’s designed to get you an idea of what the world ofZoriais about, to understand where you are, but because of that, it’s a bit on rails, and you don’t get to all the systems.
Let’s say we started the other way around, and we started with the outpost. That will be a couple of hours of trying to figure out where you are and reading systems, and who wants to start a game like that? You want to get a feeling of “Do I like the combat? Do I like how it feels? Do I like the story? Okay, then I’m going to play it, and then I’m going to spend my hours trying to understand their system.” I don’t want to spend my hours understanding the system and then look at it and say “Actually I don’t really want to play this game.” That’s not okay. I’m first and foremost a gamer. So every single thing that I saw in games that I didn’t like, and that I have the power to change, I’m changing.
Oh, we have a grand total ofzero escort quests. I hate them with a passion. We have something that looks like an escort quest, but you don’t actually have to escort that thing. It just goes where it’s supposed to go. You don’t have to escort it, you just have to find it, and then it’s going to go back home.
Q: What other kinds of things do you see in games that you dislike and have tried to change?
Nitescu:Loot is one, you know that thing like, “Oh, we’re going to give you loot only when you’re a very good boy.” I’m just going to learn how to cheat better, come on! We’re too old for this, just let the loot be there, but don’t make it overpowered to the point where I don’t see the point in playing. Don’t be cheap with the loot. All the small and tedious mechanics that we’re trying to avoid like that. The one I can’t really avoid is walking, because it’s an RPG, and I don’t really wanta teleport system. That’s really easy to do, but RPGs are a lot about exploration. If you put in a really quick travel point-to-point system, nobody’s going to bother to look around.
There are things you can’t avoid, but those that I can avoid, I’m trying to avoid. I learned from a lot of games I played through. We’ve seen a lot and I couldn’t really tell you one or the other, but all these little things that annoy people stand out.
Q: Zoria has surprisingly deep lore tucked away in dialogue and books. Can you talk about the game’s world and setting and how the team put it all together?
Nitescu:Our team is three guys, and we all come from a lot of backgrounds and a lot of games. The fortunate thing is we don’t actually play the same games. Our programmer is abigGenshin Impactfan. I’ve played through my share of games, and the other Stefan who was doing world design and level design was a big Blizzard fan back in the day. We both lost a couple of years inWorld of Warcraft. They just went poof back in vanilla, so there’s a lot of inspiration behind that.
I’m a big fan of the science fiction of Asimov and Orson Scott Card, so there are a lot of influences from a lot of places. I don’t want to spoil too much for players, but the fact that I’m a fan of science fiction might actually be apparent at some point in the game.
I’m writing a lot of the lore and a lot of the world, and the guys are also a big help. You want to make an interesting world, there are a lot of things you like, and there are a lot of things you would like to see in that world. If we had the time, manpower, and we didn’t really have to sleep – which is a really annoying habit – then the books would probably be bigger in terms of pages. As they are right now, there’s a lot of them and there are a lot of things that are going to help you piece the world up, so it’s not just the story. If you go and read to get every piece of lore, you’re going to make out what happened, what’s happening now, and what happened in history.
I’m a big fan of history. I actually studied architecture, so the development of civilization is something I studied in school at some point. There’s a bit of everything in the world. I hope you like it. That’s all I can say. I hope it makes you curious.
That’s what I miss a lot today, that feeling of being curious about what’s happening. In games back in the day, there were all these little things that would make you curious. Now you have exceptional CGI, but if the image tells you the whole story, is it a game or is it a movie? We’re not at that point. We couldn’t even if we tried, we’re too small a team to do that. But in a way, I’m happy that I don’t automatically rely on insane quality assets, CGI, and20 minutes of extraordinary videoto tell the story because that doesn’t leave much to discover.
Q: You mentionedBaldur’s GateandDivinityearlier. Many turn-based games like those use rule sets and mechanics fromD&Dor thePathfindersystems for inspiration. How didZoriaapproach the mechanics of its combat system?
Nitescu:We made our own. I know it sounds really weird, but we made our own.Dungeons & Dragonsis something that only recently began to get in the public conscience in Romania. Back when we grew up in the late 80s and early 90s, it was before the Iron Curtain fell, so in those times,D&Dwas the last thing on anyone’s mind. It was actually through games we became more familiar withDungeons & Dragons, but not withD&Din itself. A lot of the game developers of today drawinspiration fromDungeons & DragonslikeBaldur’s Gate. We draw inspiration from games, because there was noD&Dso it’s a “secondhand"Dungeons & Dragons.
Of course, we rely on what’s become common wisdom. You know, fireball is going to – shockingly – set you on fire, or ice is going to function as a control mechanic because ice usually blocks or stuns you. There’s this generic body of knowledge and we build on that and not much else. It’s not very directly inspired byDungeons & Dragons, because we don’t really play that.
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Q:Zoriahas a number of interesting mechanics like class-based rest bonuses and a deep crafting system. What do you feel makesZoriastand out most?
Nitescu:Well, in today’s market, it’s always hard to say “this stands out” beyond the gigantic titles like we were discussingBaldur’s Gate, now there’s all the talk with games likeStarfield, but those have like 500 people working on it, so they better stand out!
I think it’s the mix of mechanics. So again, you got this demo, and you would say it’s a smallerBaldur’s Gate. It kind of works the same way. It’s got turn-based combat, it’s got exploration quests, all the RPG elements, but then you go into the system where you have your own base, you switch around followers, so already the approach you have to the world is completely different. you may go to a place multiple times and see the secrets and hidden places and stuff like that. This completely changes the way you play the game.
What I like to call the “decision space” in all thesesuper tactical RPGs, most of the decision space is built around combat. You don’t have a lot of choice in terms of companions. The story in itself has a pretty clear flow, so most of your decision-making happens in the combat. We’re splitting up this decision space. By the time you get to combat, you’ve decided on the party composition, you’ve decided whether you engage with the outpost upgrades mechanic, and you already decided on the crafting.
The crafting in itself is also a hybrid system. Usually, you get the blueprint, you need the materials and you make the blueprint. It kind of works the same way with us but not really. You have the blueprint, but the blueprint says “two metals, three stones,” but it doesn’t say which metal and doesn’t say which stone. You have the base stats that are given by the blueprint, and then depending on what metal and what stones you put in it, you can get multiple items out of a single blueprint, with variations based on what you use.
There are a lot of small decisions that you make outside the combat. It changes the balance of the game. You can engage with them, but it’s not built to force you to engage with them. You can ignore, like, 80% of it completely, and still play the game in a very loose manner. Sure, it might not be as easy, combat is going to be a bit more difficult because you didn’t do all the preparations, but it still allows you to do this. And then you have the resting mechanic, the camp mechanic. That also is a bit different. I would say it’s a mix of systems that creates a familiar experience, but not necessarily the same experience.
Q:Zoriareleased a prologue a few years back and gave players a first look at the game. Has there been any feedback since then that helped guide the game’s direction?
Nitescu:Besides being the first iteration of something playable the guys at Anshar Publishing at some point asked us if we could remake that, and I was like, “No, absolutely not.” From scratch, sure, but otherwise, no, there is not a single system from that prologue that still functions as it did back then. Technically, it looks the same, but it’s not the same.
Beyond that, doing that prologue was probably the single best idea that got us to where we are today. Because on one hand, it kept us in Steam players’ view, which is something that’s really hard to do as a small studio. It’s insanely hard, it’s getting harder by the day, and it got us quite a lot of reviews. Those reviews are probably what shaped this game more than anything else. You’re making a game you like, but up to a point, you’re trying to make a game for the players. Even if you really like a thing, if nobody likes that thing or a vast majority don’t like that thing, maybe you shouldn’t put that in the game.
If I could do that again, I would do it in a heartbeat, because the simple act of getting to 300 reviews, sifting through them, seeing what comes up numerous times, what people like and what people don’t like about the game, that shaped the game to a great extent where it is today. That was a good idea.
I would advise anyone that’s serious about investing time and money in a game to try and do that. IfSteam had any option to get some reviews for a demo, that would make a huge difference because it helps you a lot to get first-hand feedback from the players.
That’s a good point. Demos are a great opportunity to get feedback from players, and right now Steam users can only do that on the game’s forum.
Nitescu:If you’re there and you got that button, “Did you like it or not?,” you can say “No! Because I hate this and I hate that!” You get it out of your system in 30 seconds flat. For me, that’s important. Even if the tone is not the best, it’s the idea behind it. You got so annoyed that you wrote.
I had those reviews like “This game is utter shit. It’s so bad!” But, it was like an hour’s worth of prologue, they had eight hours played, and they wrote walls of text about why the game is bad. And I was like, “Yeah, on one hand, you have a point. On the other hand, you really want to like this game. You got so annoyed because you couldn’t, but you really wanted to like this game.”
That’s a review I’m going to take into account because that’s someone who really tried to like that game and failed. If demos had reviews, that would change the landscape a lot and hopefully make a few better games. I’m sure there’s going to bea few bad reviewsfor us even after all this. You can’t make everybody happy, but I’m sure we fixed a lot of potential bad reviews before they happened because we had that problem.
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Q: There are a number of classes to choose from when forming a party. How did you approach the class designs relative to each other? Are there certain synergies you wanted to bring out?
Nitescu:We didn’t want to go there. We try to avoid that because, first, it would change the combat completely. Second, that would make the scope of the game a bit bigger than our team could handle. It’s already a really big game.RPGs are some of the biggest gamesyou can make, so it’s one of the weird choices that we have made that got us here. We took every “don’t do that” that was said and went in the opposite direction, and we somehow ended up here.
We didn’t do that especially because, if you do that, you limit the number of viable choices. You end up with two or three different party compositions and those are the meta builds. I don’t want that.
Take four wizards and see what happens. I mean, why not? If the game is built against me doing this, it’s just one less choice I have. Sure, there are a few compositions like the classic composition where you’ve got your tank that’s in front who takes all the damage, then you’ve got the good healer, then you’ve got a couple of damage dealers, and it should work pretty well.
But yeah, do four healers. I assure you it’s going to work. It took us a couple of hours to finish a 10-minute fight because we had virtually no decent damage-dealing skills, but we could heal like no other. It was perfect. So yeah, do that. Why not? That’s the point of the game.
Q: How do you approach the game’s combat encounters in terms of enemy abilities? Will there be boss fights that challenge players in unusual ways?
Nitescu:Here’s where our years of MMORPG experience come into play because we like these battles to be interesting. The general system behind it doesn’t allow us the same degree of depth. I’m not really sure you’re going to feel all the systems that are in there, because the way the damage and the abilities are built, you don’t get like 50 rounds of combat because you’re going to be bored after 50 rounds of combat.
But at the same time, there are a lot of things you will see coming from the bigMMORPG boss battles. There are a few battles where you have environmental items. The combat system allows for abilities to be set to activate between various HP levels, so I can make an “enrage mode” where below 30%, he’s going to be giving you everything he’s got.
Think about it like this: You have combat that is turn-based, but everything outside the combat still works on a real-time mechanic. you’re able to enter a battle with two guys, then you get three guys in a patrol coming, and when they enter the battle area, they join the fight. You better think twice about where you fight.
And then you have the traps. If you start the combat in a trap environment, that trap is still staying in real-time. If you move on your turn and end up in a place where there’s a trap, by the time it’s your turn again, you’re going to be long dead because that trap is going to be hitting you in real time.
It’s a bit of a hybrid system. It feels good for us, and I’m curious how it feels for the players. We got a bit of inspiration from the big MMO bosses, so there’s going to be a few surprises here and there. One problem I have is that my colleague – the other Stefan – is doing most of the combat design, and he’s a very good player. We’re going to be looking at the difficulty level again, because right now, the first play testers said, “Eh, it’s a bit tough.” He likes a good challenge. We’re going to havea difficulty sliderso you don’t have to be a super player just to finish the game.
Q: Do you have plans for DLC or post-release content?
Nitescu:The honest answer is “Let’s see the release.” In an ideal world, yeah, sure, absolutely. One of the cool things about RPGs is thatRPGs build IPs. You build a world so you can develop in that world, and that’s why you make a word that you like. All the things that you find in that world are designed to make sense in this game, but they’re designed to accommodate five games, if possible.
If the game is successful enough, there are a lot of things that I would still like to do and then think aboutZoria 2. As I said, there’s a bit of science fiction in it, so there are probably a lot of directions these things could go, like how theWarhammeruniverse has got two directions: the fantasy direction and the sci-fi direction. My colleague, Stefan, is a big fan ofWarhammer, and he has been teaching me aboutWarhammera lot.
So yeah, if at all possible, if financially possible, we’d like to develop this as much as we can. I’d love to have DLCs. I’d love to do the next game in the series. There’s a lot of story I haven’t told. We kind of have ideas about two, four, I don’t know, five DLCs, and two more games at this point on paper.
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Zoria: Age of Shatteringis set to release for PC in Q4 2023.
