In the realm of fantasy role-playing games, few titles have captured my attention and imagination quite like Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms. Set in a rich and expansive world brimming with dark magic, epic battles, and intricate lore, Alaloth promises to be an unforgettable gaming experience. In an exclusive interview, we had the opportunity to sit down with Alberto Belli (Gamera Interactive), the mastermind behind this amazing game , to delve into the depths of its creation and uncover the secrets that make Alaloth a true gem in the realm of RPGs! Step into a mesmerizing isometric world and immerse yourself in its breathtaking beauty as we explore the captivating visuals that bring Alaloth to life!
Editor note: Grab the game now at an unbeatable price during the Summer Sale on Steam 2023!
Let’s kick off this interview with a quick presentation of Gamera Interactive! We’re truly eager to know more about your team. Could you share some details like the number of people working there, whether your team is distributed, and any other aspects you believe might be fascinating for our tech-savvy readers?
Gamera Interactive has been founded in 2017 by industry veterans coming from publishing and development. We have released 16 games on Steam, PS4, Xbox One and Switch, both in-house developed or from third party studios but we are not a publisher. We coproduce, port and relaunch games already out on the market through our Re-Launch program. The studio has been built to work on Alaloth but to sustain the development we decided to go with small side projects used to position the studio as well as a reliable biz partner. At its peak, 18 people were working on Alaloth, right now we are just 7 which is basically the core team. We’ve started with a small office and upgraded to a massive one back in 2020 but then pandemic striked and since 2022 we are fully remote, scattered around Italy
Can you give us an overview of the development process behind Alaloth and what were some of the key challenges you faced?
I’ve started thinking to a RPG back in the days but the idea to setup the studio became real in 2015, when I still was in “Storm in a Teacup”, my previous studio, founded in 2013. Other founders were oriented to other kind of games so I’ve sold my shares and gone all in with Gamera putting all the pieces together. It was originally designed as modern Moonstone, which is one of the benchmarks since the very beginning. Than of course we’ve built on thi and I’ve decided to go on with something in between an old school RPG and a modern action. In terms of design, the main pillar was to bring 3D action mechanics working in a iso view because there was nothing like this on the market – and Alaloth is a unique game even now.
It was supposed to be not so huge, with focus on combat and fast playthroughs as the original Moonstone. It turned into a 100+ hours RPG with two games in: a classic one and an action one. To be fair, we had a good plan since the very beginning, we are very good in making plans, but we had to face a huge number of issues completely out of our control. We’ve lost one of the founding members in a mountain accident, we had issues with Chris Avellone when allegations were made against him – but we never canceled him -, we signed with a publisher but we’ve taken publishing rights back in May 2022 – can’t comment on this – and on top of this we had all the issues that could happen during a 3 years dev cycle.
We’ve risked bankrupt twice because of a VC that at some point decided to not give us the money they were supposed to pay – legal battle in progress – and much more. Despite all of this, we’ve released, being Top Grossing on Steam 2 weeks after launch and releasing 60+ patches and 4 Major Updates in nearly 1 year of EA. In 6 months, we’ve delivered all the contents originally scheduled for the EA.
In previous interviews, you mentioned that Alaloth is akin to a fusion between Baldur’s Gate and Dark Souls, blending elements of classic RPGs with modern action RPGs. With that in mind, do you believe that this bold choice has paid off? If so, could you elaborate on the reasons behind its success?
As a small indie studio that has to pay bills, being out with “just another RPG” would have been pointless. We are not reinventing the wheel but I think we successfully released what we’ve envisioned at the very beginning and players’ fee validating our vision is the most important thing now. Baldur’s Gate meets Dark Souls is the most common quote from people playing the game, not from us. But I’m happy to see this because this was exactly what we were pitching at the very beginning.
This is what “staying in between” means. Of course the game is not Baldur’s Gate nor Dark Souls, it’s just Alaloth and I can say it’s pretty unique. We are talking to two different targets and we are trying to force both of them playing a different way. We are trying to push old school lovers to play a bit more action and younger players used to go “full DPS” taking their time to read the huge lore we’ve created. That’s what is a key selling point for the game.
When it comes to the graphics of Alaloth, there is something truly remarkable. We can observe an extraordinary attention to detail, particularly in terms of textures and color analysis. Your team has managed to bestow upon the game a nostalgic yet contemporary ambiance. Could you kindly share some insights and tricks with the indie community on how you achieved this stunning blend?
Making games is hard but it’s even simple somehow. It’s all about resources. We are not making a photorealistic FPS and we are not going against big guns. We are positioning the studio as the one able to create an amazing fantasy world full of life and what a small team as Gamera could achieve is entirely on “details”. We can’t compete with AA budgets and such but we can definitely reach the same quality when it’s about world building, small details that can be spotted by players and so on. We don’t have hyper realistic models around but I can say that if you are looking at connecting dots among stories and very small details about the lore, we don’t fear comparisons
Alaloth was officially released a year ago, and since then, we have witnessed numerous updates and a resolute dedication from your team. Have there been any aspects that you underestimated prior to the launch and had to address and modify throughout this year?
Game development is always about study and problem solving. I saw many things in 20 years both on small and big productions but every single project has its own unique challenges, despite the experience. I can’t say we did wrong with the launch, 99% of the studios in our shoes would have been shut down facing all the issues we had to handle throughout pandemic and after it. We’ve been forced to launch EA to avoid bankrupt and this was a situation caused by the people that we are actually battling with through lawyers.
When we’ve got the game back we were supposed to have some money from our VC to be used to go self publishing the game and we didn’t have these money. So we had to backup with personal savings, asking a huge effort to the team and losing part of the team. We’ve launched during the Summer Sale, worst moment ever. But we had to and luckily our huge number of wishlists (130.000) helped but again, it could have been a 10x times launch with the proper conditions. We hope to do great things when going out with the full release
