We had the chance to talk with Steven Peeler of Soldak Entertainment, asking him about his new action RPG, Depths of Peril. We thank Steven for taking the time to answer our questions.

Please introduce yourself and the game Depths of Peril.

My name is Steven Peeler. I'm the lead designer and programmer of Depths of Peril. I'm also the owner of Soldak Entertainment.

Depths of Peril is an action RPG with strong strategy elements. The game starts out right after the Fourth Great War where the good and neutral races were slaughtered. The entire land of Aleria is pretty much overrun with monsters now. There is no longer any place that is safe. You play as a faction leader in the barbarian city of Jorvik and must protect the city and bring glory back to the barbarians. To do this you must physically protect the town when it is attacked, solve quests for the city, and adventure to destroy threats and become more powerful.

At the same time that you are doing these things, there are other barbarian factions (called covenants in the game) that are plotting your death. You see Jorvik was destroyed during the war and its leaders were all killed. The town is now rebuilding and needs to choose new leaders. Barbarians choose their leaders by fighting to the death and many covenants are competing to become the next leaders of Jorvik. The last standing covenant will become the next leaders.

Let's get down to it: Why are you creating this game?

We are creating Depths of Peril because we wanted to add something new to the RPG genre, especially the action RPG subgenre, by adding in some new elements that haven't really been seen in this type of game before. We don't want to be just another clone, we want to expand the genre and make something unique. There are many ways that we are doing this. For now I'll just mention three of them.

The first and biggest addition is the strategy elements dealing the other covenants. This includes diplomacy, trade, wars, and raids. How you do this is completely up to you, but a good way is to use diplomacy and trade to keep everyone off your back and going to war and raiding one enemy at a time.

The second is the huge back-story available in the game and told in a unique manner including short stories, histories, and myths. Many stories specifically talk about items, people, and monsters in the game.

The third difference is that the world the player adventures in is a living world. Things change all of the time from the player's actions, the other covenants' actions, and sometimes even the monsters' actions. Here's a good example. Let's say there is an uprising of nagas in the Dire Realm. If the player can't quell the uprising fast enough, the nagas might build up their power enough to attack the town. I've mentioned this scenario in previous interviews, but what I haven't mentioned is that while the nagas are attacking the town they can cause all sorts of havoc while there. Obviously they can kill some of the town npcs while they are attacking but they can also poison people, poison the town's water supply, or even infect the town with the plague.

Depths of Peril is an "action RPG with strategy elements." Sometimes when games cross multiple genres, they are mediocre in some and good in none. What's being done to ensure DoP doesn't fall into that trap?

We are not trying to do everything that both genres offer. Depths of Peril isn’t half RPG and half strategy game or anything like that. We are only bringing across the features from strategy games that make sense for Depths of Peril.

Much has been written to create a history for DoP, so we won't delve into that. However, is this a "typical" fantasy setting, with traditional monsters? Or are there new creatures unique to DoP?

We have decided on a split approach. A few monsters and races, everyone will recognize. This was done so that people will feel they have some grounding in the world, so they instantly understand part of the world. Many monsters and races are new, making the world fresh and different, not just another generic fantasy setting.

Let's talk about the game mechanics for a moment. Hack-n-slash, turn based, or something else?

Depths of Peril is all real time. I personally like turn based games, but I don't believe this game would work as well if it was turn based. For example, if all of your diplomacy with the Brutal Slayers covenant has failed and they decide to raid your covenant house and destroy you, it is extremely intense because you will have a massive battle on your hands just to survive. You must fend off the attackers while protecting your lifestone
or you will lose the game. This just wouldn't be as exciting and tense if it was turn based.

Since you play as a Barbarian, how much customization will the player have for the character in terms of appearance, armor, weapons, etc?

Most of the customization is in the equipment that you can carry. There are hundreds of base items that you can find or buy. When you take into account magic modifiers, sets, and unique/artifact items, there are probably hundreds of thousands of items to choose from.

Explain how diplomacy works in the game and why a player may choose to use it.

Diplomacy is mostly done through trade. You offer them something and ask for something in return. You can also give gifts or make demands. In general, the more good trades and gifts you give to a covenant, the more they will like you.

Using diplomacy can keep everyone from going to war with you at the same time. Remember you are essentially enemies with all of the other covenants. They all want to become the new leaders of the city and you are in the way. If you don't do any diplomacy at all, the other covenants are bound to gang up and destroy you. Unless you are insanely powerful, the other covenants combined can easily destroy your covenant. At a minimum, you use diplomacy to keep as few enemies as possible.

You can also develop full allies with other covenants, which can be very useful. They will protect you if you are attacked and even help with offensive wars, but they will expect the same from you.

DoP is to feature a "breathing and evolving world," where your choices have consequences. Can you give us an example of how that works?

I gave a good example in a previous answer but I'll give a couple more here, one example from the covenant gameplay and one from the world.

One of the major changes in the covenant gameplay you can make is to use diplomacy to form alliances. First, you have to get a covenant to agree to a non-aggression pact, and then a mutual protection pact, and finally a full fledged alliance. Each of these is harder to get then the previous agreement. The good and bad thing about alliances is now your two covenants are basically tied at the hip, what you do and what they do effect each other. If either one of you gets into a war (either defensive or offensive) the other is forced to go to war with the new enemy immediately. So your choices of establishing an alliance with someone can have good or bad consequences. You might have a friend to help out when you are attacked, but you also might get dragged into a war you don't want to be in.

Another good example of consequences from the world is one that actually happened to me a couple days ago. There was an uprising of Wicked Torvas in the Scowling Den (a dungeon). I was busy trying to cure the plague that had broken out in town and had so far infected about half of the town, including some of my recruits. I didn't deal with the uprising very quickly. They managed to build up enough power and launched an attack on town. Town attacks are always pretty dangerous because you never know what is going to happen, but this attack was really nasty. Not only did the attack have a really powerful elite Wicked Torva in it but they also attacked one of my allies directly. By the time I got over to my friend to help out, it was too late. I got there just in time to see his covenant fall, and then the full group of torvas assaulted me!

In today's climate, many gamers don't read as much as they should. So when they're presented with a game like DoP with a wealth of backstory and history, they may feel the need to skip over it. What's being done with the writings so they are not "lost?"

We don't force the player to read the back-story if he or she doesn't want to; it's basically optional. However, we do try to encourage the player to read them as much as possible on our end. First, everyone is likely to at least collect the tomes because there is a bookshelf in your covenant house and you get a small attribute bonus for each unique tome you have collected.

Also, many of the items have stories attached to them. If that item or the item's original owner is in any of the back-stories, you can read the stories directly from the item. This is true about almost all of the set items and many of the unique items. So in many cases the stories are very personal because they refer to items that you have collected. A good example of this is if you find Ciglio's Gold Ring, you will be able to read about Ciglio in the story Double Edge. Ciglio is an evil necromancer (not that you can find many good necromancers). You can read Double Edge on our website right now at http://www.soldak.com/content/view/50/51/ (part 1) and http://www.soldak.com/content/view/51/51/ (part 2).

And finally, there are a few secrets in the game that are revealed in the stories if you are paying enough attention and reading them of course.

Let's switch gears and talk about independent development. Becoming an indie dev sounds like a double-edged sword: balancing freedom with financial stability. How has it been for Soldak the past two years?

That is very true. In general, in the games industry the person that pays for the development is the one with all of the control. Just like you said, an independent developer tends to get all of the control but has to pay for the development. Of course, there are always exceptions to this. As for Soldak, things have been going as expected for the most part, a long road but now we are nearing a release.

Are you looking to market DoP through digital channels, traditional means (store shelves), or a combination of the two?

Currently we are planning on a release through digital channels at first with a retail release after that as a possibility. We are doing this for many reasons, including the control to make an innovative game that we want to build, not just another clone. In theory, it should be better for the gamers. It should be cheaper than a typical retail game since there will be less middlemen, and gamers never even have to leave home to get the game. Also, hopefully this will keep us closer to the people that actually play our game since they will buy through us instead of having a retailer, distributor, and a publisher in between us and the actual gamers.

When someone talks about innovation and creativity in the games industry, what developers do you think of?

I don't usually think of any particular developers exactly since creative developers tend to come up with a first unique game and then make some less innovative but very good sequels. I usually think about games more so than developers in this case. Some good examples that I can think of off the top of my head are Guitar hero (Harmonix), Sims (Maxis), Diablo (Blizzard), Wolfenstein (id), and Roller Coaster Tycoon (Chris Sawyer).

What one game that has been released do you wish you had designed and why?

At the exact moment, like everyone else, I would probably say World of Warcraft. I would be extremely happy to have almost 9 million people happily playing my game all over the world.

Bonus Question: If Gabe Newell, John Carmack, and Warren Spector were thrown into a cage to fight it out to the death, who would emerge victorious?

Well I was going to put a joke in here about a certain lawyer that tends to say ridiculous things about games and how Carmack would obviously win because of his "training", but I thought the joke would be misunderstood by too many people.

So here's my safer answer. :)  Carmack would get thrown into the ring, bounce off the floor, and something inspirational would hit him immediately, like how to do rag doll physics better in his next game. He would then wander over to the corner of the cage to work out the math in his head. Meanwhile, Spector and Newell would have a spectacular fight in the center of the ring but manage to kill each other at the same time and Carmack would win by default.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I would like to add one more small thing about our back-stories. We now have a bunch of stories posted on our website (seven currently) that are directly from the game. As a small step to making a game that people will enjoy as much as possible, we have a poll on our website to find out which story everyone has enjoyed the most so far. This poll and future polls will help guide us to making better games for our audience. So if you want your input heard go vote at http://www.soldak.com/

Interviewed By: Alex Hammond