Tobias Rowe recently spoke to the team behind the upcoming game, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics due to be released sometime this year.
We’ll be having some of the team appear on the podcast in a future show so stay tuned for that episode.
Who approached who? Did you pitch Tactics to Netflix off of the back of Stranger Things 3, or vice versa?
BonusXP worked on the original Stranger Things game and were in the midst of working with Netflix on Stranger Things 3: The Game. The two had a great relationship from working on those titles, so Netflix asked if BonusXP would be interested in working on a title based on The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. There are tons of Dark Crystal fans at the BonusXP studio, so they jumped at the chance to tackle the project.
What excited you the most about the opportunity to work on the Dark Crystal IP? What is your favorite Dark Crystal moment?
David: Honestly, I hadn’t seen the film in quite some time before beginning to work on this project. My only real memory of the series was how frightening the Skeksis were. That said, now that I’ve spent more time with the IP recently, it’s hard to beat The Chamberlain’s iconic “mmmmmmmMMMMM.”
As far as a Dark Crystal game goes, the amazing world, deep lore, and huge variety of creatures and characters is an incredibly exciting prospect to build a game around.
For those unfamiliar with game development, what size team is working on the game, and how much effort goes into completing the finished product?
The size of the team fluctuates as the project progresses. Anywhere from 20 people to close to 50 with art contractors working on the project. The project begin in 2018, so we’re looking at over a year of development time.
What went into the decision to develop a game in the tactics genre?
The BonusXP team have a strong tactical background. Members of their team have worked on the original Civ, Age of Empires 2, and Halo Wars, to name a few. One genre they haven’t taken on beforehand are tactical RPGs, however. There are many Final Fantasy Tactics fans on the BonusXP team, so they started investigating that approach to the title.
A good tactical RPG needs a wide variety of environments, creatures, and lore. It’s hard to ask for a better IP than Dark Crystal to more than cover those bases. With conflict at the heart of the story for The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, a tactical combat game made a lot of sense.
Does content in the game draw from the expanded universe? And have you add anything to the lore yourselves?
We want to make sure that we’re aligning closely with the Henson and Netflix teams as we craft the story for the game. We’ll be pulling from the show and established lore, but we’re also adding several new things that we’re excited to be able to bring to fans.
You revealed three playable characters during the Nintendo Tree House Live demo. What is the maximum party size?
Different missions will require different numbers of team members. We’re considering five as the upper end, but this could shift in development.
I love that fizzgigs are playable characters, and the spiked armor they wear in concept art looks awesome! Will there be any other animals in the game? Playable or otherwise?
Yes! We can’t get into too many details, but the thriving wildlife of Thra will play a big part in the game. Expect more playable and non-playable creatures to be revealed leading up to launch.
The combat mechanics look like they have a solid foundation. What unique gameplay does the Dark Crystal IP bring to the genre?
One of the main goals of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics is to refresh the tactics genre to make it as friendly as possible to genre vets and newcomers alike. With that in mind, the team is aiming to allow players to spend as much time in the thriving world of Thra as possible without having to delve too deeply into menus.
As far as new mechanics go, we want to highlight environmental manipulation. We showed a little bit of that off in Treehouse Live with the movable boulders, but we want this to be something that players will encounter in a variety of different ways across the course of the game.
There are some cool things the team is planning around elevation as well. Some skills get extended range if your elevation is higher, or give you more options for combat. For example, if you use your Gust ability to knock an enemy off of a cliff, they’ll take fall damage. Expect to see more examples of this leading up to launch.
Will there be an enemy campaign or missions with playable Skeksis?
We’ve discussed this a bit. While it likely won’t make its way into the release this year, it might surface as a DLC in the future!
Will the game feature a multiplayer/co-op mode?
It will not – single player only.
Do you think the game lends itself well to future DLC? Do you have any planned?
We are really focused on delivering the best possible game at the moment. Most strategy games tend to support DLC in some form. We’ll look at that if the game is successful, but really, we are putting everything we can into the one release right now.
Will there be any performance or content differences between platform versions?
Content is planned to be consistent across platforms.
Not all Dark Crystal fans are gamers. How have you catered to them?
As mentioned above, the BonusXP team wanted to create this game with the goal of making an approachable tactics game, whether someone comes to it as a genre pro, or a Dark Crystal fan with no gaming experience. That will manifest from UI to difficulty settings, to story content.
A big goal for this title is to create something that’s not just the season re-told, but something that also includes additional details for the hardcore Dark Crystal fans to dig into once they’ve finished the series. If you don’t want to deal with challenging tactical encounters, we’ve included multiple difficulty settings to allow players to cruise through at a leisurely pace and soak in the story and world.
When will the game be released, and on what platforms?
We don’t have an exact date announced yet, but we can say that we’re releasing later in 2019. We’re launching on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, and Mac.