Thymesia is a dark, brooding, and highly atmospheric ARPG that makes a fine addition to the ever-growing souls-like genre. The game’s combat system has been crafted with great attention to detail, expanding on mechanics first implemented in previous souls-like games with additional intricacies, while tweaking existing gameplay staples and creative tropes of the genre to its own benefit.
Check out our full review of Thymesia
We were happy for the opportunity to speak with OverBorder Studios, the developers behind the new plague-infested hit, about what went on behind the scenes of Thymesia. As a small team based out of Taiwan, the level of quality they brought to the table with Thymesia is nothing short of impressive, and certainly raises the bar of what to expect from similar projects. We had the chance to ask them about topics ranging from their delayed release date, to what it’s like publishing a game in multiple languages, as well as some of the inspirations behind their new fantasy epic.
Let’s take a look at what they had to say on those topics and more…
Was the initial feedback received from the steam demo expected, or did it catch your team by surprise?
We expected there would be lots of feedback on the demo. The souls-like fanbase is a very passionate community, and we love hearing straight from the players. We wanted to make sure Thymesia was an experience that as many players as possible would enjoy, so we took on the feedback and implemented changes off the back of it.
Between making the changes, getting them QA’d, and porting them over to the different platforms, we needed a few extra days to get everything out.
What was the seed of inspiration that grew into Thymesia?
Thank you for the kind words! We put a lot of effort in building a visually distinct world. The whole project actually started as a tech demo for our two founders (Our game director and animator). It took them more than 2 years to figure out how to make a decent combat system, and after that, it took them another year to gather teammates and design the first boss fight as our first demo.
For the visual style, we started with a more generic medieval theme (pictures at the end of the document). Then, we asked ourselves, what can we do to make Thymesia stand out? And the answer for us was “mutations.” We asked ourselves the question “what if the plague not only infected living things but also the environment?”
The creative process in our studio is a team effort, and we often use whiteboards to brainstorm new ideas together. To give you an example, for the visual style we started with the word “mutation”, we then researched keywords and pictures related to mutations, such as symptoms of diseases, and we picked some of the most visually interesting ones to work with. Our talented 2D artist then drew some incredible concept art, giving the team a cohesive theme to work towards in the game.
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In a past interview, when asked if your team planned to bring the game to consoles you stated that your team was focused on making the PC version of Thymesia the best possible experience. What changed your mind, and what were some of the challenges specific to consoles your team had to overcome?
Since we are a fairly small team and Thymesia is the first project we knew we couldn’t afford to do multi-platform development at the same time. It was our publisher, Team17, who gave us the resources and help to do so – they provided us with a QA team, extra programmers, and extra artists. We really couldn’t have achieved any of this without them.
The biggest challenge when developing a multi-platform game is everything takes so much longer to do. When developing on PC only, once a bug is found, we can fix it, make a build, have QA test it, and push a patch to steam, all of that can be done in a day or two. However, when bugs are found on the console, they need to be fixed and tested on all platforms, this alone can take two or three times longer.
What sort of experience has your team had in video game development prior to Thymesia? Did your team find it necessary to outsource any content production, or to learn new development methods?
All of our developers have more than 3 years of experience on average working on games, but they’re smaller unknown games, and they’re not in the action genre. Having the experience and knowledge in our respective fields was really helpful for development, along with having the combat system figured out beforehand.
For an indie project, or any project really, we think it’s important to figure out the team’s strengths and weaknesses and play into those. That’s why we outsourced some character models and art assets, but we did almost all of the combat animation in-house.
Does your team have any future plans for implementing any multiplayer functionality to Thymesia?
Thymesia was created as a purely single-player experience.
Some of our team members love the multiplayer part of Souls games and have spent hundreds of hours playing. However, it would take us years to add multiplayer features to Thymesia, partly because our programmers don’t have previous experience with adding multiplayer into a game, and partly because it’s such a mammoth undertaking to add co-op into a game.
Your studio is located in Taiwan, and English is a second language to your development team. What are some of the challenges in developing a game in multiple languages?
English is not our native language, but we learn English from elementary school to high school, so we all speak English to some degree. On top of that, two of our developers studied game development in the US, so we can communicate in English without any major issues.
However, when it comes to translation, it’s a totally different story. We can speak day-to-day English, but translating stories and dialog is much harder. That’s why we work with a local translation firm to translate all the Chinese in-game to English. Since we speak both English and Chinese, we are confident both of them are good, and our publisher also helped us translate the game into other languages.
Thank you OverBorder Studios, for a fascinating look at some of the work that went into Thymesia! You can find their recently released new game on PC and on all consoles. For more information and updates on OverBorder Studios, follow them on twitter.
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