Survarium interview - Exclusive

Our close relationship with game developers continues beyond indie gaming and Kickstarter. In fact, today we are publishing an interview with Vostok Games, former developers of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, about their upcoming online FPS Survarium. Oleg Yavorsky, PR & Marketing Director, joined us for the conversation. Enjoy!

 

First of all, welcome to our network and please, introduce the game and the goal you’re aiming for it.

Hi, thanks for your interest in our project and for inviting us over.

Survarium is a free2play online FPS game set in the near future post-apocalyptic world. The game focuses on the aftermath of a massive ecological catastrophe on Earth, the reasons behind which are only vaguely known. The player is one of the few survivors among the population, trying to adapt to new life and survive on the ruins of the lost civilization. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

 

 

Obviously, all the gamers are happy that you persisted through the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 incident and are still pursuing that original vision, which I feel can only be fully represented in a MMO setting. There are still many questions about the game anyway. For example, will you have a persistent game world in Survarium like in most MMO games? That would seem optimal, but there are hints that it will not be the case.

Survarium will be a session-based game, at least at the initial development phase. Development of a persistent game world would require a lot of resources in every respect - human, time and costs. The good thing is that the online format of the project allows us to constantly upgrade and expand the game with new features and possibilities. So hopefully someday we can introduce a seamless Survarium playable universe as well.

 

 

How many players can be together concurrently in your estimations?

It depends on the play mode, but we estimate up to 30 players on a map per game session.

 
Is it possible to kill an enemy with a single well placed shot, for example in the case of headshot, or will there be a certain amount of damage that needs to be dealt overall in order for him to die in a RPG fashion?
Absolutely! Headshots will work as due). We are planning to introduce an innovative damage system to the game. We decided to sacrifice the general health bar to a system where each body part has its own ‘health’ points. Therefore you can receive injuries of different extremities and those will yield different effect on your gameplay process. For example, if you have your arm wounded it starts bleeding, you can’t keep shooting with it at the same pace/accuracy; you start limping if one of the legs got injured; a torso or head injury yields more critical damage. You can find out more details about the weapons and the damage system planned for the game by watching our dedicated developer video diary.

Is it possible to loot players after killing them in a PvP-enabled situation?
Yes, but the stuff you pick from the enemies will ‘last’ until the end of the match only.

 
Will there a be a centralized auction house to sell/exchange items, or do players have to trade personally?
In fact, we do plan to introduce an in-game auction, so the players could trade with each other in the game. The auction feature is expected to appear in the Beta version by the end of this year, as you can read on our development timeline .

 
Will there be any form of player housing?
At this point we do not plan any in-game housing or shelter-type of thing for the player. The game lobby will serve the role of his safe nook where he can manage his character, items, stats, improvements etc. between the matches.

 
What’s the ultimate goal for individual players and for clans to achieve? Is there any kind of endgame in Survarium? Also, will players be able to influence the storyline development in any way?
We plan three different modes for the game, including team-based PvP fights, co-op missions accomplished in PvE combat, so as a Free play mode where each player is a lone wolf trying to survive on the level. Each of those game modes will provide its own challenges and goals for the survivors. For example, in PvP each team is running a time race trying to collect parts of a unique device to help them survive the Storm (a massive anomalous deathwave); in Free play mode every player has only one life and by playing on a big map full of dangers (anomalies, mutants, other human opponents) his goal is to reach a certain checkpoint without dying.
In Survarium we plan several storylines developing in parallel and joined together by one metastory. This said, we want players to be part of the process to decide upon which direction the story should further evolve. For example, if there is a story-related object on the map which the player can either destroy or save at his own discretion, we will collect the general statistics of what was the choice made by the majority of players. If the majority opted to destroy it, for example, the story will evolve in the direction where that particular object is no more.

 

Thanks for your time.