Skara the Blade Remains interview

The wave of crowdfunding seems unstoppable, and so is our desire to bring you exclusive content on the most interesting projects in the gaming industry. In this interview we’ll cover Skara the Blade Remains, a MOBA developed by 8-bit Studios currently on a Kickstarter campaign; Pablo Rodriguez and Cesar Ortega, the two founders of the development studio, were kind enough to answer our questions. Just for reference, we recently reported that the game is now running on Unreal Engine 4.

First of all, welcome to Worlds Factory! Please, introduce yourself and your game to our readers.

Thanks a lot! We are Pablo Rodriguez, co-founder and Creative Director and Cesar Ortega, co-founder and CFO of Skara – The Blade Remains.

Skara is a Free to Play game that will test the skills of players around the world. It takes you to a world in perpetual war, with a unique hand to hand combat system and a list of social features that will allow players to collaborate and compete with thousands of warriors to become a legend.

 

 

 

You mentioned that with your combat system, it’s imperative to block at the exact moment to avoid getting hit. Since Skara is primarily a multiplayer game, do you plan to use dedicated servers to minimize lag? Also, you mentioned FPS several times but the video shows a third person perspective, why is that?

Yes, one of the features that we love from FPS games is the fast paced action, the non-stop rhythm and the quick killings and respawns. We will use a third person camera perspective cause in a hand to hand combat game like Skara you need to see the movements of your own character, and stay alert in case your enemies approach you from behind.

We are using dedicated servers for the first multi-players test games and works perfectly with 8vs8 Faction Battles although it is too soon to say if this is the best solutions for Skara.

 

You said that the game does not have “levelling”, but it seems to have character progression since you talked about both Experience points and Honor points. The latter will apparently help players climb through player Ranks, so I’m wondering if there is any kind of “Honor decay”, similar to the old system used by World of Warcraft, where players who didn’t keep playing eventually fell off their former rank.

Exactly, characters don’t level up and always have the same skills and strength (like in Versus games). We want to reward the best warriors, not those who spend more hours using their characters. In Skara, a newcomer can defeat an unaware veteran.

Also, we don’t want to force players to stay online in order to keep their ranking positions. Of course, if you play inside a faction and everyone stops playing, this faction will loose positions, but the main rule in our game is that we reward the most skilled players, so you can stop playing Skara for a while and return to your same character.

 

Skara seems to be more than your average MOBA, in scope at least. For example, faction battles seem very interesting as they could give a sense of persistent conflict similar to that of MMORPGs. Will it be possible to conquer another faction’s city and/or ultimately destroy this faction, as you also mentioned player-created factions and cities?

We are very excited about Faction Battles among self-created factions because players will have a sense of ownership and will do the best for their armies, collaborating with companions and working together to reach the top positions in the rankings. Only the best factions will gain access to the special features of Skara, so you can’t just pay for them, you need to earn those privileges on the battlefield.

 

It also seems like Skara will feature a Story mode, which is unusual to say the least for a MOBA. Can you talk a bit about the story?

Skara is founded and developed by gamers, and as gamers, we love the background that Story Modes create around the races and legends in the World of Skara. For that reason, we are developing not one but five Story Modes (one per each race).

We are currently offering the opportunity to become one of the Main Characters of those Story Modes to our fans. The first protagonist will be chosen among all the visitors to our booth at the E3 a couple of weeks ago (please visit our Facebook contest to choose him/her), and the remaining four will be chosen among all our Social Media fans. If you are interested in becoming an important part of Skara, follow us in Facebook and Twitter and you can be the chosen one.

In the Skara’s Story Modes (available both online and offline), everyone could end up playing a character with your face and name as the protagonist. Again, we want to involve gamers in the creation process of those factions, characters and arenas as much as possible.

 

Is there anything you would like to tell our readers about Skara?

Something important we often tell is that Skara is a project from gamers to gamers. We want the players to participate in the creative process, building with them a whole world that will last forever. As an Indie company, the interaction with our users is the most important, and we will be able to grow with them as a game, as a company and as a society.

 

Thanks for your time.