We had the opportunity to interview the Empire of Ember developers. Today we are joined by Patrick Kevin Day (writer), who also worked on TellTales Batman and the LA Times, and Kevin Jenkins (developer). We did both an interview and a first look at the game. So let’s dive in and read all about this intriguing mashup of games! Or, if you want to know our initial thoughts, scroll down to the end of the article.
Before we dive in, however, let’s do a quick rundown on Empire of Ember;
Enter a world of steel, war, and magic to avenge the murder of your wizard master. Recruit and lead your army in hundred-unit clashes. Design, defend, and lay siege to fully destructible cities. Loot procedurally generated dungeons. The fate of an empire is in your hands. A secret enemy launches a surprise attack on your home, viciously murdering your wizard master and leaving your city in ruins. No longer an apprentice, you must take charge of a magical kingdom and rule as you see fit.
Fight
- Use the environment to crush, trip, impale, or explode enemies.
- Raise fallen enemies and command the undead to fight on your behalf.
- Fully destructible cities. Use catapults to fire from afar or blast through the walls and lead your troops through the breach.
Command
- Lead your army in the first person, in battles of up to a hundred units.
- Tactics matter. Order your men to hold the line with a shield wall while archers rain death from above. Teleport behind enemy lines to wreak havoc.
Build
- Design, decorate, and defend your own fully destructible 3D city. Strategically place spawn points to rain fire from high towers while melee units defend the gates.
- Integrated sharing. Download, destroy, and rate other players’ cities.
Rule
- Make decisions that can change the story and lead to different game endings. Features a story written by Patrick Kevin Day, a former lead writer from Telltale Games.
- Hold court and pass judgment on daily events in the lives of your subjects.
Although I already spoiled a little bit, can you introduce yourself and PoleAxe Games?
My name is Kevin Jenkins. I’m a 46-year-old game developer that has been working in the industry for about 20 years as a programmer. I loved building Lego castles growing up. Lego archers would defend the walls, soldiers would hold the gates, and catapults would lay siege. But plastic siege boulders hitting the walls would just bounce off. I’ve always wanted to play a game where the player could actually smash a hole through enemy walls and lead his soldiers through the breach, so I started to build it myself. I’m responsible for the design and programming, but I tend to do a lot of other things related to the game as well.
And I’m Patrick Kevin Day. I wrote the main story of the Empire of Ember. Previously, I covered the entertainment industry for the Los Angeles Times before moving into game development around six years ago. I worked at Telltale Games, where I wrote for The Walking Dead: A New Frontier and both seasons of their Batman games.
Before you started working with PoleAxe Games, you worked on TellTales Batman. Could you give us a sneak-peak into the world of TellTale and how it is to work with such a studio?
Patrick: Telltale was my first job in the game industry, so it was very much a steep learning curve. Before that, I’d written TV and developed several projects for Hollywood studios. But the interactive aspect of Telltale’s games added a whole other level of complexity. It’s hard enough to write a decent scene between two characters, but to write multiple variations of that scene and make them all equally compelling? It was a huge challenge.
When I first saw the footage and game logo for Empire of Embers, it reminded me a lot of Age of Wonders, Age of Empires, and all mashed together with Mount & Blade. Could you give us a quick rundown on how the game will function?
Kevin: Dark Messiah of Might and Magic inspired me to the idea of a battlemage where you could specialize in melee weapons or focus on magic. As you correctly noticed, I’m also a huge Mount and Blade fan, particularly of their combat system. But we also wanted a larger scope, a world where the player could adopt multiple roles: battle-mage / army commander/leader of a kingdom.
As a battle-mage, the player can personally level up his stats, buy new weapons and equipment, and research new spells. These can be combined in interesting ways that synergize with each other. Different load-outs are useful in different situations, be it a dungeon exploration, army combat, siege, or long solo mission.
As an army commander, the player has the ability to enter into a light real-time strategy mode; this is a more tactical approach to combat. In this mode, the camera zooms out, and the player can drag / select units and order them to move, attack, or hold position depending on what’s happening in the larger scope of the battle.
As the leader of a kingdom, we wanted the player to be able to pass judgment on his peasants, like in Dragon Age: Inquisition. These can be moral decisions, trade opportunities, or other decisions that affect your kingdom.
The game has been designed with the player in mind so that they don’t have just one role but adopt key responsibilities that directly affect the game depending on what decisions they make.
Since the story is in the hands of Patrick, we have high expectations. Can you elaborate a bit on the story and setting of Empire of Embers without giving away too much about the plot?
Patrick: Kevin licensed the world of the RPG Ember, so when I came aboard, there was already a strong base from which we developed the story. The original Ember game introduced the basic idea of the Embers as a mysterious source of great power and the Lightbringers, the people who wielded that power. I took that idea and thought about what kind of a society would grow up around such beings. The Lightbringers would surely live like kings. But what about the races that chose not to approach the Embers that rained down from the sky? It seemed there would probably be a lot of jealousy and mistrust. And rather than put the player on the outside, viewing the Lightbringers from afar, what if you were working directly for one of those Lightbringers and he was a decent guy?
It was important to me that the story not be a traditional fantasy quest, where you have to get the sword that kills the demon, etc. I thought it would be more fun to put a murder mystery at the core of the story, and through that investigation, you start to uncover the political dynamics of this world.
Empire of Embers features both procedural dungeons and a full-fledged city builder with destruction-able elements. Is there a PVE and PVP element in both? Or is the game fully focused on giving the player an immersive PVE experience?
Kevin: Empire of Ember is focused on PVE but includes an asynchronous multiplayer element, whereby other players can lay siege to and loot a copy of your city. The copy includes spawning points and your army composition, so it’s similar tactically to fighting another player. Visually, there are over 1000 different placeable structures, each fully destructible. We want the community to feel like they are contributing to the universe by being able to create their own cities with the city builder rather than solely pursue the story inside of the game; we want that experience of community and creation to go beyond what’s inside the game itself.
As mentioned before, the game will be heavily story-based and even features multiple endings, depending on your choices as a ruler. Does this mean we can go full Game of Thrones and conquer the whole of the continent (and fail to do so, and lose it all)?
Patrick: I can’t reveal that! What I can say is that players who wish to pursue raw, unchecked power will be as equally gratified as those who rule with kindness and benevolence. We don’t judge!
And, something we ask everyone we interview – what’s your favorite console and game (apart from your own game, of course)?
Patrick: Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of Animal Crossing on Nintendo Switch with my daughters. We share an island. Our dynamics in real life are mirrored in the game in a lot of interesting ways. I’m constantly urging them to save their money and pay off their loans while they like to create random objects and then leave them strewn about the island for me to pick up. It’s fun.
Kevin: My favorite game of all time is Subspace, which was one of the first large-scale multiplayer games on the PC. But for more modern games, I think I’ve logged the most hours on XCOM 2.
Anything else you would like to add/let the readers know?
Patrick: I hope everyone has fun exploring this new world. I had a blast visiting it myself.
Kevin: We’d like to invite your readers with comments or questions to our Discord channel (https://discord.com/invite/qRgFqrU). It’s not easy being a self-funded indy developer, and words of encouragement help a lot!
We want to thank PoleAxe Games for doing this interview with us.
First Look – By Timmy Adriaens;
I played the game in early development, which means there are usually many cracks in the facade of a game. Sadly I experienced many, from very slow movements to not responding to commands, … I do not even know where to begin properly. I know most of these will be ironed out, but it is hard to keep a good impression from a game when too many things go wrong. My gaming system is a beast with a 20k benchmark and is an Asus Zephyrus, so it should not be due to my system underachieving unless this game requires more than Cyberpunk…?
The thing that irked me the most is the inability to do a 90 degrees turn within less than 3 seconds. Lagging during a battle and obvious frame drops were a frequent appearance as well. In short, the game is not there quite yet. But I am sure these issues will be ironed out, providing for more decent gameplay. I can also say that I look forward to the finished product as I saw some promising elements.
For more in-depth details about the game, I would like to address the readers to the trailer I posted above. It goes into some of the elements Timmy mentioned in its first look. We look forward to playing the completed game and hope you do too! Be sure to drop in on the Discord.
