OR: Shifting back to Tangledeep, do you have a favorite ‘job’ to play as?
AA: I would probably have to say the Sword Dancer. The design of it is really neat. It’s based on Tai Chi sword fighting, which is not something I’ve personally done, but it’s the kind of thing you see in a lot of martial arts movies- [like] Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon– there’s a lot of influence there. And the gameplay of the job is really fun, with a lot of mobility. And rather than standing in place and trading blows with the enemy, you’re always moving around in different ways. And it rewards you very well for your tactical play.
“So I think [The Legend of Shara will] be especially exciting to people who have played the game a lot. But even if you’ve only played the game a little bit and you’ve seen the first quarter, the first half, it’s going to be like a ‘breath of fresh air’ to see new areas, new layouts, and new monsters.”
OR: You just announced on February 22 the new expansion, Legend of Shara, which is currently due to be released this month.
AA: That’s the plan. I’d say that’s the plan only because the localization is taking a little longer than expected. There’s a lot of challenging text elements that has taken the translators longer than I thought. Ideally, yes, this month.
OR: With the localization, how much ‘say’ do you have over how your game is being localized and what approach are y’all taking? Are you looking for a strict one-to-one, something similar, or like ‘this is kind of like what we’re going for emotionally, so run with that’?
AA: I think what I’ve tried to do with each language that we have right now: Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and German- I’m working with the individual translators, which is really nice. I think if you’re working with a team of translators, there’s more of a chance that the style and delivery and tone is going to get muddled. Whereas, if its just one person, they grow to understand the game and its context. So generally, we try to convey the meaning without being unnatural. Sometimes, one-to-one doesn’t make sense. For some things like names of creatures and characters, you want that to be pretty much unchanged. But if there’s humor or jokes in English, those might not translate exactly. So translators have some leeway there.
OR: Going back to Legend of Shara: What is this expansion about, and how does it fit into the larger Tangledeep universe?
AA: This expansion came about partially because players reacted positively to the character of Shara. She is somebody you meet about halfway through the game. I won’t spoil anything about her other than that she’s a major character in the game. She’s not playable, and people connected with her. And I could see in our Spoilers channel about her in the story- what you learn about her, the events between your character and hers. So I thought it would be interesting to take this same kind of core gameplay, and do it from that character’s perspective, and change- rather than having a job system, she would have her own custom gameplay [instead] of fighting the same bosses and having the same cutscenes. It’s the same dungeon, but the encounters in the story are different, her allies and enemies are different. So that’s sort of the fundamental pillar of it. It’s a new story with a ‘twist’ on the traditional gameplay.
But the other element of it is basically more content and ways to play for everybody. So even beyond that one story, the level cap is increased, so people that have beaten the game and are hungry to find ways to power up their character- there’s more ways to do that. There’s more monsters. There’s very difficult post-game areas that people who have invested hundreds of hours into the game, and they want to see how far they can push- there’s new ways for them to do that. But the other sort of major pillar is what are essentially ‘mystery dungeons’, similar to the Shiren: The Wanderer games or more modern examples [like] Bloodborne’s Chalice Dungeons or Diablo III’s Greater Rifts. It’s not exactly like those things, but you set aside parts of your character and you start at the bottom of an entirely new dungeon that is entirely generated. There’s usually some sort of scenario with it. Maybe certain creature types are there, maybe you are limited in certain skills or items, or some other twist.
And you play that dungeon from start to finish as a game-within-a-game. And if you win, you get a new type of item that’s very, very powerful [that’s] called a ‘relic’. So this kind of gameplay is pretty, regardless of what level you are as a player- you can play it as a short, sort of ‘coffee break’ dungeon run, fifteen floors, very simple- or you can go for a marathon, a tower that deals [with] fifty floors and do that to power up with the best possible items.
And people have responded very well that have been beta testing this. And I’m pretty excited for it too.
OR: Why procedurally generated?
AA: So the one thing that people have talked about with the core dungeon in Tangledeep– even though it’s randomly generated -procedurally generated- there are a lot of common elements. You always start the game in Cedar Caverns, which is a forest environment with the same sort of monsters. And you proceed into the next areas, Fungal Caverns. And so there’s a structure to it. You can, to some extent, plan. You know that Fungal Caverns is going to be a wide-open area with certain kind of monsters. You know that the kind of things there are going to be in Cedar Caverns at the beginning of the game.
So with these sort of mystery dungeons, you have to think on your feet. Because even though the general parameters, you might know there’s going to be robots here, you might encounter frogs. The monsters themselves are randomly generated, so they could have powers unlike those you’ve seen in the regular game. The layouts can be different- they can be much smaller, much bigger, a combination of different maze-like or ruin-like elements.
So I think it’ll be especially exciting to people who have played the game a lot. But even if you’ve only played the game a little bit, and you’ve seen the first quarter, the first half, it’s going to be like a ‘breath of fresh air’ to see new areas, new layouts, and new monsters.
“That being said, I couldn’t help myself- there’s already probably the equivalent of half of another expansion in the works.“
OR: In the teaser that y’all dropped on YouTube, you mentioned a Calligrapher job. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
AA: Yes, so that is going to be the thirteenth job in the game. And with every job in Tangledeep, I’ve tried to have things that aren’t super traditional. Or if they come from a traditional fantasy background, I try to put a little bit of ‘spin’ on it. For example, rather than Necromancer that summons skeletons, we have a Floramancer [that] summons various plant creatures. The Paladin is probably the most traditional we have now.
So Calligrapher came from a sort of ‘FINAL FANTASY-style ninjas’. Somebody that dual-wields and uses elemental attacks and focuses on offense [by] sacrificing defense. And rather than being able to take a lot of hits, they would rather dodge hits completely. So we took that gameplay style and we thought ‘How can we put a twist on this and make it fit in the Tangledeep world better?’ And [that]s the idea of a Calligrapher- somebody that is doing cool stuff with magic runes, reading scrolls and things like that, and using ink-based attacks, dancing brush strokes- that seem stylistically interesting while keeping the sort of offense-based gameplay. Blasting enemies with different elements, using two weapons at once, dashing all around [and] dodging attacks.
OR: Will this job be exclusive to the DLC, or will players be able to use it in the main original game as well?
AA: It will require the DLC to unlock that job, but then you can use it anywhere. You can use it in the expansion content [and] you can use it in the regular game’s content right from the start.
OR: Is this the last expansion from Tangledeep, or do you expect more content in the future like this?
AA: Legend of Shara is a little bit of an experiment, because we put a lot of time into it. There’s a lot of art, a lot of music- obviously a lot of new gameplay. It’s taken the better part of a year to wrap up, and we’re still working on the localization of course. And I’m honestly not sure how people will react. I don’t think it’s the case, but if people don’t bother to check it out, then spending another year on another expansion probably wouldn’t be worth it.
That being said, I couldn’t help myself- there’s already probably the equivalent of half of another expansion in the works. Not complete in any way shape or form, but there were ideas that I had for this expansion [that] I started on and I realized that they were too thematically different. So I set them aside.
So if Legend of Shara does well, I would go back to those ideas, continue, build upon, and flesh them out into a full expansion. If Legend of Shara doesn’t do that well, then I might try to just polish up what I already have for that incomplete content and release new – comparatively small- but release a major free update or something like that. But it would be a tenth of the size of what the full expansion would be.
So it’s like how many more resources we would put into that would depend on how this expansion does.
OR: Can you tell us any about these ideas for this half-finished expansion?
AA: So it’s ‘half-finished‘ [means] ‘half-finished’ of the ideas I already have. And we would go beyond this- but what I’ve already come up with was the idea of basically a series of new hidden areas and themed bosses. Like, a slime dungeon, a frog dungeon, with new slimes, new frogs, and new gameplay mechanics in each of those new dungeons. At the top would be custom, huge, bosses of that type. Like, super-special frog of some kind that is four times the size of normal enemies.
And the other concept that I’ve had was a sort of crafting system. Something that people have brought up in Tangledeep is that once you get pretty far into the game, and you’ve gotten good equipment for yourself, you often find items that you don’t need and you sell them to the shops. But that’s kind of boring, though. What if you could do something like combine certain pieces of equipment to make something better, or re-roll a piece of equipment you have to get different modifiers? Things like that. So the idea of a crafting system to give you more ways to use your inventory is something that I thought would be interesting. So that, what I just said, is about half-done.
If Shara does well, I would take that and not only build on that further, but go even beyond that and probably do a fourteenth job also and some other stuff. More new monsters, more new items, you know. I really do enjoy working on the game. I have many, many ideas. *laughs*
Tangledeep is out now on Steam, GOG, and the Nintendo e-Shop (NA/EU/AUS/JP).
Have you picked up Tangledeep yet? If so, what do you think of it and what is your favorite job to play?
Let us know in the comments below!
