Interviews
Phil Goddard talks about the development of the online Flash title, Exile The Game
“…the whole thing can be played entirely online with no downloads”
Four duchies, equally divided. Then over a tower in the South, a dark shadow appeared. The shroud of the Dukedom of Moloran spread and consumed the South. Scouts from the other duchies went to investigate, but few returned. Those that did spoke of horrors unimagined, of monsters and legions of undead.
Soon, the realm was thrust into a full-scale war. The kingdoms fell, one-by-one, until only the Kingdom of Emeryn remained. The armies of Moloran entered the lands of Emeryn, and the people were pushed out, and finally exiled.
The few remaining settlements of men went into hiding as the darkness took firm hold of the once-prosperous kingdoms.
Exile The Game is an online Flash-based action title that is free for players. The demo does not require registration while the full version of the game does require players to register to play.
It is the creation of two people, Phil Goddard and the programmer known as Martz. Phil was gracious enough to take time to talk with GameZone about this project.
Question: First, what is the premise behind the game Exile? Is the game wide open, or does it follow a clearly defined path? Did you draw your inspiration for this game from anywhere in particular?
Phil: The game itself is still structured in a sense as it is still in its early days. We have planned a storyline for the first five campaigns which will lead you to unlocking all the characters. Once you have unlocked all the characters we will look into a more multi-mission option with the additional options to spending experience points on different characters in different ways (much like traditional RPGs). As far as inspiration goes I initially had the old Gauntlet game in mind but swapping the mass monsters with strategy and storyline. It also gave us more scope for better graphics. I also loved the old Hero Quest board game when I was a kid and other Games Workshop stuff, so wanted to give a top-down dungeony feel to it, just like the board game.
Q: Even though it is a Flash-online game, how much latitude will players have when it comes to customizing their chosen avatar?
Phil: Once the player has unlocked all the characters after Campaign 5, they will have the option to spend experience points how they wish. We want to hopefully then adorn them with different garments and weapons, etc. They should also be able to change clothing / armour colour as well, like in other RPG’s.
Q: What prompted you to create this game? What was your goal when you began to build the game -both short and long term?
Phil: There are two of us working on the game; myself, a Multimedia designer… I wanted to get into online gaming as I saw this as a massively under-developed area of the market and figured it could be done a lot better. Martz, the programmer, hadn’t had much Actionscript programming and wanted to develop these core skills for his career. So the short term was solely for personal development. However, as the game developed I started to play with storylines and characters, and thought it could take off and have a lot of players who could, hopefully – as a community, come up with new concepts for the game.
Q: It is my understanding that this game has a total design/production team of two? How do you divvy up the duties of designing and maintaining the game?
Phil: The design and build of the game is split up between programming and function, and design and concept. I am responsible for all art, design, storyline, character design etc. and Martz is responsible for all of programming and game function. Regarding maintenance, we turn to our players to run the forum, we don’t have much hands-on now with the community side, we don’t need to. Martz also works with Google to help fund the game and the massive server we have. I am responsible for marketing (e.g. this interview, hehe).
Q: What are the particular challenges of designing a Flash-based game, and what were the biggest hurdles you had to overcome when creating Exile?
Phil: The biggest problem we had was the amount of characters we could have on screen at one time. As we did not want to compromise on quality, we had to include no more than 4 monsters in each room. This runs fine on most machines. Another hurdle we are still trying to solve is to do with Internet connection. If a player loses connection during loading or saving it is possible they will lose game data (but this goes for any online media). Nowadays our biggest hurdle is time. Simply finding the time and cash to continually develop something of this size in our own time is a huge fete… we are currently playing with the idea of selling the game to in-house teams who can give it the energy and time it now deserves.
Q: You are offering this game up free to play, but are also allowing players to donate to the cause of keeping the game alive. What kind of operating costs are you looking at? Do you anticipate having bandwidth issues?
Phil: Bandwidth WAS an issue, but we now have a huge server allowing us 1000GB per month, which is cool for now. Our server costs are covered by our Google adverts on the demo and homepage, but our time is not paid for (which is the main thing). Each campaign takes approximately 100 hours from start to finish and in our current work environment is very difficult to find.
Q: What type of combat system do you have in place to challenge gamers? And how many levels or areas does the game have? Will you continue to create content for the game, or - at some point - will you refocus your energies on another project?
Phil: We have many ideas for new projects, but we want to continually develop this game as long as people are playing it. The combat system, along with a lot of concepts of the game will constantly be updated and improved. We have planned 5 – 6 Campaigns and storyline, and really do want to develop further. Currently two campaigns are live with the third in development.
Q: What do you consider the most compelling reasons to go into Exile (could not resist the turn of phrase)?
Phil: No worries, hehe. I think the main reasons to play is that the whole thing can be played entirely online with no downloads. It can also be played from any system running Flash Player 6. Each level takes approximately 15 minutes to play, which is ideal for a lunch time break (I do a desk job, can you tell). Obviously it cannot compete with other MMORPG type games, but as far as Flash games go, we reckon it is the most advanced online today.
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