August 18, 2008

Punch Entertainment Talks Mobile Battles: Reign of Swords, a New Strategy Game for Mobile Phones and PC
By Louis Bedigian

“A lot of us at Punch are big fans of Advance Wars and we wanted to put an innovative spin on that style of gameplay.”

Mobile games don't usually get a simultaneous release on phones and PC, primarily due to the discrepancies in power. That wasn't a big concern for Punch Entertainment, Inc., the developer of Mobile Battles: Reign of Swords, a new strategy game designed for both platforms.

"We pursued a game for both platforms because we wanted to deliver on the promise of gaming-on-the-go, or taking your gameplay experience with you when you were away from your PC/console, while still offering the deeper game experience that you would find on your PC," said Tobin Lent, Founder and CEO of Punch Entertainment, Inc. "Reign achieves this as the players can play the PC version for more time and control-intensive activities, but can use the mobile version to view battle results, issue challenges, respond to challenges, check their buddies’ standings etc. It’s really a nice balance between the two platforms and we haven’t seen this anywhere else."

"Providing the game on multiple platforms was a natural fit with the idea that you can play Reign of Swords in different ways," adds Steve Nix, Creative Director. "There is the single player campaign, which provides hours of game play as you build your army and navigate the story of the Carrone Empire. For this type of extended experience, a player might want to be relaxing at home in front of their PC. For the multiplayer server battles, the setup time and battle replay is fairly quick and might be performed several times throughout the day. A collection of several short play bursts is perfectly suited for a mobile player. By supporting both platforms, it allows our players to experience the game anywhere while providing the best experience for how much time they have available to play."

Reign of Swords has received quite a bit of praise since its release. Start by telling us about the game's beginning (the start of development, planning stages, etc.) and how it went from a concept to the success story it is today.

Tobin Lent: A lot of us at Punch are big fans of Advance Wars and we wanted to put an innovative spin on that style of gameplay. We also wanted to build a multiplayer combat game that could be played cross platform (mobile & PC) and still give a strong experience on each platform. We spent a huge amount of time tuning and play-testing this game, more than any other game we’ve ever developed. Everybody at Punch put a lot of hours and ideas into Reign, and I think it really shows.

Steve Nix: Reign of Swords was a personal indulgence for me as a designer. It is the type of game I enjoy playing and I had wanted to create a collectible army game in this type of fantasy/historical setting for some time. I also wanted it to be multiplayer, while avoiding the time commitment issue of having two players online at the same time for a lengthy battle. This goal led to the design of the player assigning his troops into formation groups and giving them some initial strategy, but then allowing the game server’s A.I. to play out both sides and return a movie-like battle report of the results. I’ve been really pleased that players have embraced and enjoyed this style of multiplayer conflict, as it allows even casual users the ability to launch several battles during a day without devoting hours of their time to do so.

What challenges did you have to overcome in getting the game to run on multiple headsets?

Kyle Poole (Technical Director): The most challenging aspects of mobile development are memory restrictions and CPU performance. It gets even more difficult when you need to try to provide the same game experience to all players, whether they have a high-end phone or a cheap low-end phone that can barely run any games at all. For a strategy game like Reign of Swords, a capable AI for the single player mode was the most critical part of the game, and fitting the complicated formation strategies onto low-end phones was certainly challenging.

Is there a chance the game will be released on Xbox Live Arcade or any other console platform?

TL: We are thinking about Xbox Live Arcade, and also a DS and PSP game. We are launching an iPhone version next month.

SN: I hope so. Opening up the Reign of Swords player community to the Xbox Live Arcade audience would be fantastic and offer yet another way to experience the game.

Reign of Swords appears to be closer than a traditional strategy game than most mobile titles. Tell us about that and how you pulled it off on gaming's weakest (technologically, compared to DS, PSP, PC or the consoles) platform – the mobile phone.

KP: There was always a constant balancing act between the space taken up by art resources, AI code, and map data. Luckily our engineers have lots of experience in optimizing games for mobile. Our strategy has always been to design the game to be the best it can be on high-end phones, and then slowly cut or reduce features as we port it to less capable phones. This allowed us to get the best possible game on every device.

Now let's talk about the most important aspect: the gameplay. For our readers that have never seen or heard of Reign of Swords before, what can they expect from it?

SN: Reign of Swords offers a full campaign storyline of 49 missions and 28 multiplayer battles, each providing an interesting battlefield to wage war upon with an army comprised of up to 23 different types of units. The game is played in turn-based sequence, where the player may issue orders to each of his units on his own turn before the enemy replies. Units often have multiple attack capabilities; either melee and ranged attacks or possibly special abilities such as magic or shape shifting. A winning strategy will require the player to combine his units into powerful formation groups, take advantage of the battlefield’s terrain, and outmaneuver his opponents’ forces to strike at their flank or more vulnerable troops. Victory earns the player new units and/or spoils of war that can be applied to their existing army to upgrade to new unit types. Success in the multiplayer battles of a given kingdom also earns the player noble titles and units as word of their victory spreads across the Empire.

What makes Reign of Swords a collectible battle game?

SN: The player’s army is collected over time through campaign and multiplayer battle success. The player’s choices of which units to upgrade with the spoils of war will also drive their army in a certain direction; favoring infantry, ranged, cavalry, war engines, or special magic wielding units. Their collection of units becomes precious to them, heightened even more by the fact that units can be lost in multiplayer battles. Victory and defeat naturally evolve their army and tell a story unique to each player. In addition, each kingdom of the Empire provides a certain flavor of unit rewards, so players that favor a particular kingdom will naturally see their army grow in that direction.

From the screenshots it appears that at least some of the environments are set in the open with trees, lots of grass and few structures. Obviously it's hard to pull much more out of a mobile phone, but is this the extent of the environments?

SN: While the actual tile set of terrain images was a bit restricted due to the mobile platform, the types of battlefields are quite diverse. There are ambushes, open field engagements, river or bridge crossings, hilltop fortresses, wooden palisade camps, walled towns, and even full castle sieges. The various battle engagement types found throughout pre-modern history, albeit with some fantasy liberties taken, are offered to deliver a very complete experience.

What are the multiplayer features? How many people can you play against?

TL: The [multiplayer] battles are one-on-one battles. We keep scores for each kingdom. Players that get the highest scores in those kingdoms each week are issued rewards which include units and technology to strengthen & upgrade your army. Scores are reset each week so that new players have a chance to claim titles in the kingdom. In multiplayer battles, players set up their army composition and placement on various maps, and then issue tactical orders to their units. The maps and battles are incredibly diverse and include ambushes, fortress sieges, huge open field clashes and battles over all kinds of terrain. There is a lot of replayability.

Reign of Swords features five different unit types (Siege, Calvary, Specialty, Infantry and Ranged), each with a few more different kinds of units (Siege types include cannons, catapults, and trebuchets). How did you decide which of these were appropriate for the game? Were there any you wanted to include that didn't end up fitting with the others?

SN: The unit list was constructed with the driving rule that each unit should have its own role on the battlefield. Even the weakest Militiamen unit has a purpose, as their deployment cost versus their combined strength in numbers makes them an effective unit type. The list was created to be as large as possible, but any redundancy in unit capabilities resulted in a unit being cut from the list or its abilities altered to make it more unique. Two areas that I wanted to explore that weren’t feasible for this version were large units (such as elephants or dragons) and troop carrying units (like wagons or ships).

Shifting gears, tell us about your studio, Punch Entertainment, Inc. How did it begin?

TL: The team at Punch has been doing mobile games together for a long time. Many of us come out of Lavastorm, which was one of the top mobile games studios early in the mobile games industry. We spun out of Lavastorm in 2005 to focus on really innovative original IP, particularly games that had strong community and multiplayer elements.

Is Reign of Swords your first project?

TL: We had several projects before Reign and I think each one was a stepping stone to Reign which is one of the most ambitious games we’ve ever done. We took all of our knowledge of multiplayer, community and cross-platform play and rolled that experience into Reign. Even with Reign we’ve learned a lot which will become invaluable to our next game.

Many indie studios are comprised of developers that used to work for big corporations. Is that true of Punch as well?

TL: Several of our folks came from EA. I think this brings a good foundation that really helps Indie studios out. There are certain processes and approaches that the big guys have figured out, and when you combine that with the innovative spirit of an Indie studio, I think it is a powerful combination to making great games..

Most small studios are eventually swallowed by big publishers. What are your thoughts on this?

TL: It does tend to happen. We are just focused on making the best games we can and building our business at this point.

Do you have another project lined up, and if so, can you tell us anything about it?

TL: We are launching a social networking game called EGO at www.ego-city.com.  We are in the early stages but are excited about EGO’s prospects. This game is playable across mobile phones and the Web. You create custom avatars and develop them tamagotchi style, then you can take your avatar and fight, flirt, and play with other avatars. EGO allows deep interaction between avatars. Its’ a lot of fun. We are all playing it right now!

Anything else you'd like to say about Punch Entertainment, Reign of Swords, or the game industry as a whole?

TL: We hope to continue developing engaging cross-platform multiplayer games, and are eager to see how this style of gaming develops. It’s a very intriguing concept.

Thank you for your time.

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