Fans of the roguelike and roguelite genre have had some real gems to enjoy over the past few years, with excellent games like Dead cells and the award of last year Hades which offers an incredibly satisfying, run-based dungeon crawling on Switch.
Curse of the dead gods is another example that has been gradually building up its fanbase in Early Access on Steam for some time, and developer Passtech Games will soon be bringing its crisp, spicy combat and beautiful particle effects to you in a Nintendo system – it’s becoming on 23rd launch on Switch eShop February. The word on the street (well, at least on Steam) is ‘Very positive’, so you’ll want to pay attention when you’re partly with spicy, crackling fights and explosions.
We caught up with Passtech’s Margaux Saly to find out more about the studio’s history and inspirations, how the team sees comparisons to Supergiant Games’ god-filled, top-down action title, and what to expect from the Switch version of this multiplatform roguelite …
Nintendo Life: If you may have missed it, can you give us a brief outline of Curse of the Dead Gods and what it’s all about?
Passtech Games: Curse of the Dead Gods is an action roguelite that takes place in a cursed temple. You seek eternal life, but end up in your own snare. You will face a horde of enemies in the dark corridors of the Jaguar, Eagle and Serpent Temples; you will fight against the champions and deadly boss of these places, only to die again and again. But you will rise and become stronger if you find ways to escape death.
The temple is ruled by the God of Death, Xbeltz’aloc, who finds a malicious pleasure in using your greed against you. Pay with your own blood at altars to get better equipment, but watch the consequences of suffering curses that determine the course of each run by random modifiers. Defeat your enemies, but get ready to deceive the traps covered by the shadows. Light is your best ally in the temple!
Tell us a little about Passtech Games – how big is the team and how long have you been together?
Passtech Games is a small French studio in Lyon. It was founded in 2012 by Sylvain Passot as a one-man studio, as he worked alone on the first game. It has grown over the years as the projects have become more ambitious. All the core members of the team joined Passtech Games a few years ago, and we have known each other from previous projects at various game studios.
We have released a total of four games together: a tower defense called Space Run, its continuation Space Run: Milky Way, a top-down adventure game called Masters of Anima, and of course Curse of the Dead Gods. Today we are about ten permanent members in the team, and sometimes a little more during the production phases.
COTDG has been in Early Access for a while now – how long have you been working on the game, and how did the ideas behind it develop?
We started working on the concept of Curse of the Dead Gods in 2018, just before the release of our previous game, Masters of Anima. We knew we wanted to go for a much darker and sharper game, so we spent a lot of time creating the combat system and the artistic direction of the game. We got inspiration from our favorite games – mostly Darkest dungeon for the cartoon art style, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the version of 3D cell shading.
We liked the way the roguelite genre worked, we thought the top-down camera fit, as well as the game mechanics we tested at the time. It was also a genre that enabled us to present a challenging, skills-based experience; while you have a large progression curve and a lot of content. Right off the bat, Early Access seemed to fit in best with Curse of the Dead Gods, as it involved the community in the development!
How did the game’s early access period shape and change the end product?
The Early Access format contributed a lot to the development of the game. Of course, we had our own guidelines with all the main content we wanted to integrate into the game, such as the Serpent and Eagle Temples. However, the community has helped us a lot to expand our list and test the game mechanics on a large scale. Some ideas have actually been adapted thanks to direct feedback from players. Early access is really an excellent tool to bring a balance between games and fresh ideas to concepts. Although we had a very precise vision at our game, it was always interesting to consider the suggestions of the community and try to integrate them into the existing mechanics.
However, the community has helped us a lot to expand our list and test the game mechanics on a large scale. Some ideas have actually been adapted thanks to direct feedback from players.
On the other hand, we also had to trust ourselves as developers, because the purpose of Early Access is not just to blindly accept all the feedback from the players. There has necessarily been a certain amount of ideas questioned and thought about. For example, we’ll get negative feedback about the Final Curse (which is pretty bad and so intended), but it comes from players who do not really understand the purpose of this curse. On the other hand, players told us when we made a bad decision about how to reward them with meta-currencies, so we decided to listen to it and adjust the concept.
Either way, it was great to see all of these players get involved with Curse of the Dead Gods and get to know it so well that they know what can and cannot be added.
It’s always a challenge to start a game across different consoles – how smooth was the process of running the game on Switch?
Definitely a real challenge! But we are very proud of the way the game looks on the Nintendo Switch and other consoles. It does not betray the computer version, even though of course we made concessions in the graphic version and performance of the game. Today we are pleased with the result on Nintendo Switch with a resolution of 920p when the console is docked and 720p in manual mode, as well as 30 stable frames per second, which is much appreciated for a game where reflexes and fluidity are of utmost importance is. If we have the chance to further optimize the game on consoles, we will of course do so!
Following Supergiant’s success with fellow roguelite dungeon crawler Hades last year (another game that went through a long early access period), did the reaction – and the comparison – with that game affect your approach to COTDG in any way?
First, we were very happy to see such an amazing response for Hades and Supergiant Games. It’s always nice to see a game succeed, especially when you can see that it puts a lot of passion into it.
As for the comparison: for us, it stops with the fact that it’s a top-down roguelite. These are two completely different games in the way they present themselves. Curse of the Dead Gods is almost a strategy game where every move must be devised to prevent it from falling back on us, while you can be carried away in Hades by the amazing madness of the battles. The success of Hades and its comparisons did not at all affect our approach to the curse of the dead gods. Our game was already in development before Supergiants’ announcement, and as I said before, it remains two fundamentally different games. It was very interesting to see what they could do with the genre, because it was really innovative and effective. After all, one can only be flattered by such a comparison.
Curse of the Dead Gods is almost a strategy game where every move must be devised to prevent it from falling back on us, while you can be carried away in Hades by the amazing madness of the battles.
How much impact has the game and team had over the past year or so from global turmoil?
Fortunately, we are in an industry that is not too much affected by the pandemic. Almost all of our work can be done remotely, and that’s a real blessing, especially when we’re in the middle of developing our game. Lockdown in France started shortly after the release of Curse of the Dead Gods in Early Access and we had to adjust our working methods. Of course, it affected our productivity in the beginning because we had to get used to a new rhythm and new ways of working together. At Passtech Games, we had been working remotely from time to time, so the entire team was ready to work from home. But it was true that it was not very practical to come up with ideas, troubleshooting, mechanics, etc. Not to be exchanged. Our early access suffered in a way because we would have liked to integrate even more content, but we had to make choices and put things off the list. Hopefully we will be able to add it after the release of the game if it is successful.
Do you have any concrete plans regarding the launch after the game is out?
We are currently working on the first patch after the launch, which should be released in the first two to three months after the game’s release. It offers new content like new weapons, remnants and curses, and even a nice surprise for roguelite fans! We will not say more for now, but you will know soon enough! After that, we’ll take a step back from developing Curse of the Dead Gods to see what the players and the community have to say about it, and hopefully they’ll enjoy the game as much as we do so we can keep it new. to add!
Is there anything else you would like to mention that we have not touched on yet?
We look forward to sharing Curse of the Dead Gods with the Switch gaming community and hope you enjoy our Cursed Temple!
We thank Margaux and Passtech for taking the time to answer our questions. Curse of the Dead Gods begins on February 23 on Switch.