Update at 07:03, 05 February 2014:
We’ve received word that Mojo Game Studios have changed the name of their title to ‘Aderyn’s Cradle’, out of respect for Flying Cafe’s Cradle. Doesn’t make their project any less stunning or any less worthy of your Kickstarter backing!
Original story at 06:00, 05 February 2014:
I tend to keep an eye on Kickstarter fairly regularly but for the past couple of months there hasn’t been anything that’s really caught my eye. That was until we received an email from Mojo Game Studios about their project for open-world adventure Cradle.
I’m not going to lie: I was forced to watch the promotional video for Cradle without sound originally because I was on a train at the time, and I didn’t even wait until the end before backing Mojo’s campaign. As soon as I saw the opening scenes, travelling through a forest full of lush vegetation and god rays streaming down through the trees, I knew that this was going to be something special that we had to get behind. The visuals are absolutely stunning and, now that I’ve had a chance to watch the remainder of the video and read the rest of the promotional material, the gameplay looks like it’s going to be pretty awesome too.
Mojo Game Studios is an independent game studio based in Pittsburgh, founded in 2012 by dedicated gamers at Carnegie Mellon University. On their website they say that they believe video games are the future; the medium is ripe for a new direction and they want Cradle to help that movement. Thank you to President and Founder Hank Zwally and the rest of the team for taking the time out of their busy schedules to answer our questions about their project.
Can you tell us how Mojo Game Studios was founded and what made you decide to start making Cradle?
“The story of why and how we came together is worth telling. When Mojo was founded two years ago, we were mostly college students who shared the same goal – to create the game we’d all been longing for, and hopefully shake up the semi-stagnant and comparatively unexplored realm of first person RPGs. Since then, our team has grown to include both experienced and new talent in the industry, all who share our passion and dream. The team cohesion that comes with this is awesome.
“At the heart of Cradle is the goal to create a fast-paced, skill-based game, full of exploration and adventure. Anyone familiar with game design practices, however, understands the challenges currently faced by game developers both big and small. Part of the mission of Mojo is to solve some of these problems, particularly when it comes to design. One of the biggest time costs in making a game is rework. Time and again designers come up with new, and often better, ideas that need to be added to the game, only to have these ideas cause a ton of unintended alterations to other aspects of the game. These changes to the game ultimately necessitate rework, and a lot of lost time.
“In contrast, we approach game design from an extremely top-down view, which makes for an unconventional development strategy. So far, our way of developing and designing has lead us to very little, to no rework and I’m confident that our approach will continue to provide such results. But to be honest, I don’t think this project would be remotely possible if it wasn’t for our novel approach that reduces rework to next to none.
“To come back to the question, then, we decided to start making Cradle because of our drive to create something beautiful, but also as an attempt to solve a problem we see bringing down an industry we care deeply for. Being manager of these guys is a pleasure, and the team cohesion and sense of friendship that we share makes our communication very efficient. We all share the same goals and dream, and the passion to achieve those dreams. Cradle could have never been done without the type of team cohesion and clarity of vision that we all share.”
According to the Kickstarter page, Cradle is the story of an outcast who stumbles into the centre of an ages old struggle between humanity, nature and the gods. For those who haven’t heard about the game, would you be able to give us an overview of the plot?
“Cradle is set in Anora, a land presided over by five gods: Ostia, God of Mouth; Nitima, God of Heart; Acie (AH-chee-ay), God of Eyes; Ryphae (RAI-fay), God of Mind; and Aderyn (ADD-ehr-in), God of Hand. In the beginning, as each god’s existence began, they divided up the land, each claiming their own territory, or ‘cradle’. For ages, the five gods presided over their respective cradles in relative harmony. Aderyn the Maker set himself apart from the other four gods, however, in that he encouraged his followers to exercise their free will. This angered the other gods; their followers began to abandon them for Aderyn’s more merciful ways. By uniting their formidable forces, the Four challenged and defeated Aderyn, wiping his lands from the very face of Anora in what became known as the Soulfire Crisis. Over time, the memory of Aderyn and his followers faded.
“His essence and power did not.
“In Cradle, the player experiences the wrath of the gods through the eyes of a traveler who’s been exiled from the lands of Ostia, a thousand years after the Soulfire Crisis. As you flee Ostia’s all-consuming wrath, Aderyn’s ancient, overgrown shrine is stumbled upon, deep in the wilderness and long-abandoned. After seeking refuge there, you later take up arms for Aderyn. Cradle is the story of the journey you embark upon to restore his cradle to Anora and save yourself from the wrath of Ostia.”
This was the sight that got me hooked on Cradle.
A comparison that a lot of people will make is to the 2012 success The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in terms of both style and gameplay. Have any titles influenced your work?
“Yes! Here are our main inspirations, and how they inspired us:
“As you can see, Skyrim is one of our influences. Cradle is, nonetheless, different from Skyrim both artistically and in key gameplay areas such as combat.”
The game features RPG elements that most gamers will be familiar with: quests, character classes, weapon and armour augments, and mana for example. What makes Cradle different?
“I’ll have a chance to talk about our unique combat systems in a moment, but another thing that sets Cradle apart is immersion. When a player becomes immersed, the longer they stay immersed the more immersed they become. The first step to creating the best immersive experience, then, is to identify what things break player immersion, and then prevent them from happening in-game.
“Immersion happens on both a conscious and subconscious level. As developers, it’s imperative that we recognize and address this. For example, the biodiversity, speciation, and variety of flora and fauna has a huge impact on how much the player becomes immersed. Our own world features a lot of variety that goes unnoticed because it is static; you don’t consciously note every different species of plant, animal or fungus you walk past on a hike, but the mind will still sense their absence, causing an environment to ‘feel’ unnatural. Likewise, no player will explicitly comment that, say, uniformly-spaced trees renders them unable to believe they are in a forest. Nonetheless, more variety and randomness in a natural environment gives more of the illusion that the game is real and better immerses the player.
“UI design is also big. The goal of our UI design is to give the player exactly what information they need, no more no less, in the most intuitive and non-intrusive, visceral way possible. Rather than bars and numbers, we’ve found more subtle ways that get the same message across. When it comes to our HUD, we do everything we can to convey only what the player needs, with as little screen obstruction as possible.
“Other than that, we are ensuring our world has a deep and rich history so that players feel the reality of Cradle. It has a past, present and future, and the last is for you to decide.”
The game makes use of the Realfight Combat System, developed by Mojo Game Studios. Can you tell us how this will work and what it will bring to the experience?
“Cradle’s Realfight Combat System is a new way to fight, developed by Mojo Game Studios to bring the player an unprecedented level of dynamic control in first-person melee combat. Realfight brings four main tweaks to traditional first-person melee combat as it’s implemented in games such as Skyrim or Chivalry:
“Deterministic Combat Animations enable the player’s attacks to change based on which part of the enemy’s body is targeted. In other words, where you aim to attack on your opponent determines which attack your character executes. Because these choices vary by weapon, but are the same from enemy to enemy, this system is easy to learn and intuitive to use. Simply by aiming and clicking the left or right mouse button, you are able to choose in real time where and how you will strike.
“Order determinism allows for smoother chaining of melee attacks; where you last struck has an effect on how the next attack will play out. If you have a sword and want to do a slash right at the torso of an opponent, followed directly by a slash left, simply aim at the right torso and click the right mouse button, then aim at the left torso and click the left mouse button. The result is a continuous slash to the right and back from the left. This system adds fluidity and reactivity to our combat.
“Weapons and weapon weight also factor into Cradle’s Realfight system. Each weapon is designed to have different strengths and weaknesses in combat, which is something not usually captured in first-person melee combat as far as their effects on blocking, dodging, or interrupting enemy attacks. For example, a player cannot successfully block a heavy mace with their own small dagger, nor could they hope to make a dent in a heavy shield using a short sword. The beauty of this system is that there is no restriction on the player from attempting these moves; but the fundamentals of the physics, momentum, and other aspects of real-life weaponry are present to build their intuition for what works, and what doesn’t; what to compensate for, and what to exploit.
“Likewise, another layer of realism is added through proximity determinism. Essentially, when a player is too close to an opponent to accurately swing their weapon, they will push off from their enemy in order to reposition themselves on the battlefield. These push-offs will also be deterministic, according to where the player aims and which weapon they are using. What this improves upon, in traditional melee games, is the inconvenience of being unable to reposition without interrupting the flow of combat.”
Cradle features five distinct environments: Icelands, Quarry, Desert, Bayou and Titanwood. Which of these has been the most complex to design and which is your favourite so far?
“The Bayou is most complicated to design because it has the least grounding in reality. It’s a swampy, fungus-infested marshland which is home to the center of trade and the biggest metropolis in Aderyn’s corrupted lands. Much of our artistic style finds its roots in the beauty and wonder of the natural world; we want to invoke that awe and wonder as you explore Aderyn’s cradle. Designing the Bayou forced us to expand our creative designs further and stretch our minds to feel and picture it; to imagine the type of wonder the place would exude if it existed in real life.
“My personal favorite is the Quarry. I am a lover of nature, so the abundance of vegetation, the lush landscape really excites me. I also love waterfalls and the feeling of mysticism that accompany them. All natural landscapes, like all of our environments in Cradle, have their own flavor of mysticism to be experienced. The atmosphere that accompanies the Quarry is one that resonates with me particularly.”
Cradle features some extremely striking and distinct settings.
We’re really impressed by the use of the CryEngine for this project and already the game is starting to look amazing. What made you decide to go with this engine over other such as Unity and Unreal?
“Our decision to use CryEngine is grounded in the idea that we want to capture the beauty of the natural world, and use it to evoke wanderlust and the thirst for adventure in players. To do this, we wanted the graphically most advanced solution we could have. CryEngine also allows us to create seamless open worlds using voxel terrain sculpting.
“Albeit a challenge to work with, CryEngine has indeed been sufficient for our needs after the additions made by our programming team.”
What challenges have you faced going down the Kickstarter route? Were you prepared for these when starting out?
“There have been a ton. We anticipated a lot of them. For instance, we expected to be on call, responding to questions, comments and concerns 24/7. We also expected to have to gather new content to show people over the course of the Kickstarter.
“But to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, there were ‘unknown unknowns’ that we couldn’t have anticipated. One of these unknown unknowns was how much additional content we’d have to upload to Kickstarter to communicate the vision of Cradle. This has caused us to have to add additional content and clarification on our page that weren’t prepared for time-wise, but should have been. We also didn’t expect to have so much difficulty getting covered by larger media outlets like Polygon, but this has proven to be difficult due to our newness in the industry.”
Is there any advice you’d give to someone who’s thinking of making an indie game?
“To be honest, it’s hard for me to say, because the game we’re making is really not an indie game in size, scale or scope. I really don’t have experience working with a traditional indie so I don’t have quite the same challenges nor advantages. However, one general piece of advice I’d give: ensure you have the best communication methods and as clear definitions as possible. Anything that anyone talks about or decides on, from production to responsibilities, make sure it’s all well-defined. Much of Mojo’s success hinges on airtight teamwork and coordination. This is how we can be so certain that our vision is being implemented just the way our artists, programmers, designers and musicians expect it to. Losing sight of that through the production and rework process kills a lot of games. Without clear definitions, this coordination quickly and easily falls apart in ways that take valuable time to remedy.”
Can you tell us which component of Cradle you’re currently working on? How are you feeling about its release?
“To be honest, the answer to that is ‘everything’. That is, we work on all of our different things in a parallel format to be able to test them quickly and in an integrated fashion. One that’s going on now is full implementation of combat and hammering out all of those details. It’s coming along very well.”
What does the future hold in store for the Mojo Game Studios team?
“Provided we’re successful with Kickstarter and Cradle as a project, we plan on taking our approach to different genres. With Cradle, we hope to bring a new type of game to the market that will redefine RPGs. In future Mojo endeavors, we want to bring the same approach to other genres of games. Not to mention, the world of Anora we’ve created is simply too vast to be encompassed in a single game of this type. The only hint I’ll leave you with is: Cradle only details the journey through Aderyn’s lands. The rest of Anora is left to explore for the future.”
We hope we get the opportunity to explore the rest of Anora in the future.
Thank you once again to Hank and the rest of the Mojo Game Studios’ team for taking the time to answer our questions. If you haven’t yet checked out Cradle on Kickstarter, make sure you head over there as soon as possible; the campaign needs to raise $350,000 by 21 February 2014 in order to be successful and it’s looking so good that we can’t let it fail!
The game is due for release in summer 2016 so there’s still a while to wait but, from everything we’ve seen so far, it’s really going to be something special.
