Announced last year of the Indie World Showcase in December, Deliverance is the upcoming noir drama from Change this year. Developed by the indie team Atomic Wolf and L.INC, it compares the darkness of the dystopian comic book story to the narrative of the chapters and the playful scene used in the sidelines. The result is a playful graphic novel with hand drawn art that made you engage with a bad shot and a choice of dialogue.
To find out more about this exciting meld media, we spoke with Marek Czerniak and Konrad Wałkuski, Creative Director and Producer respectively at Atomic Wolf, about the trial and error of finding the right balance when mixing legitimate, hopefuls of attracting comic book readers and key gamers, as well as global facts and genres team that the team was looking at during the Liberated development.
Nintendo's Life: The release includes the status of a comic book or graphic novel and video game interaction. Tell us a little about the game and its conception.
Atomic Wolf: So… how did it all start? Yes, we as a group of liberals – we are big fans of both, grew up in video games and comics and are still a big part of our lives. So the simple answer is that it was a kind of… obvious thing to do. (smiles)
A big (challenge) was to get a good rating (…) Shoot too far in any direction and end up with a visual novel or action game with comic ciccenes.
Indie gamedev is more widely available than ever, digital comics are becoming more and more popular, so let's just think: why haven't anyone done this yet? We probably did many more and digital comics!
So we came out and decided to make the world's first graphic novel. Our dream experience – something that feels and reads like a comic book, with every visit associated with it, but also draws you directly to the stories, actions, and challenges you can overcome.
We have been kicking around various ideas and trends for quite some time. Just trying different art styles and gameplay elements, or starting from scratch several times (which you see now is actually the third reboot), until we finally get to the fun part – this is fun and engaging and a good balance between comic book and video game.
To be completely honest, there are times when we feel that it's actually kind of strange that two-way communication can end up working together.
We have seen previous attempts to mix games with other art forms (film, music, etc.) with various effects – some surprising, some not so much. What challenges did you face in combining these two different ideas?
Hey man, there was a lot of challenge. Like I said, it took a lot of effort to get to where we felt we were in a good place.
Great indeed was finding a good balance between a comic book and a video game. Shoot too far in any direction and you end up with a visual novel or a comic book action game. So even to get to that point when we felt we had the right balance, that took a while.
What you think is as simple as speech bubbles: you have to take into account shape, fonts, reading speed, variety, and don't get me started doing the localization.
This was also important as we hope to reach not only gamers, but also comic book fans who are probably not the best players. One of the ways in which we do that job is to introduce two gameplay styles – something challenging for players, and a standard student story mode.
After that it is rather the comic book's taste and style that we want to maintain whether or not you read the story. That means less details like visualization of the sounds (real-life "BANG!" Shots), but also finding an art style that transforms seamlessly between 2D and 3D. Think In Spider-Verse, who did an Oscar-worthy job of that kind of thing.
And I mean, creating comics is often as hard as hell. We have some amazingly talented artists on the team, but we're an indie studio and not veterans in the comics industry, so we had to get a lot of basics right. What you think is as simple as speech bubbles: you have to take into account shape, fonts, reading speed, variety, and don't get me started doing the localization.
Sounds great and loud, we settled on this. We don't do overs, so music and sounds are very important in setting the right tone and feeling and acting when reading a comic.
You know in the end, we can just keep touching and changing things forever because there are always advances or new ideas to try. But I think we've come to a pretty happy place, our players generally agree, now we have to look at how everyone feels and go from there.
The mix as seen in the trailer (at the bottom of the page) immediately brings to mind the Mega Drive / Genesis game Comix location. What inspirations – anywhere in between – have you been looking at while developing the game?
This is a really big question because for years, our team has been threatening two generations. Everyone brings their part and their own motivation to the table.
But let's start with the obvious: video games. Comix location, XIII, Max Payne, and a bunch of others who are already busy mixing comic books and gaming so that will be part of our DNA. We've seen some very limited pieces of comic book influence in those video games, but I don't think anyone is passing that way with freedom. We look again Inside and Complex Shade like the best of all, so I hope that comes in handy.
We are very inspired by cyberpunk because, in fact, we are not around (…) pieces of the puzzle are already here, and they all come together in the Liberal world.
Also: Comic books, comic books, comic books. We have to learn the hell out of format. As for V for Vendetta and anything by Frank Miller, in particular Sin CityWe work differently, they all have a huge impact. Our art is often inspired by a noir, but I hope we found ourselves.
And then – and I think this is just as important as the way the game looks and plays – there is a world and themes we shoot for. And of course, to get a good list of incentives is simply to open the news.
We are inspired by cyberpunk because, in fact, it is all around us. Named after many mistakes, deep delusions, distant drone wars, online world politics, Cambridge Analytica and subtle globalization, high inequality, China's social note system – puzzle pieces are already here, and they all come together in the Liberated world.
So, humanity has experienced a kind of cyberpunk dream, but it is still something that affected us as a teenager and we feel very bad. They asked around the office, some of us used to play pen and paper Cyberpunk 2020, read Gibson again Ghost in the Shelf, we learn about androids and their electric dreams. Speaking as a studio based in Poland, Jacek Dukaj and his novels are a complete treasure – I believe Old Axolotl is available in English, and Netflix is actually doing a show! The little people in our group say it all The Dark Miracle and Blade Runner, and we sat down with them to watch Matrix for the first time (too bad they never made other clues (smiles)).
Liberated is built by Unity, even though using a specific tool developed by LN. Can you tell us about the tool and how it helped improve it?
Working with the Liberated version of nature has allowed us to build our tools, so now we're building an entire framework of Playable Graphic Novel around it. PGN we call it. The reason is why we want to keep following the release. Continue to explore this concept of bringing comedy to a whole new level – not just video games with pieces and comic book flavor, but we balance the comic book experience highlighted by sound, movement, choice, and loyalty to its gameplay god.
The game comes to PC and changes first. Kind of like a Nintendo computer tablet supposedly makes it perfect for a comic book game. Are there any other reasons to make the game a special switch-timed?
I will not use sugarcoat: in fact, the release will not be an escape. It's fun, it's inspired by the world around us, and full of gray shadows.
I understand that the Switch form is ideal for a comic book experience that you can take during a walk or relaxation at home. And what's more important, whenever we show a game, people can immediately ask "Is it coming to Change? That's the way I want to play this!"
So we had to pay attention, and switching (focus pun super) to the Nintendo platform seemed to help a lot as an indie studio with limited resources. Nintendo is a very good partner, released and featured on the latest Indie World show that comes with a whole new community (hello Nintendo Life!). We are very excited about the scope and support of Nintendo.
What is the biggest challenge of building a switch? We think that controls, UI and text scaling should cause more headaches than any of the standard issues.
It sounds like a reasonable font size and text scaling seems to be a problem with most games these days. Being a comic book and all, Release is very closely related to the script so we're really looking forward to that. Switching is a huge trick when you think of management and TV mode, so we've developed a solution that allows us to dynamically adjust the view size and text size to fit each mode. The efficiency and smoothness of the switch is something we work hard at right now (…) We make sure the comics look good and accessible no matter where your mode is.
There is certainly no shortage of intimate dystopias that we should enjoy in games (or books or films, for that matter). With the current events of mass isolation and increasing news coverage of destruction and gloom, how does the player's fatigue struggle and separate it from the release of other games with similar settings?
I will not use sugarcoat: in fact, the release will not be an escape. It's fun, it's inspired by the world around us, and full of gray shadows.
But we do not intend to be preached with a clear agenda to tell you who is right or wrong, who is good and who are bad people. We take a step back from that, and look at the variety of characters in the Liberated world. I do not want to go deep into the plot, but you will encounter themes of hope and despair, price conflicts and ideas, and good people coming together on a broken plan.
The release is coming this year – what is the concept on the exact date of release?
We are not ready to do more Q2 by 2020 right now. Sorry! Soon ™ ️. A broken game is really bad and all that.
Finally, are there any Switch games the team enjoyed during their off-season?
Short answer: yes!
Long answer, to go around the room: I just finished Return of Obra Dinn by Lucas Pope over the holidays it was a completely professional work, and now it's down and in between Astral Chain and Fire Cone: Three houses depending on the mood. I understand Luigi's house from our game director, too Dad is you, Grim Fandango, again A night in the woods from others. So, it seems our taste is very different!
Thanks to Marek and Konrad for their time. The release should be with us sometime in Q2 this year, so keep your eyes peeled for more details and let us know below if you want what you've seen so far.
