Interview: Arclands Dev Has “No Plans To Give Up” On The Game Post-Launch

Hey! My name is Jon Keller. I’m a Professional Pixel Artist and Graphic Designer. I’ve been making games forever as a hobby and Arclands is the first project of mine which I am planning a commercial release for.
In Arclands, you play as a Wizard who got banished to a mysterious and dangerous land. Try to survive by expanding your settlement to a full-blown castle, learning mighty spells, and forming alliances with all sorts of characters who also found themselves banished. Roughly speaking, Arclands is a city-building RTS with RPG elements – Kinda like a mix between Age of Empires and Zelda.

Keller: I love all those games you mentioned! The biggest difference to most is that Arclands lands decidedly more on the RTS / City Building side of things than those games. While in most games, you only control your player character, in Arclands, you can take direct control of all units, giving it a more RTS-like feel. This makes defending your settlement a much more tactical thing and allows for different playstyles. You never fight against other settlements though – it’s you versus the wild!
A very big part of Arclands’ design is also the so-called Artifacts: powerful relics that can be unearthed by exploring or completing quests and challenges. These have a lot of varied uses: Some might help you speed up certain processes in your economy, and others may be used as defensive mechanisms against enemies. When you discover a new artifact you can also take it with you when you start a new settlement (kind of like a loadout system) – this creates an interesting meta progression in combination with how you build your wizard.
The need for those artifacts creates an interesting loop for the player: On the one hand, you need to stay in your village to defend it, but on the other hand, you need to venture out to get more powerful and optimize/defend your city better.
Inspiration mainly comes from older RTS games like Age of Empires, Stronghold, Warlords Battlecry or the Battle for Middle-Earth series, which already combined strong Hero-Characters with more classical RTS mechanics. Visually though, the game looks way closer to an old-school Zelda title – as a kid, I always wondered what a game would look like where you could build your own Kakariko Village and then had to defend it. And I’m making that game now.

Keller: It felt surreal. I’ve worked on little projects on my own here and there, but actually seeing such a great reception was mind-blowing. It was also a lot of work – people often forget that running a Kickstarter is a job on its own. I had absolutely no time to do anything else than focus on the Kickstarter during the campaign. It was worth it though. Even though it’s been a while, it is super cool to see that the community is still hanging around from day one.

Keller: No, it actually had the opposite effect. I am very wary of over-scoping the project and getting caught in an endless development cycle. Both RTS- and RPG games are already very complex and time-consuming to develop – the support from the community kind of forced me to set realistic and achievable goals. Otherwise, they would be left with a game that tries a lot but does nothing quite right!

Keller: I worked on Arclands as a solo developer for a long time, but recently I welcomed another Programmer on the team – Paddi. Programming has always been my weak point, and I was really hesitant to bring more people to the project. For one, because I was very protective of my vision (which was misguided) and also because I didn’t have the funds to fairly pay anyone. But having Paddi on the team has been a godsend! We have been working together at a Design Agency for multiple years, so we already know how to work with each other well.

Keller: As mentioned before, programming has never been my strong suit. I have hit roadblocks before – most in performance or related to shader programming. Paddi has helped me tremendously as an advisor to fix these issues. Before he was out of a job himself, he decided to join the Arclands team full-time.
Being a solo developer also always comes with a big amount of mental pressure. When you have nobody to bounce ideas off of, you can easily lose focus of what’s important and end up with really bad tunnel vision. I have definitely wasted a lot of time working on features and throwing them out again because I had nobody tell me to think twice.
When you’re working on a project alone for so long, it can take a big toll on you. For example, when you’re sick and unable to work, there is absolutely no progress made. That can be difficult to deal with, but luckily, I found my ways to cope.

Keller: No word on that yet, sorry.

Keller: We absolutely plan to support the game after release! In what way and how much obviously depends on how well the game is received and what we can afford. Let it be said though that we have absolutely no plans to give up the world of Arclands so quickly.

Keller: As the game was primarily designed for keyboard and mouse, we have to really think hard about how we can create a console version that doesn’t feel like a cheap afterthought. We are not there yet. Regarding GOG, I don’t see why not.

Keller: I think the most important part is to stay realistic. The chance to make big money (or any money at all) is very, very slim, and if your only goal is to be successful, chances are high that you will end up broke and disappointed. I think universities offering game development courses are very often doing their students a disservice – oftentimes, those students get treated like engineers and are hoping to find a job just like somebody with an engineering- or computer science degree would do. But in the indie world, it seldom works that way. I know it sounds a little pretentious, but it is much closer to working in any art-related field. People who are successful in the field usually would do the same if they were not successful.
Also, connect with other indie devs! The community is super supportive, and most people are glad to share their knowledge.

Keller: We are really thankful for the opportunity that has been given to us with Arclands. Getting to develop a game has always been a big dream, and we are so glad we are now living it. 🙂