Like a true survivor.
Trying to tell an affecting story about a family of castaways through a survival/management game is quite the balancing act. Dead In Vinland dare to tackle it and the studio’s co-founder Matthieu Richez talked to us about how they managed to pull it off.
Hi Matthieu. To start off, please introduce yourself in a few words.
I co-founded the dev studio CCCP 13 years ago. We’re mainly known for educational games (serious games), but we’ve always developed games. In recent years I decided I wanted to take the company in a new direction: Now we develop games we like to play ourselves and work more like an indie studio with no constraints. I am Lead Game Designer on these games.
How would you describe your day-to-day work in a few words?
I split my time between studio management (as little as possible :wink:) and on game design for our games. It’s actually very varied: I can spend a day writing dialog for a character or designing a new system for the game or answering questions from graphic designers/programmers; or I could be doing paperwork, profitability tables, managing partners, etc.
Where does your love of survival games come from?
Hmm, well I like two elements of these types of games: careful management of sparse resources and the difficult choices you have to make, and how character relationships evolve in an isolated situation. One of survival’s assets is that it’s fertile ground for creating memorable stories, which are written or conveyed by the gameplay. But I’m not really a die-hard survivalist, even though the prospect of hiking in nature with just a backpack on appeals to me more and more these days 🙂
What were your references for Dead in Vinland, for the atmosphere, world and game design?
It wasn’t particularly straightforward. We were somewhat inspired …read more
Source:: GOG – Good Old Games
