Author: Andrew
I was able to host an interview with the developer of the unforgivably depressing RPG Vidar, Dean Razavi. Vidar is an RPG created with the use of RPG Maker but that’s where it starts diverting from the rest of the competition. Instead of actions that supporting and developing a town, the opposite occurs; the town starts to dwindle down as a mysterious Beast kills a citizen each day and you, the Stranger, has to figure out the mystery to the Beast and save the town. No fighting, just intricate puzzles to save the town.
A big thank you to Dean for allowing me to host an interview!
Q: What makes Vidar stand out from other RPG puzzler games?
A: There’s two big things and both of them are focused on the random aspect of the game. The first and the thing that really anchors the game is that it’s a random story so the idea is that in every play through, the [sequence] of deaths that occur in Vidar change every time and as a result as people respond to those deaths it changes the narrative. There’s going to be characters that you don’t get to see their story or character development because somebody’s gotta die on the first night. The idea is that there will be some characters that you will just never get to know which isn’t necessarily the case in other RPG puzzlers. The second is that the content of the puzzles is different, too. Using the Legend of Zelda comparison, the room for the dungeon might be the same but what’s inside of it and where the blocks, torches, levers, or whatever is different every time. It makes it so that even though its testing the same skills and is focused on similar mechanics, the content of the puzzle itself is different. Zelda doesn’t have a ton of immediate replayability, it’s one of those games I love to come back to after I’ve forgotten how to solve everything, but the idea of Vidar is the idea of immediate replayability with the random puzzles. One playthrough is going to be about four hours but the idea is that you should be able to play this and see totally different content 7, 8, 9 times before one small element of the story has been seen before.
Q: If the game passed Steam’s greenlight page, how much do you plan on selling it for?
A: I haven’t really nailed down a price right now. I’m mostly looking at how far we get on our Kickstarter, which will be launching in about two or three weeks; January 11 is the target date for the Kickstarter. So, it kind of depends on how well we do with the Kickstarter. If things blow out of the water, it’s easier to offer it for cheaper. Right now the target is somewhere between $15-$20 on the Kickstarter page. That also comes with Beta access. That’s going to ultimately inform where the price end up but it’s definitely not set in stone.
Q: Do you plan on releasing any extra goodies such as the soundtrack–which sounded great when I played the demo–or eventually creating DLC for the game?
A: Yeah, the soundtrack was created by a Polish musician named Aidan Jakubiak and I want to hand out the soundtrack at MAGFest. We will have copies of the soundtrack there. As for DLC, I wouldn’t really call it DLC but I’d eventually love to release some extra content that further supports the game and it’d only be another character for a nominal price of $0.99 or possibly have it free. But to continue to support the game after the release is important to me.
Q: While developing Vidar, did you look up to a certain game for motivation or is this game influenced by any other RPGs?
A: Yeah, we’ve definitely talked about Zelda and for me Zelda was a huge inspiration for it. For me, the combat was always secondary in Zelda. I really liked the puzzle solving elements to it and so I wanted to do away with the combat entirely in Vidar and instead just focus on what I really liked about Zelda and other games during that era where you had these dungeons that had these rather clever but unique puzzles. It wasn’t about things you had to do over and over and over again. It was about how every dungeon had its idiosyncratic rules and puzzles to solve and that’s what made exploring them really fun. The original inspiration came from a lot of different games that have an additive principle for a town. Even in something like Animal Crossing where you’re in a town that’s slowly being developed and even in something like in Diablo 3 where you’re finding crafters or people to come into the town and its slowly becoming more populated and I wanted to see what happened when that principle was reversed. I wanted to start with a bustling town and then see half way through that you’re now in a ghost town. Like, there were people going around and now they’re not there. That was really the starting point for the game’s concept.
Q: Do you plan on launching Vidar anywhere else besides Steam?
A: Obviously Steam is the main goal and I’ve been looking at Desura and you can actually download the demo right now from Itch.io (click the link if you want to download the demo). I personally love Steam and I am not concerned about the DRM issues. The convenience is just way more important than any of that online only stuff for me. But I know it does concern a lot of people and so I am looking at possibly self-distributing some keys on my own website for people who want the game but don’t want to deal with Steam for whatever reason.
Q: When do you plan on launching the game’s Kickstarter campaign?
A: The target date is ultimately January 15. (This page will be updated with links to the Kickstarter when the funding process launches.)
Q: Anything else you want to let us know? Final thoughts?
A: I’m really excited about the Greenlight campaign that you contacted me through. We are already doing phenomenally well and way better than I was anticipating! We’re getting a lot of really good feedback and positive comments from people, so that’s fantastic. I’m really excited–I’m scared out of my mind–but I’m really excited that we’re going to be launching a Kickstarter soon as well. I think that we’re going to have some really fun rewards; people are going to be able to design puzzles or design events or quests for the game since the concept is all about this randomness it’s great for us because that’ll also give backers an incentive to come back and play it over and over again because they want to see their dungeon in the game. I’m really excited about how that’s going to play out!
Thanks again to Dean for the interview, this definitely got me more excited for this game and I can’t wait to play the game’s full retailed version. If you weren’t able to find any of the links in the interview to various important websites for Vidar, they are down below for everyone!
Click here to visit Vidar’s Official Website!
Click here to play Vidar’s Demo!
Click here to support Vidar on Steam’s Greenlight!
Click here to support Vidar on Epocu!
Click here to visit the Kickstarter!
Click here to visit the artist’s website!
Click here to visit the music composer’s Sound Cloud!
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