Mythos Interview (con't)

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the playable characters in the game?

Phil Shenk: Right now we have two races, the Gremlins and the Elves, with more on the way. The Gremlins are little punks, extremely clever, and a little snarky. They love life, love to have fun, and love to be “cool”. They have weird slang phrases that nobody else really gets… it’s hard to know if they’re giving you a compliment or they’re teasing you. They never shy from a fight, but they also won’t hold a grudge; they are just too fun-loving for that. They are extremely handy with tools and gadgets, and they love to make complicated, crazy contraptions.

The Elves are moody, dark, serious folk. They don’t go in for games, or frolicking, or tom foolery. That said, everyone else treats them as if they were glade-dancing, flute-playing, happy-song people. This pisses the elves off of course, because they just want to be taken seriously, and recognized for their deep, tragic, soul-baring thoughts.

We have two classes right now, and there will be many, many more. We’re trying to make each one slightly different, slightly quirky, but still recognizable and of course fun. The first is the Pyromancer, and he, naturally, deals out fire, smoke, explosions and sparks. He’s got a crazy fireworks vibe going, and his spells come off like visual displays of colorful pyrotechnics. We’re working on making his skills as fun to look at as they are useful. He will probably be able to function as both a ranged class, and a melee class, although the theme we’re going after is “unstable”. He’ll be capable of doing great damage, but he’ll also be fragile at times.

The second class is the Bloodletter. He’s a melee class, and he specializes in making foes bleed. He has abilities that can cause little bloodlings to sprout up out of blood pools, to scamper around and fight for him awhile. He can heal himself from bleeding foes, or strengthen his minions with it. He also has a range of more standard melee skills that can do big hits, or AOE hits, etc.

Both are a lot of fun, but still very much in flux. We’re changing stuff every day, and nothing is written in stone. The Alpha has given us a chance to look at how people are playing, listen to their feedback, and make changes. Like I said, it’s a great game to try out new stuff.

FiringSquad: What sort of enviroments and locations will the game have?

Phil Shenk: We will eventually have a wide assortment of dungeons to play in, and also some kind of feeling of progressing through the world. We’re still working on the exact mechanic for this, but we really want you to feel like you are moving around and traveling from place to place. Most likely, some of the dungeons will be tied to the monster races. For instance, you’ll be fighting through the Goblin country, and encountering different races and clans and accompanying quests.

One thing we’re doing that we are pretty happy with is the ability to discover maps to new locations. If you find, buy or otherwise aquire a “map”, you can use it to put that location on your map, and then travel there at any time. This lets us make new dungeons whenever we want, and to make special quests, events, or themes. We could make an “Epic Infested Goblin Citadel” that nobody has ever seen before. If you found that map, you’d be pretty stoked! It might even be worth it to put it up for auction!

FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the combat system in Mythos?

Phil Shenk: The combat is a lot like Diablo… you click where you want to go, you click on a monster to attack. You can put abilities into your right and left mouse slots, and you can also line up abilities in a hotkey bar. You’ll be able to fire off most of your spells with just one key or button push, so the action is both fast-paced and tactically challenging. It’s a strong feeling with us that a game like this should be easy to play, and it should feel fluid and natural. That concept worked well for us in the past, and there’s no reason to change it. We look for places we can improve it all the time, but that core idea is always there.

FiringSquad: What kind of enemies and monsters will the game have?

Phil Shenk: Lots :) Right now, we have a race of Goblins, with some more tribes on the way. We have another race called the “Fangosaurs” that are lizard-like. Some are intelligent, some are beasts… there will be different clans of these also. We also have some undead (we call them the “Graven”), and some exotic beasts, like the “Tongue Lasher”. There are lots more races that aren’t in the game yet, and they all have a place to play in the world history. Some of them like each other, some of them don’t. There are some very old and powerful races that know more about the history of the world than anyone else. There are some dark secrets that are perhaps better left unknown!