Two popular mobile RPGS – Com2uS’s Summoners War and Cookie Run: Kingdom of Devsisters – come together today for a major crossover event within Summoners War. New characters, events and missions will be available during the collaboration, but how do two very different franchises come together in an event like this?
We spoke with Taehyoung Kim, the head of Summoners War developer Com2uS’s Summoner Studio, about the new partnership, including how the two universes fit together, the origins of the partnership, and how long the partnership will last.
Kim also spoke to us about the types of in-game events players can expect from the partnership, including event dungeons and additions to Sky Island, as well as a clarification on how summoners and Cookie Kingdom citizens measure up against each other.
This interview was conducted by email.
GameSpot: How did this collaboration come about?
Taeyoung Kim: We considered three things when choosing a different IP to work with. How well it fits, how different it is and how much fun it would be with Summoners War.
The games have some similarities such as a turn-based collection RPG with many characters and a village or Sky Island to decorate, produce and collect.
We also looked at the differences. We wanted to find characters with a different look and feel than ours. We appreciated how conceptually Cookie Run Kingdom has a lot of fun and sweet characters.
Personally, I really enjoyed playing Cookie Run Kingdom. It’s a well-made game with lots of fun elements that make for a satisfying experience. Not only myself, but many other developers on the team also enjoyed Cookie Run Kingdom immensely and agreed that bringing two games together would be a unique and enjoyable experience for our players.
What do you think made Cookie Run: Kingdom so suitable for Summoners War?
Kim: In addition to what we mentioned, we thought the game was a very good fit for Summoners War. It is a turn-based collection RPG with many unique characters. You can also set up your own village like you can set up your Sky Island in Summoners War. We easily came up with ideas on how to shape the collaboration.
There are multiple cookie characters in Cookie Run: Kingdom. How did you narrow the list down to the five you chose?
Kim: For this Cookie Run Kingdom collaboration, we have a total of five different characters: Pure Vanilla Cookie, Hollyberry Cookie, Espresso Cookie, Madeleine Cookie, and Gingerbrave. There are so many cool characters in Cookie Run Kingdom, so it wasn’t easy to pick just five.
We also considered other cookies such as Sea Fairy Cookie, Custard Cookie III, Dark Choco Cookie, and so on. We wanted the characters we selected to be different from what you would expect in Summoners War. Custard Cookie III was one of the last candidates and our personal preference, but we ended up choosing Pure Vanilla Cookie for the Healing type best suited to Summoners War.
Will there be a lore/story explanation of how these two universes merged? If so, what’s the story there?
Kim: We gave no specific story to the meeting of the two worlds. There are a lot of stories being told through different outlets in Summoners War right now, so we thought it would get too complicated if we tried to combine the knowledge from Cookie Run: Kingdom. We included simple conversations in the beginning of the collaboration content, but they don’t contain an in-depth story.
How will the special events help those coming to Summoners War from Cookie Kingdom to adapt to the new game?
Kim: Various events will be held not only for the Cookie Run: Kingdom players but also for the existing Summoners War players. A wide variety of scrolls are rewarded to increase the chances of players summoning cooperative characters, along with various in-game goods, including runes and devils to grow them. One of the cookies, GingerBrave, is rewarded to players as part of an event.
We’re also introducing a brand new special item, the Kairos Dungeon Rune Set Fix. It is a very special item that allows players to choose the set option for runes dropped in Kairos Dungeon, which will be a great help for rune farming.
Can you give us more details about those special events? How do they differ from the normal Summoners War experience?
Kim: From various in-game content and events to enjoy during the game, the event dungeons would definitely introduce something new for the Summoners War players. The event dungeons are located in a region of Cookie Run Kingdom, so they would take the environment and enemies out of the Cookie Run Kingdom universe. While Summoners War’s transition between stages tends to fade, the characters will enter the next stage in these dungeons, just like in Cookie Run Kingdom. The Red Velvet Dragon will appear as the boss in these dungeons.
We are also introducing several decoration buildings that players can add to their Sky Island, including a building where players can collect all the cooperative characters in one place and Jellybean Farm. While decorating their Sky Island with buildings and decor is a pre-existing concept, a new in-game currency, jellybeans, will be introduced as collaborative goods and produced by the Jellybean Farm.
How long will the crossover event last?
Kim: We are currently preparing many special events so that we can wrap up the two-month cooperation period with great pleasure!
It seems that all characters have the same relative size. Are the cookie people just giant cookies, or are the Summoners really tiny?
Kim: That’s an interesting question. Actually, there are differences in size between each cookie. We adjusted their size within the correct range because we couldn’t make the size too big or too small given the animation of Summoners War.
If we kept the size of the cookies the same, we thought they would be too small and hard to see in the Summoners War universe.
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