Genre mashups are becoming more common as independent studios thrive with the game engines and legacy knowledge available online. Roguelikes and card fighters are particularly saturated, whether slow and methodical Kill the spire or quick like One step from Eden – Self inspired by the battle grids in Mega Man Battle Network. Remixed inspirations often give an indie game the opportunity to stand out, and Righteous Hammer Games’ ZOR: Pilgrimage of the Slorfen aims to use tabletop and survival games to make his deck building experience more To play chess-Like it.
Righteous Hammer founder Clint Jorgenson wanted to combine that style with his love for the cute-yet-eerie pop culture zeitgeist of the 1980s; illustrated by works like The dark crystal, Labyrinth, and The never ending story. In ZOR, a pair of Slorfs travel to discover what has fallen from Zor – their star god. The duo must fight back not only enraged creatures, but also the impending famine. Game Rant spoke to Jorgenson and artist Gavin Yastremski about designing and balancing ZOR‘s visuals and gameplay.
ZOR: Balancing between cute and creepy
Prototyping on ZOR started after Righteous Hammer’s debut title Solitairica released in 2016, and it quickly snowballed with financing for contractors through a British Colombia Creative BC grant. The first pass focused on concept art and getting enough 3D art, animations and audio to build the ‘vertical segment’. Yastremski joined shortly after, bringing environmental art experience from projects such as Plants VS Zombies Garden War and Apex Legends.
Thank goodness Gavin joined because the 3D stuff is such a step up from the 2D of SolitairicaJorgenson said. “If you see the art before Gavin came along, it can’t get a hold of what things look like now.” While Jorgenson laid the groundwork for ZOR‘s fantasy setting, which draws on 80s worlds created ‘before the rules were set’, makes the duo feel the smallest details together in an organic way. An attractive part of this project for Yastremski was that you had more to say than you would get in a big AAA team: “More ability to follow your own gut feeling.”
“For the most part, there was a pretty big blank slate — more than I was used to. That’s scary, but it’s pretty awesome to actually contribute and set up something that we came up with ourselves.”
It took a lot of back and forth to find the sweet spot between too cute or too creepy. Yastemski said: dark crystal has attractive, beautiful colors, but can “still give you nightmares”, and the upcoming game aims to capture this dynamic by avoiding unsaturated grays and browns so that things look appealing on the surface. But “if you look a little closer, some things might look a little dirty or creepy, giving you a freaky vibe.” That balancing act was particularly difficult with each new biome.
As ZOR Approaching its Early Access launch on August 30, Righteous Hammer has participated in events such as Steam Next Fest and the Yogscast’s Tiny Teams. Getting a demo for Next Fest was a particularly “great feeling” for Yastremski, who said getting to see a large audience enjoy it gave the team energy to keep going. As the lead artist, Yastremski wanted to make sure everything was visually clear without the procedurally generated set dressing detracting from the overall experience.
An example of adjustments to ZOR thanks in part to feedback from fans, the perimeter art. Yastremski said it would have been easy to float his hex-grid cards in space to stand out. Instead, the grid looks like a small clearing in an otherwise large, intimidating world, allowing players to feel their progress. “That went through quite a bit of iteration.”
ZOR: A Soup of Gameplay Mechanics
Jorgenson said heavy strategy board games such as: twilight battle offered ideas for making card-driven tactical gameplay “more accessible and streamlined”.
“There’s something really cool about the way a hand of cards becomes this decision engine, where there’s a bit of randomness, but because you control your hand and know what’s in your deck, every turn becomes an emerging puzzle.”
Yet Jorgenson also wanted to make sure ZOR has not sacrificed depth of motion. pulling from Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir ForestUsing the environment, Righteous Hammer has implemented survival and crafting elements to ensure that players can’t always do the “best”, most predictable. The Slolfs players control start with a handful of cards and can collect recipes and materials to craft new ones. By gaining experience, players can upgrade some cards between stages, resulting in “hundreds of cards” to make each run unique.
However, every action a Slorf takes – moving, attacking, and harvesting – must come from a card, many of which cost hunger or thirst points. Even discarding a card to pass in turn pays its cost. After defeating each enemy, the player can keep pushing his Slolfs to collect more materials before resting by the campfire; a quiet moment to create or upgrade maps and other stats. “Every turn, every step, everything you can do is something you have to think deeply about,” Jorgenson said, and ZOR‘s design avoids the downtime of moving around the map in games like Advance Wars.
It took a lot of time to create a card-driven tactical ‘board’ game where players juggle food, drink and fight. The intense, puzzle-like decision-making is designed to leverage the strengths of games such as Final Fantasy Tactics or In the Break. Jorgenson said balancing all these elements got easier when Righteous Hammer approached the idea less like play Whac-A-Molea forever, and instead establish a hierarchy of basic concepts on which more detailed ideas are piled.
“This game is more about the infinite ways that the smaller amount of content is combined. You never get bored because there are always different layers.”
Feedback from Steam Next Fest also helped focus the game’s mechanics, such as implementing deck slots to avoid the natural hoarding behavior. “We’ve all played witcher where you have 75 drinks and never drink one,” Jorgenson said, but if he has too much harvested material, Slorfs can’t draw cards (a realistic, but “pretty lame” representation of being overloaded).
Once ZOR launches in Early Access, Jorgenson said it will receive regular updates “until we’re satisfied.” “There probably won’t be time to celebrate or pat ourselves on the back,” he said. “I just hope it catches on because I know it’s a very new concept.” Jorgenson thinks he’s too perfectionist to leave anything unfinished, and his experience at AAA studios has led to an aversion to trends like microtransactions that can get in the way of a polished, tight game. “We hope people appreciate it, and we can continue to develop this idea.”
ZOR: Pilgrimage of the Slorfen is in development for PC, with a Steam Early Access launch scheduled for August 30.
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