Stray Kite Studios, a collective formed by some of the industry’s most talented and prolific developers, just announced a new fantasy game: Wartorn. With this upcoming rogue-lite bringing together such a powerhouse of AAA talent, Wartorn‘s indie game scale has presented both benefits and challenges.
Slated for later this year, Wartorn is the debut game of Stray Kite Studios—a hub of AAA talent. The team comprises figures who played key roles in games like Bioshock, Borderlands, and Age of Empires. Paul Hellquist, the chief creative officer at Stray Kite (and lead designer on the original Bioshock) spoke to Game Rant about the team’s collective talent and how they’ve adapted to the smaller scope of Wartorn.
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The AAA Pedigree At Stray Kite
Hellquist spoke at length about the team working on Wartorn, pointing to the impressive breadth of experience amongst its developers. Members like Paul Slack and Kyle King have worked on games like Age of Empires 2 and Borderlands respectively, and Hellquist elaborated on how that experience is reflected in Wartorn:
“There is the simple answer that all of the AAA pedigree in our studio has given the team the experience to know what it takes to produce and ship top quality games. More specifically, our art director, Paul Slusser, worked on many RTS games, including Age of Empires 2 and 3 as well as Halo Wars. His experience has helped inform how to make art for the isometric camera view and provides insight into solutions that have worked in the past, especially for controlling strategy games with a gamepad.
Ryan Slack, our lead programmer, has had a ton of experience with UI from many years in AAA and has helped us build a system so we can quickly make the large number of UIs required for the game. Our lead artist, Kyle King, specializes in animation and his previous experience with cinematics and ability animations from Borderlands have really helped us create memorable motion and poses for our characters in Wartorn.”
Here, Hellquist goes into great detail about what the talent at Stray Kite brings to the table. It’s clear to see how all three of these individuals are well-suited to the strategy elements of Wartorn. The game’s isometric view and squad-based gameplay ought to stand out from other roguelikes, and the game undoubtedly benefits from the team’s AAA experience across a broad range of genres.
It’s also noteworthy that the team includes many former Borderlands developers, with Hellquist previously serving as a senior designer for the original Borderlands and as creative director for Borderlands 2. It’ll be interesting to see how this factor plays out, considering that Wartorn’s war-ravaged, dark fantasy world is quite different from the more comedic stylings of Borderlands.
The Challenges And Freedoms Of Wartorn’s Indie Scale
On the subject of taking a team like this to an indie title, Hellquist is understandably optimistic. As an indie studio, Stray Kite Studios is far more limited when compared to the massive budgets of AAA franchises, but Hellquist notes that independence also brings new freedoms:
“Wartorn is truly an indie title compared to the major AAA releases that many of us have worked on in the past. Stray Kite Studios is fully funding the project with our own money and, of course, we have a lot less money than the big AAA publishers. The big win is that we have unprecedented control over the game we are making compared to what most of us have ever experienced in AAA. Development has been really exciting in that way.”
On the other hand, Hellquist also mentioned the challenges of this smaller scope compared to games like Bioshock. He stated, “We have had to keep our ambitions in check. We have huge grand ideas, and sometimes we have had to remind ourselves that our team is less than 10% the size of the teams we’ve worked on in the past.” As many indie games have shown in the past, small, talented teams can work wonders with limited resources and limitless creativity.
Wartorn is coming soon to Early Access on PC.