Legendary Wars: T-Rex Rumble Interview

We talk to Interplay president Eric Caen about his company's upcoming DSiWare title.

We recently had a chance to sit down with Interplay Entertainment President Eric Caen to talk about their upcoming game, "Legendary Wars: T-Rex Rumble".

TGS: Congratulations on the game going gold, Legendary Wars: T-Rex Rumble would be Interplay's first original release since re-emerging in 2007, correct?

Eric: It is indeed the first Interplay original game since quite a long time. We are excited and happy to release it now, and showing our work. We have followed the same motto: “by gamers for gamers” even if today, many publishers seem more interested by casual gaming projects.

TGS: How big was the development team, what was your role on the project?

Eric: In terms of full-time team members, most of it was the work of just one person, Rob Stevens, who designed and programmed the game. There are quite a lot of other people who worked on the project, though. A total of about 20 people were needed to produce the graphics and animations. Then another one-man team, in the form of Jean-Marie Philibert, provided the music and sound effects.

TGS: Legendary Wars has been in development for approximately four years now, was it always in development as a DS title or did that happen later in development.

Eric: It was the DS’s tactile screen that provided the original inspiration for an RTS (Real Time Strategy) on DS. We finally had the means to produce a fluid interface for controlling large numbers of characters without having to work through clumsy menus or button combos.

TGS: For readers who may not have heard of the game before, can you describe the concept behind the title?

Eric: As I just mentioned, Rob wanted to produce a real RTS for handheld, where turn-based strategy games have been the norm for far too long. With the tactile screen we had the equivalent of a PC’s mouse, so the user-interface was no longer going to be an issue. The next step was to decide a setting for the game’s story and it needed to be something unusual. I had had some success in the past with games based in prehistory and Rob himself had programmed the successful SNES game Prehistorik Man. So it was decided to base the game in a similar environment.

So we knew we were making an RTS set in prehistory. But we couldn’t just make a copy of PC based RTS games because we were targeting a handheld. Consoles like the DS need to have shorter game times for those fleeting pick up and play moments, yet PC RTS games can last hours while you build up your forces and prepare them for battle. We decided to simplify things a little, minimizing the preparation phase so that you can get down to fighting hoards of enemies pretty much right away.

TGS: Can you explain the campaign storyline, what can players expect?

Eric: Basically the game puts you in control of a down and out tribe that has fallen from glory. It is not really all that clear in the first game, but this tribe is the seed of modern humanity, they must survive to start the next phase of mankind’s development towards a more intelligent and organized society. This actually has some bearing on future episodes of the game, but we won’t say more than that for the moment.

But for now the player just has to help them survive day to day life by collecting all the food they need to survive and grow. You start with the smallest size of village possible and just a handful of men, as you progress through the game the village grows and new soldiers become available. Your main foes come in the form of wild animals.

TGS: What type of enemies can the player expect to come across?

Eric: We’ve taken a large amount of creative liberties here, just like Hollywood, and made those animals dinosaurs, just for the fun of it. So you also get to face up to a T-Rex, who’s big enough to gobble up your men whole!

TGS: How is the control scheme, will it be solely touch based or will the face buttons also be used?

Eric: The principal controls are solely tactile. Though some functions appear or are duplicated on the face buttons, it is possible to play the game almost entirely via the tactile screen.

We’re actually very proud of the way we’ve combined complex control concepts into a very simple and streamlined system. It works like this; each man in your village has a target on the ground that is used to control him. Drag this target around and he will also move to stand on it. It is also contextual, so put the target on an enemy and he’ll attack it, put the target on a collectable and he’ll pick it up.

That’s all well and good for one character, but the trick is that if you put the target of one man onto another of your men or his target, they’ll combine into a single target that controls both men at once. You can keep combining targets like this until you are controlling all the men you have! You can also create groups by doing a long press on the ground, which starts a lasso selection, then you just draw around a group of men to combine them.

To remove a man from a group you just drag him away or you can use the lasso to split a group. It’s all very simple and quick, in fact you can create a group and give it an attack order in just two gestures, it’s very powerful.

There are some things that can only be done using buttons. The second screen displays a map of the playing area with dots showing your men. By holding the L or R Buttons you can bring this map onto the tactile screen, where you can tap different places to move your point of view there, or drag your point of view around to quickly scan the entire map.