Eitr Interview

Written by Charles Husemann on 8/18/2015 for PC   PS4  

Travis Huikner contributed heavily to this interview

Eitr made a huge splash at E3 this year, first during Sony's press conference and then with some great action on the show floor.  After reading the write-up from Travis we reached out about an interview and we were lucky to get some of David Wright's time.  He's the lead artist/game designer for the game and he gave us some great insight into the game.

Could you give us a high level overview of Eitr?
Sure, so Eitr is an Isometric Action RPG with a modern approach on pixel-art and gameplay mechanics. My (David Wright) background in playing games involved a concoction of Isometric RPG's and fighting games, and I always found the melee combat system in your generic ARPG to be slightly on the simple side, you know, click on enemy, your character walks towards it, click on enemy again your character attacks it. The difference with Eitr is that we've build an in depth combat system where players can block, dodge, parry, shield break, etc.

The most striking thing about Eitr at first glance is the game's unique and beautiful art style. What were some sources of inspiration behind the art style?
Well it's funny actually, the way Eitr looks now is actually a lot different from where it originally began. I was new to pixel art, Eitr is actually my first attempt at doing pixel art and when I was originally drawing the assets they were a lot more simple than they are now.

I started off being inspired by 'Superbrothers: Swords and Sworcery', I loved their art style and how their characters had long limbs and small bodies and heads. Knowing that I alone was going to do all the art for Eitr, I wanted to try something quite simple, the original sprites I made were not so... amazing, haha.

So I started reading tutorials and looking at the art of some of the best pixel artists out there and I slowly started to learn that there is a lot more to pixel art than meets the eye, I won't get too technical, but there is a calculated structure, to good pixel art, almost like you're building rather than drawing and the more I learnt the better my art got. I actually had to redraw almost every sprite in the game 4 times because my art improved so much since we began.

What have been some challenges in creating certain visual effects in that retro style?
I actually think the biggest challenge hasn't actually been in the creation, but rather the implementation, as the game is 2D, but also isometric, our biggest hurdle has been 'sorting order' how you determine what objects display infront of other objects depending on their layer and Y-position. Sometimes this can require some extremely complicated algorithms, one that springs to mind is water. We have a map where you're in a sewer like area, and the water goes up to the players knees and as she walks, the water ripples around her.

Because the game is 2D, you have to think about things like when she moves up and down, how does water stay in front of her sprite and behind her sprite simultaneously and the ripples have to do the exact same thing at the same time. Thankfully my co-developer, Tobi Harper, is an awesome programmer and when we sit down together it seems we can pretty much figure out anything.

How has the reaction been since showcasing the game at E3?
Quite overwhelming actually, when we first showed Eitr on our Devlog we really didn't expect much, I remember we put up our first Gameplay video just showcasing our combat system and we were hoping for maybe a few hundred views and we would've been quite happy. That video ended up with 10's of thousands of views completely unexpectedly and next thing we knew we were signed with Devolver showing Eitr at E3.

So when we went to E3, we again really didn't know what to expect, being so new to the industry but we've has such positive feedback from both the community and the press, we're extremely greatful and humbled by it. Though, I have to say this level of hype has really put the pressure on, haha.

What things did you learn from watching people play the game for the first time?
Well thankfully I learned that our game is actually pretty good, haha. Before E3, the only people that tried Eitr were friends and family, I always thought that they would no matter what say the game is good to spare our feelings, so going into E3, we really had no idea what everyone else would think, so far I think the large majority of people who have played Eitr have been quite impressed and I hope that we can continue to impress with future updates, content and improvements.

We also learned that usability is extremely important, players want to get things done as quickly as possible, especially when it comes to things like inventory management. The UI needs to be easy to understand and as intuitive as possible, so in our Gamescom build the inventory management has had some significant improvements over what we showed at E3 and we're going to continue to monitor and improve usability as we move forward.

Another thing we learnt is that we had a number of people, who had trouble adjusting to the speed of the game, Eitr is deliberately slow paced - but it isn't meant to be excruciatingly slow, so we actually increased the speed of the entire game loop, the game is now roughly 1.25x faster and it does make the game feel a lot smoother to play and now we noticed at Gamescom we didn't get a single comment about the game feeling too slow, I think we've got the speed of the game at the right point now.

One of the more interesting elements you showcased at E3 was the game's approach to leveling your character with favor and such. Can you describe how the leveling system functions with your character?
So how it works is as you're going through the game you will find 'Favor'. Favor can come from multiple sources including bosses, completing missions, finding hidden treasures and can also be found, rarely, from any enemy in the game. Once you have Favor, your character will receive a buff. If you return to Yggdrasil, the town hub, you can trade in Favor for Levels.

Levels are not as potent in statistics as Favor, but Levels are permanent, Favor is lost on death.

So it is up to the player if they want to be statistically stronger, but have a risk of losing their strength on death, or play it safe by trading in Favor for Levels and not have to worry too much about dying, you can also be a hybrid and trade some Favor in for Levels and hold onto some.

As mentioned during the E3 presentation, the game will include nine worlds connected via a central hub. Can you talk about the various worlds that players will be exploring?
So these worlds are all pulled from Norse Mythology, what we've been showing so far is Midgard, Midgard is Earth - the world of the human mortals. In our trailer we also showed a little bit of Jotunheim, the world of the giants, there are also a number of more interesting landscapes including Niflheim, which is the world of the Dwarves and is a frozen land covered in mist.. Muspelheim, a world of fire and lava ruled by the fire demon, Surt.. and Hel the land of death and sorrow.

Is there anything important that we missed?
Well everyone usually asks this so, Eitr will be released in 2016 on PS4 and PC. Linux and Mac versions will come after and we are still discussing whether Eitr will come to Vita!

Thanks for speaking with us! Hopefully next time you get more time to actually sink your teeth into Eitr.

Thanks to David for taking to answer our questions as well as Stephanie for coordinating the interview.