There’s a sense of humour behind your
early promotional material, though the
game itself seems quite straight-faced.
Is that fair to say? Or are we looking at a
secret comedy game?
HSL: Yes, that is indeed super-fair to say.
Starborne is set in a serious world, grounded
in a rich science fiction aesthetic, where
players assume the roles of commanders
conquering a newly discovered final
frontier. Apart from this setting, the world
of Starborne is entirely player-driven, and
what energy the players bring to the world
echoes within each server. Most just focus
on empire-building and conquering the
galaxy, but we’ve had an alliance role-playas a descendant of the original Spanish
Inquisition, instigating wars and eradicating
players they deem to have remnants of an
entirely imaginary space flu.
In general, Icelanders don’t take
themselves too seriously. We want the
material we release as a studio, where we
talk about the game, to echo this. We think
a lot of players who have joined us so far
have really resonated with the sincerity in
Solid Clouds’ marketing materials. All the
in-game trailers for Starborne however, and
everything that is set within the game world,
is very much grounded and straight-faced.What are your plans for Starborne over the
next few weeks/months/years?
SG: One of our biggest ambitions, post-
open-beta release, will be to connect eachelements that could inspire Starborne. Those
were pillars we wanted to emulate. That is
why our fifth hire into Solid Clouds would
become a community manager, and during
Starborne’s alpha stage development, we
have hosted three Starborne fanfests in
Iceland. We knew the development of the
game was going to be a bit of a slow burner,
so that investment we feel has paid itself
back multiple times and continues to do so.
Both studios are also based in Reykjavík,
which has a population of around 240,000.
Naturally, a lot of knowledge sharing takes
place because of that intimate proximity.
After many moons of development, with
harsh weather conditions and a brutal
lack of sunshine in the winter months, we
are super-proud to present the results
to the world! During that time, our studio
headcount has tripled. Starborne and Solid
Clouds as a studio has developed its own
unique character and identity and has
started inspiring the next generation of
game makers in Reykjavík.
What engine/toolset are you using to bring
Starborne to life?
HSL: We develop in Unity and use the
Azure cloud to host our server. Last year we
switched to ASP.NET for our backend which
has made our lives so much easier in respect
to development speed, cost, and raw server
performance. Unity gives us a lot for free, but
with Starborne being such a unique game,
we’ve been developing our own framework,
named PROSPER, on top of it to facilitate the
development of Starborne, and to be able to
create a series of MMORTS games.
And what about your team – how many
are working on the game?
HSL: We are 18 full-time, on-site in our
Reykjavík office. We have a nice mixture of
development disciplines, and we outsource
for some things, like sound design. Around
15–20 is a magical number in our eyes.
Everyone can sit together while eating
lunch, so we avoid a lot of unnecessary
communication overhead. We are still big
enough to generate enough power for
some really heavy punches, as we’ve proven.
We just have to be [mindful] to select our
shots carefully.
game server to form a metanarrative
where victors are prominently featured
on a perpetual galaxy map, and their
spoils affect an ongoing competition
between in-game factions.
On that galaxy map, you will also start
seeing different types of game modes. We
have worked for a long time to really nail
the core one, but players will start seeing
games that will be slower or faster, featuring
different victory conditions, and be on a
bigger or smaller map. We will be constantly
changing up the formula to keep giving
players fresh puzzles to solve.
In the long term, we want to make the
game more accessible, and therefore we’ve
started looking into different platforms like
browser and mobile.Finally: will I actually be able to get my tiny
mind around what’s happening (unlike
in EVE)?
SG: I’m sure you will! It can be a bit daunting
at first glance, but the best way to get into
Starborne is with friends. Like with EVE,
we have an amazing community that is
really willing to help new players with their
first steps. Our Discord channel is always
buzzing, and we recently launched forums,
so we have a lot of avenues for players to
group up and take hold of the frontier.Starborne arrives in open-beta on 2 April,
on PC.“We’ve had an alliance
role-play as a descendant
of the Spanish Inquisition” It may not show up in-game, but there’s a
real sense of humour behind Starborne.wfmag.cc \ 09InterviewAttract Mode