Broken Hourglass Interview on Gry.o2.pl with JCompton

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From here, posted on 10/09/2009. It appears they're still moving forward, although no guesses as to when it might be released. The interview is in English and Polish. I went ahead and included the English version in the spoiler:

Spoiler

Andrzej "Klecha" Klimczuk (Gry.o2.pl): Welcome. Could you give our readers some background info about yourself?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): My name is Jason Compton, and I am the producer of The Broken Hourglass.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): How would you describe the gameplay of The Broken Hourglass?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): Hopefully, a lot of fun! More prosaically, The Broken Hourglass is an isometric CRPG which takes place in the new fantasy setting of the Tolmiran Empire. You create a single player character and assemble a small team of companions, whom you control to interact with others, fight, cast spells, disarm traps, and so forth.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): What can you tell us about the storyline in The Broken Hourglass?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): The game involves finding out why your home city of Mal Nassrin is under siege, and dealing with the complications and hazards within. You begin the game having only narrowly survived a devastating explosion in one of the city's residential districts and come out of a long coma to find that the city is magically sealed, the local government in shambles, and strange and deadly shadow creatures are appearing out of nowhere. You will have to find out what is going on, and find ways to stop it.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): What kind of locations and settings does the game take place in?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): The game takes place entirely within the city of Mal Nassrin, long-faded jewel of the Tolmiran Empire.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): How are characters created in The Broken Hourglass?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): Players use a character creation wizard to select a portrait (and yes, you may add your own) and gender, and select from one of the six playable races. From there you may spend experience points to buy attributes or traits. We offer "level paths", which are similar to the concept of character classes, which spend about 70% of your points automatically, or you may choose to free-spend all points. You may create any number of characters, but may start the game with only one at a time-the rest of your team is assembled from the residents of Mal Nassrin.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): What kinds of professions will be available?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): There is no "profession" system as you might find in a MMO. There will be a number of level paths. From a story perspective, at least, these reflect a profession ("scout", "soldier", etc.).

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): How are quests handled in the game and what kinds of quests can we expect to see?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): We made an early design decision to make our plot-critical quests as independent as possible-that is, although there are a handful of major tasks you have to complete in order to finish the game, we try to make it possible to approach them in any order you like. These plot-critical quests require a variety of disciplines, from negotiating with soldiers and thugs to exploring the inner reaches of your character's subconscious mind.

The game also has dozens of optional quests, ranging from fleeting encounters to some sticky situations. One involves a man whose wife split into four personalities. Another is a tale of rivalry and jealousy played out over a decade. And some are just an excuse to mix it up with some baddies.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): What about NPCs? Will there be much in the way of NPC interactions?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): The Broken Hourglass offers nine joinable NPCs, which are among the centerpieces of our design. Their personalities, commentary, and skills will help players have a different experience every time they play. Some can become romantically involved with the PC.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): What sorts of spells and weapons will be found in the game?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): The The Broken Hourglass magic system is based around five elements (earth, air, fire, water, and physical force), and ten common spell effects such as damage, healing, armor, and attribute modification. Physical magic is uniquely able to heal, regenerate, and drain life, but it cannot affect the primary stats of a character or creature. Depending on the type of spell, it can be targeted at the caster, a single person, your entire party, all of your visible enemies, or as an area effect. There are also unique spell effects outside the range of the common effects, most of which you learn as special quest rewards or other special benefits.

The weapons are based around key skill groups: bows (including crossbows), hafted weapons (clubs and maces), swords, and polearms. Weapons have different properties which can make them more potent against a defender-Rapid weapons, such as bows, are harder to dodge, while Penetrating weapons such as spears diminish the effectiveness of armor. Also, by improving your brawl precision, it is possible to build an effective bare-knuckle fighter, as the base damage of your fist or other natural weapon increases as your brawl precision goes up.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): What sort of skills will be available?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): There are about three dozen skills you can buy points in. Of particular interest are the skills which can be applied as a group. For instance, your party's Diplomacy score is based on the highest individual score, plus half of the next highest score, plus one-third of the next highest, and so on. Aside from accentuating the idea that your characters work together as a team, this also means that you are not penalized for having multiple characters invest in the same skills-by applying them as a group, you still get some advantage to having more than one character with the same skill. In conventional RPGs, you would usually be wasting your time to have more than one skilled lockpick or diplomat. The Broken Hourglass makes it more sensible to divide responsibilities.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): What enemies and characters will be featured in the game?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): Because The Broken Hourglass takes place in a sealed city, many of the characters you encounter are the citizens of Tolmira, ranging from gladiators and guards to brewers and dye merchants. There are, however, some decidedly otherworldly encounters, such as the deadly shadows and the mysterious Faceless Host-creatures of magical origin who entered your reality in the wake of the destruction of the Primarch's Walk neighborhood. Some ancient horrors under the city have begun to stir as well...

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): What other elements of gameplay you are planning to put into The Broken Hourglass that you think are unique and important?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): The group skill concept is something we're very excited about. The Broken Hourglass has been designed from the ground up around the idea of building a team of characters and caring as much about how you solve the problem with them as just getting past the next hurdle and advancing the plot.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): Approximately how long has the game been in development?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): The very first seeds were planted in late 2004, with the game itself under development since late 2005.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): What are the team's main goals in creating The Broken Hourglass?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): There are so few party-centric, story-oriented RPGs out there, and an obvious desire from players to have more of them.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): Please tell us more about sound and music portion in The Broken Hourglass.

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): We wanted to bring the unique flavor of the Tolmiran setting to the world, and composer Rob Howard has done a very nice job with his original compositions. We stumbled into a terrific convention-the music in the game is "performed" by two very different ensembles. One, the more sweeping and majestic pieces, are played with full instrumentation by what we came to call the "Mal Nassrin Orchestra." The other, which you tend to hear in smaller settings, is what we called the "street band"-simpler arrangements, just a few players, the kind of thing three musicians on a street corner might knock together in the hope of earning a few coins.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): What are the system requirements likely to be?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): Most new computers of reasonably recent vintage should have no trouble with The Broken Hourglass. In particular players will benefit from a system with 1 GB of RAM, a 1024x768 display, and a discrete GPU of the Nvidia 6 generation or ATI equivalent. The game is playable on lesser configurations-I myself have been using an Acer Aspire One as a portable development platform lately-but because The Broken Hourglass has about a quarter-million frames of animation, the memory and discrete GPU are useful. I should also point out that The Broken Hourglass is widescreen-ready and playable at basically any resolution, although 1024x768 is the minimum the interface was designed for.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): Currently what is the status of the game's progress and when will it be released?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): I would love to be able to answer that! We'll just have to keep working until it's done.

Klecha (Gry.o2.pl): Finally is there anything else you wish to say at this point about The Broken Hourglass?

Jason Compton (Planewalker Games): I hope that we will be able to bring our game to you shortly, and that it will become a new bright spot for story-oriented RPG players.