Les Mondes d’Aria: Our interview with Edouard Gaudel of the Ludogram studio

• Your fundraising on Ulule has exploded its objective by more than 1500%, what is your feeling on this subject? Can we expect any major surprises following this very successful fundraiser?

The fundraiser was great, we were lucky to have the community of Game of Roles who was very involved and very present, which was pleasant for the team and the financial health of the project. We were also lucky to have people who were immediately interested in the world of Game of Roles because they heard about the game. That’s great because we are delighted to make known the world of Fiber.

What also changes are all the levels that have been unlocked. That is to say a large number of characters, we are now at around thirty playable characters and the game is available on all platforms: Switch, PC, Mac, Mobiles, PlayStation and Xbox. Regarding surprises, we are planning things in relation to game modes on Twitch to make the game playable with as many communities as possible.

• For those who would discover the world of FibreTigre with this game, can you present Les Mondes d’Aria and also explain to us how it is a new kind of narrative game.

First a little word about FibreTigre who is a talented narrative designer, game designer and author, and who created the medieval fantasy universe of Aria. It is first a show on Mister MV’s channel with Daz, Lam, Lydia and MV. It is a universe which is deliberately very accessible and which allows everyone to follow the adventures of the group of players of which Fiber is the game master. And we have the idea, which resulted in this original formula of narrative game , it was to say “how can we transcribe this experience of being around the table, around a story? “.

We created a multiplayer narrative game format whose originality is that, most of the time when it’s a multi-narrative game, it’s a voting system. It’s always a little frustrating when it’s a majority vote. There, the narrative designers have created a system called One For All (one for all) which ensures that all player choices are taken into account. For example, when we come across bandits, like in the demo, if ever someone decides to negotiate, another on the contrary decides to hide to attack them, and yet another to flee, and well the story goes adapt to all these choices. It will thus combine an original branch with respect to all these choices.

An unpredictable narrative full of surprises

• Why did you opt for an experience oriented towards the narrative genre rather than towards the T-RPG or the C-RPG?

What interested us in this formula was the accessible aspect. We wanted a game where four people could easily play with family or friends. There, the gameplay is to move a figurine, which is fun because there are a lot of things with that, and it’s very easy to play at the same time. The advantage is that, someone who is a fan of Aria and who wants to show it to his loved ones, he can quite easily hand them a controller locally or online. This principle of playing together was the first criterion. We even had a first iteration of the game, which was a multiplayer visual novel, but that posed a lot of problems, it was a bit restrictive, so we went with that formula.

What also excites us is to take a universe to make it playable for several people and to work with creators, here in this case Fiber, and to tell ourselves how we can make this universe discover as much as possible. of people.

• The Worlds of Aria will incorporate One For All, a unique game system for the genre where the story will not be shaped by the majority of character votes but by “the sum of individual choices. What made you want to imagine it? Have you encountered/are you already encountering difficulties in its design?

Difficulties, there are many on the design of video games but there they are numerous, it is a new issue and full of challenges. As I said with the voting system, it can be a little frustrating when the majority wins. Here the idea is that everyone can surprise or collaborate. We encounter difficulties because there is a lot of interactivity to anticipate and systems that will fit together. We have very good programmers at home who create the tools in symbiosis with the narrative designer, so that makes it possible to have a tool adapted to this type of writing.

• How do you manage internally the expectations of Game of Roles/Aria fans regarding your production?

The chance we have is that the Game of Roles community is really exceptional, in the sense that it is very involved and benevolent. To give an anecdote, we had made a questionnaire before launching the pre-production of the project, and in 24 hours, we had had 3000 answers. It’s one of the rare times in my life where in a questionnaire, a bit of market research, we had people who said “and above all good luck to the team”; “courage for development” etc. It came back a lot. These are people who know what it is to create or at least who know what it means, and who trust Fiber in its choices, and therefore in Ludogram. It is up to us not to disappoint them.

The idea was to make a game based on what makes the salt of Aria’s formula: humor, imagination, surprises, and integrating the strong characters of the universe. That’s why we decided to create a large number of playable characters, including figures that were very popular with fans like Jotun, a fan on Twitch who had “sub” at the time and who saw his name integrated into the game. That’s what we try to satisfy them. We are also going to do an alpha at the end of the year so that those who supported the project can test the game and provide feedback that we can process in order to refine the formula as well as possible.

• The cast of playable characters promises to be quite varied. So, will it be possible to roll a 100 while claiming to be the best chess player in the Worlds of Aria or to burn down an entire city, inadvertently or not?

Yes it’s planned, and for the record, we do a lot of play tests internally and there are players who have a reputation for being really lucky in the team and others who aren’t. Oddly programmers have better dice rolls so we think it’s rigged *laughs* but yes it’s expected to have situations like that. On the tests and the scenes that we created, it already happens quite a bit.

The famous 100 in a role-playing game is a critical failure. It happened in a situation where one of the players, in this case Daz, had to do everything but 100 and he did it at the worst time in history. That’s what we want to push, that’s the kind of moment when it leaves you with memories. It was created as a machine for creating memories together and that’s where the multiplayer dimension was decisive for us. We know that moments are more memorable when they are shared with others.

The teasing of a nice, but still potential, feature

• Do you have an anecdote or an unusual story to tell? Something that marked you or an anecdote of development on the game?

I have one over Fiber. When I say he’s an exceptional person, I sincerely mean it because when we talk to him, very often it ends up on Twitch in stride *laughs*. On the final night, there was a topic where I said to Fiber “please don’t talk about it, we’re not ready for this”, and one moment Lam asked a question in the show, namely is there an engine that allows you to write stories in the world of Aria.

It’s a bit of exclusive information, so I’ll take advantage of it. It’s something we really want to do. We think a lot, saying to ourselves that it would be great if the fans could write about the game world. Just before the show, I tell him not to talk about it, we are still thinking about the question. And when Lam asked the question, he replied, “Ah! I’m not allowed to talk about it but suddenly I can…” *laughs*. It allows me to talk about it, we think about it and we move forward strongly. We want to allow other people to use our tools to create games.

• Can you say more about the form it will take? A dedicated tool or leave the possibility of moderating the game?

That’s all the thinking! In truth, I am impressed by fanfiction, I find it an area that is fascinating. How people take over a universe to recreate stories in it. The RPG has this fantasy somewhere, you can do this exercise in lots of different universes. We, the reflection, she is to say to herself that on Aria, there are a lot of things, a lot of scenarios, and a lot of people who play in this universe because there is a role-playing book published by Elder Craft .

We can tell them, like the book, that they can create their adventures and potentially share them. That’s reflection. It can be tested, it’s big developments to do but it’s something that is close to our hearts. We love allowing people to create so if we can do it, we will. Now we have a big game to produce and we want to deliver as soon as possible to thank the fans for their trust.

• A last word for our readers?

Allow me, I wanted to thank you because you are part of the media who covered Worlds of Aria very quickly and that means a lot to us. I also take this opportunity to talk about the team, we are 20 people who work really well. No crunch here. Beyond the financial success which is very important because it allows the teams to be sustainable and to grow quietly. Recognition also comes from the commitment of the fans, the people in the team were very touched so we really wanted to thank them, including those in your community.

We are very interested in having feedback on what we do, so we have our Twitter account where we regularly post concepts, production elements etc. We also have our Ludogram discord. We are interested if people want to get involved, we are quite open to development. It’s a classic too, but wishlists help a lot, especially for Steam algorithms, it’s precious. So feel free to follow us and add the game to your wishlist. And if you want to support the studio, we are also working on a game called Firebird which will be released in the fourth quarter of this year and which is also in co-production with FibreTigre and Quentin Vijoux.

We thank Edouard Gaudel for taking the time to answer our questions. Aria’s Worlds will be released in summer 2023 on PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch. Firebird, meanwhile is planned, at the end of the year on PC via Steam.