One More Gate: We take stock with the Ankama team


After a demo quite appreciated by players during the Steam Fest, One More Gate continues with an early access giving the horizon many updates before a release in early 2023. In order to take stock of the project and its ambitions, the editorial staff spoke with Adrien Bariau and Papinaut, Game Designers of the project.

One More Gate: In a few months, a game forged by the community

A few introductions are in order first before discussing with the two members of the One More Gate team. For the first, Adrian Bariau, Game Designer, rather comes from the mobile pole of Ankama, having been able to participate in projects like Cosmobot or Nindash, before starting to work on One More Gate. Papinaut, Associate Producer, has already been seen on the side of Dofus and especially Dofus Retro, with a few appearances during Ankama Live.

An “iterative” construction of the game

One More Gate is part of a desire to make turn-based and a card game. If the idea is not new on the Ankama side, attests to this long series of games with this combat system, we note an ambition to add the roguelite aspect and especially to accelerate this format to the point that it is forgettable by its fluidity.

Adrian

We have been working on the game for about 2 years. At the beginning, I was alone with Tot [Anthony Roux, PDG d’Ankama] to establish constraints and production bases. There was a good freedom before arriving at a prototype and starting to create the team, growing to 3 members and now about ten for a few months. »

The team evokes the abandoned idea of ​​offering an episodic game, very narrative. However, it was not retained and it is the roguelike aspect that will prevail, with its shape lite. The player thus does not totally lose his progress over the runs, through experience or better basic spells. The concepts around One More Gate will continue to evolve rapidly with an important stage of conceptualization and benchmarking. This phase consists of analyzing the existing game environment to find ideas, points for improvement and to constitute a concrete set of objectives for the game. The Maelstrom, for example, is the result of this reflection to easily identify the game.

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Papinaut

For the gauge mechanics, the idea came as benchmarks based on blackjack. The size of this one was indeed 21 with steps at 7, 14 or 21. The whole thing was however lowered to 6 to keep something more fluid »

Oropo, imperative or additional freedom?

After a very short season 3 of Wakfu, viewers had little information about Oropo’s story. Yugo’s clone was supposed to shine but passed too quickly, so much so that Ankama will dedicate a special episode to him thanks to the Season 4 Kickstarter. prequel character and possible transmedia content. As a reminder, the game team clarified that the story told would be canon.

Adrian

Oropo was of course at first a constraint but quickly and after some research, it was finally much better. There is a great vagueness around the character. and this one remains intriguing, enigmatic and without a real tangible story beyond season 3.”

The Krosmonote, an important step for One More Gate

The first public appearance of the project took place during the Krosmonote 2021. This, in addition to a first point with Adrien, had brought a presentation trailer. Despite mixed feedback, the team continued their work. Thus, she took a large part of the build presented to redesign certain environments, recognizing a first preview which was not ideal.

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Papinaut

The Krosmonote just allowed us to highlight the existence of the game. It also gave us a first feedback follow-up in particular on the decorations »

Indeed, we can only see this big work of the graphic aspect, with an effort on the environments. We therefore move from a fairly closed cellar to much more open plains and fields, favoring the demonstration of the possibilities of artistic direction. The character design was much less criticized and remains very similar. In addition to the visual improvements, we note the cancellation of Echo as a playable character, always intervening against the story. The team, however not excluding the addition of new options in the future, prefers to focus on Oropo for the release in early 2023.

A community-oriented demo

Openness to the community is a key point of One More Gate. Whether through constant improvements and very active exchanges on Discord, the team wants to follow discussions between players as much as possible, when they are obviously relevant. The official Discord is also strongly highlighted as soon as the main menu is opened.

Papinaut

Exchanges with players are our number one objective, especially during the demo phase. We are conducting tests within Ankama, but external feedback is very useful for balancing, gameplay and the general feel of the game.”

Game design in Early Access

Creating a game and its mechanics is an often abstract notion. If the game design understood as on Dofus, Wakfu or Waven is much more complex, it is interesting to look at it under the prism of a game still in formation. How to balance monsters and spells without oversimplifying, making a run impossible or keeping a roguelite intuitive?

Adrian

The difficulty is set according to my own difficulty barometer, as well as various tools. I use a large Excel sheet of values ​​that I update according to feedback and especially their occurrence. This allows me to balance spells and monsters according to different weights, which I can modify more or less freely. »

This system is fairly common in GD design, whether or not player feedback is considered. It can be applied locally to sets, such as Waven spells or Dofus stuff. Obviously, raw stats aren’t enough to balance more abstract mechanics. This makes early tester meta analysis even more essential.

Papinaut

For example, we looked at Poisons and Pierce-Armor damage after the demo, coming back very often in the feedback. The first run, currently impossible, will also become so. »

A tight roadmap

After a fairly short demo, the team plans an Early Access arrival on Steam and the Ankama Launcher in the coming weeks. This announces that content will be added and submitted for feedback regularly before ending on a “release” version. The target window corresponds to early 2023, with plans on paper for DLC depending on the success of the game. Note that unlike the demo, the saves will not be deleted this time from an Early Access version at the other. The final version will however require a full reset. In addition, a Switch version would also be in the cards.

Papinaut

We are already looking for development [de la version Nintendo Switch]. A mobile port could be envisaged but would require much more work of adaptation much more technical, on the interfaces in particular. »

Thank you to the members of the One More Gate team as well as Ankama for the time given to this discussion. You can also find our game preview test via this link.



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