Oceanhorn: Chronos Dungeon – A match made in Indie
A few weeks ago, we made a surprise announcement: a new chapter in the Oceanhorn saga will soon be available on Apple Arcade (hint: it’s just a few days away!)
Oceanhorn: Chronos Dungeon is a bit of a detour for the franchise. This time, the game could be described as an action-heavy multiplayer couch co-op dungeon crawler with rogue-lite elements. Yes, it's a mouthful!
For this title, Cornfox & Bros has been working in strict collaboration with Lauri Paakinaho of Woblyware. Lauri is the gaming-industry equivalent of a swiss-army knife: there's a lot of him in Chronos Dungeon. Today we discuss how he helped to bring our vision to life.
"Indie game developer describes me pretty well. For the past 11 years, I've dedicated a huge chunk of my time to creating and playing games. Ever since I started gaming on Amiga in the late 80s, games have been a big part of my life, almost as much as the French bulldog snoring under my desk as I speak". As an indie developer, Lauri has been running his own company, Woblyware, since 2011: "I spent most of my career taking care of every aspect of game development: design, coding, art, audio, you name it. So far, I've released over 20 titles on various platforms. I've worked with others in the past, and for Chronos Dungeon, I'm focusing on coding."
Some time ago, Lauri started a discussion with our Producer Claudio Lins over social media: "We discussed one game I was promoting at the time. Later on, Claudio remembered the discussion, got in touch with me, and here we are."
The concept of Oceanhorn: Chronos Dungeon has stayed true to its roots throughout the development: "We discussed a dungeon crawler with randomized levels, monsters, and heroes. Maybe we had to narrow down some ideas, like having hundreds of different enemies, but the game we're releasing is pretty much what was envisioned initially."
As the genre is already popular, the initial research phase mainly consisted of playing a lot of indie games together and deciding what we liked and what we should do differently in Chronos Dungeon while giving it an Oceanhorn spin. "When I look at Chronos Dungeon, I like to think it blends retro and modern elements well: an evergreen, easy to approach gameplay, but also cool graphical effects like dynamic shadows or lighting changes based on the season. I'm particularly proud of the shadow system – it's something I've never done before, and it turned out pretty well."
About his expectations for the reception, Lauri concludes: "Huge RPG games like Oceanhorn 2 can be hard to approach for people who don't have too much time on their hands. Chronos Dungeon offers a different experience, so I expect to pull in new people with this title. You can pick it up and get straight into the action, put it down and jump back in later when you have a moment to spare."
We know you're keen on getting your hands on Oceanhorn: Chronos Dungeon – We're so close to release now: make sure to reserve enough seats on your sofa!