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Today, we’re thrilled to have the founders of Opia Games, Hugo and Paul, join us to share insights into their journey and their upcoming debut project, The Lone Blade.
Tell us about your studio, the people behind it and how it was formed.
Originally Opia Games was formed at the end of 2020 by two friends from college who wanted to make a game about a jumping sword. Along the way, two other friends joined the project as co-game developers. The group was then boosted as other people joined too, to help with the business aspects of game development.
How did you get started and now many people are in your team?
We are currently a team of five people with our own specific skills, although we are able to be polyvalent in other tasks. Hugo is our game designer and programmer, Paul is our level designer and programmer, Florent is a game artist and a game designer and Baptiste is a Game artist. Regarding the business aspects, Gilles helps us by advising us with choices.
How quickly did you expand the team?
It took us around a year and a half before asking other people in. We needed help and we were used to working with these people so we knew that they were a good fit for the company. It’s important to work with people you trust, not only as friends but also co-workers.
How many team members and offices did you have when you first started?
We started as a team of two with no offices, and now we’re five members still with no offices, but regular calls and online meetings to plan the advancement of the project. However, we were lucky enough to get selected to be in a French incubator (Wizz) that will provide us with a temporary workspace in the near future.
What other games are you working on right now?
Right now we’re mainly focused on The Lone Blade, since the release is coming up soon. However, we are also starting to work on the pre-production of our next title.
Tell us a little bit about the story behind your game?
The Lone Blade is a 3D platformer where you are a soul trapped in a sword. In order to redeem yourself, you will have to create your own path: jump, dash, spin, or spike to the ground and walls to go through the deserts and climb canyons, and temples… to the top of the highest mountain.
The main interest of being a sword is exploring new ways of moving around and overcoming obstacles. Jump, dash, spin or spike to the ground and walls, in other words create your own path.
The game takes place in the ruins of a world that once was yours, immersing the player in a universe of folks trapped in the sand, giants, humongous gates and walls of staring eyes.
The game is meant to be challenging, but not unfair or frustrating. The difficulty is a direct reflection of the game lore: the character’s need for redemption, and the struggle that it implies.
What challenges did you face when you first started?
The biggest challenge at the beginning was how to make a static object move around. What physics to use? What movement to set up? Basically inventing a way for a sword to move on its own. Another challenge was deciding what universe to set the game in in terms of the lore and the level design. What type of game were we to aim for? Was it something funny? Was it something serious? In what time does it take place? Is it level based, or endless?
What would you do differently if you could go back and do it again?
We would probably spend more time defining our goals regarding the game. Having more of a bottom up workflow than just adding feature after feature. Keeping a clean workspace (within Unity). Defining a specific render pipeline at the beginning and sticking to it. We would probably just take out the bosses in our game, because the gameplay wasn’t really meant for them, and we had a hard time figuring how to implement them in the game (add to that, that it was our first time having bosses in a game). Overall, The Lone Blade was our first game and we learned a lot of stuff while doing it.
Is your game single / multi-player or both?
The Lone Blade is a single player experience. However, it’s special aspect, regarding its difficulty in mastering the controls will require some mental support or a lot of gamepads for non-initiated gamers.
Has your game won any awards?
We won a few awards with our demo – the game is still not released at the time we’re writing this. Our first award was the Indie Platinum Game Award. After that we were nominated for the GameCup Award, and finished 2nd (leading us to the incubator).
Is your game free, a one off cost, monthly payment or micro or crypto transactions?
The Lone Blade will be a one off cost game. You will have to pay for it once and then it’ll be yours to keep.
When do you plan on launching your game?
We wanted to release the game around the end of March, but it might get delayed since the whole team is pretty busy at the moment. But don’t worry, we will do our best to give you a memorable game experience.
What Platforms do you plan on launching on?
The game is planned to be launched for PC, MAC, LINUX on Steam and Epic and depending on how good the game does, we might develop it for other platforms like XBOX, PLAYSTATION and NINTENDO.
Do you have a Demo?
Yes. It’s available on our steam page.