Interview: First Dwarf Developers Plan To Add Skill Trees For Every Character

Anastasia: Hi, I’m Anastasia Stetsenko, I am a Level and Quest Designer for First Dwarf. Usually, I start my job with a combination of level and environment design for floating islands that are scattered across the world of our game. I take into consideration the main story on the specific island, and what challenges, quests, and other content should be there.

When quest lines, documentation, and dialogues are ready, that’s when I start coding my parts in the Unreal Engine script language “blueprint”. I need to give the player clear information about their current task in the quest, where they need to go, and what they need to do. I also write some scripts for the mechanics and optimize the game using Unreal Engine technologies and tools.

Anastasia: First Dwarf takes place in the world from our previous game, Driftland: The Magic Revival. It is a mix of classic fantasy elements but with a twist. Our world has been torn apart by a great mysterious explosion called the Great Rapture and is held together only by ancient magic.

In this setting, different races fight over the remaining fragments of land to provide resources for their people and find a place to live. We also grew up reading the masterpieces of J.R.R. Tolkien and took a lot of inspiration from them.

Anastasia: For fans of action RPGs, the game offers dynamic real-time combat, separate development trees for the Dwarf, the Dragon, and the Mech, various weapons and skills, and an immersive fantasy world to explore. In addition, we want other elements such as colony building and defense mechanics to enhance the RPG aspect of the game.

Anastasia: After the first two islands which teach the rules of the First Dwarf world, the game opens up more. We want to give players the freedom to choose the next island to explore. To reach some islands, we will need to acquire and craft a specific technology. 

Anastasia: At the beginning of the game our ship crashes and in the process, we lose most of our resources. Finding ourselves in unfamiliar territory we must survive but also provide the necessary materials for our colonies. By collecting resources for our settlements, we can raise their technological level and unlock new useful recipes and blueprints.

Each colony has its specializations and can unlock different things. For example, our first settlement is home to the Mech Builders Guild. If the guild thrives, we can get blueprints for better parts and upgrades for our Mech. 

Anastasia: Ragna has a connection with nature and mana that gives her unique skills that will help her and Tru along the journey. She can talk with animals, read Eskoim texts, swim, and fly to places where Tru and Mech can’t. She feels dark magic, knows alchemy, can explore islands from above, and breathes fire.

Anastasia: Our colony’s defense system is always developing and progressing. We want to give the players the ability to build colonies, defend walls and towers, and explore the island.

Sometimes monster attacks will be intense and the player will have to go back to their colony and help with defending it, but most times, if the colony infrastructure is good, they can feel free to explore islands and not think about the settlement. Of course, we added an alarm system using the Raven that informs us about the danger in the colony.

Anastasia: Every character has its advantages in exploration. Ragna can fly and swim to go places unreachable for the Mech and Tru the Dwarf. Mech can gather resources and do heavy lifting for the team. 

Anastasia: Our world is inhabited by unique fantastic animals. The dark magic endangers some of these animals and can get sick. If we find a way to heal them we can interact with them and get useful resources.

Some of the healed and befriended animals can be petted. In the feature, we want to add an option to tame animals for the settlements.

Anastasia: The reception of the playtest pleasantly surprised us, the vast majority of players liked it. We are happy that much of the feedback from players coincides with our production pipelines and what we would like to add and improve in the game.

We want to improve combat, building systems, tutorials, optimization, and lots of minor things that players pointed out. 

In addition to the improvements, we also want to add skill trees for every character, tech trees for the guilds, new buildings, new islands, economy, and for sure more things.

Anastasia: We exclusively announced the game in 2022 on the IGN channel, where First Dwarf was met with a warm reception. Of course, we had been working on prototypes and the concept beforehand.

As for our team, we are a small independent studio that is also supported by very talented freelancers and subcontractors. However, when it comes to the main core team, which has been working on the project since the beginning, it consists of 7 people.

Anastasia: If you are interested in our game, I highly recommend joining our community on Discord. We post concept art, talk about features, and share information about the development progress and together we pass the time until the game premiere.