With action-RPG Dragon about to allow people to early-access it on Steam in a week, I decided to ask Erik Johnson of Red Level Games (and Arcen Games) a few questions. Happily, he decided to answer them.



Let us get one thing out of the way first… Will we really get to play as fully grown dragons in Dragon?

Yes — no false advertising on that front. And not just any dragon, your dragon. We want the game to contain a really robust character creator, and for players to have a variety of branching options as their dragon gains experience and evolves (through various means such as completing quests, eating, sleeping, and so on). A fledgling version of the character creator will be in by Early Access next week, and it might still be possible for us to release it ahead of the 19th — which would give those interested a chance to customize a bit ahead of jumping into the first public Alpha build.



Aren’t dragons a bit overpowered though, despite all their undisputed awesomeness? How do you plan to balance this?

Great point, designing a game that is challenging even for powerful dragons has been a fun problem for the team and something we’ve been thinking about since development started. You begin the game as a young dragon, you’re a powerful threat but certainly not the biggest or baddest creature around. There are other dragons to contend with who will reason or fight you depending on your decisions, reputation, and honor. Griffins inhabit many of the same regions as young dragons and frequently attack as well.

Attacking villages and stealing livestock shouldn’t be too tricky in general, but attempting a siege on a castle won’t be some walk in the park. Scores of archers will quickly deter dragons with softer scales. There are also many heroes, wizards, dragon hunters, trolls, and other mythical beasts that can make short work of a weak, unprepared, or overwhelmed dragon.

What motivates a dragon?

Whatever it is, our goal for it is to match the player’s motivations (at least whenever possible). Similar to Skyrim and Fallout, we want Dragon to set the world out in front of any given player and say: Go. Fly. Explore. Intimidate. Burn. Hoard. Slumber. Talk to the guy with the quest. Change your mind and eat him instead.

There will be set stuff to do, and it’s up to the player if they feel like doing it; or if they’d rather just go off and figure things out as they move through the open world. Ultimately we’d like the game to compliment any given style of play the player dictates, whether that be deathbringer, chaotic neutral, guardian of the realm, or friendly but a bit antisocial and sleepy. Whatever it might be — as long as that living/breathing world is able to properly react to the player’s actions, the motivations should stem from there.

And, in a nutshell, how will the game play?

Similar to an action RPG, but you’re a dragon as opposed to a humanoid protagonist — meaning you can fly. We haven’t taken that portion of it lightly either. A few of us on the team spent a good amount of our time on the road this summer, attending conferences (including PAX Prime, Dragonflight and Denver Comic Con) to build awareness as well as get feedback from attendees on the game’s concept and our flight and combat mechanics. I remember worrying that without the RPG layer in at the time, people would see it as a lackluster tech demo. Instead, we had trouble getting folks to give up their seats for the next in line. They wanted to explore all corners of the world by air, and it became clear that many of those who tried the game found flying around the small biome we created for the demo to be its own special experience. I’m not sure how to describe it, maybe relaxing? Cathartic? Regardless, it allowed them to cut loose as a dragon and we know that’s the crux of it all.

Another one of our top priorities is to have the initial co-op/multiplayer layer in for our Early Access Launch next week, as we’re aiming to develop content that will specifically cater to various PvE and PvP bits as we move toward official launch. We’ll be relying on early adopting players to help us test out these new features as we introduce them, along with other aspects of the game like mod tools.



Could you tell me a bit about the team working on Dragon?

Sure! Red Level Games is a team of seven at current. We have our game director Grant Williams, a programmer, an artist, an animator, a writer, a community manager, and myself. We all reside in the Tri-Cities area near the southeast corner of Washington state — about three hours drive from both Seattle and Portland. The nearby Hanford area draws a lot of potential developer talent out our way, but there really isn’t much of a scene for indie developers here. That’s something all of us at Red Level are hoping to change in the coming years.

Care to discuss your inspirations and goals? What do you aim to achieve with the game?

The RPG genre in general: Dungeons and Dragons, the aforementioned Western RPGs, franchises like Diablo and Borderlands, the Dragonlance series, even JRPGs like the Final Fantasy series have had influence on our game in one form or another. Most of us on the team have been into fantasy lore since we were kids, which is where our interest in dragons developed in the first place. While we’re focusing on the European dragon archetype for now, it would be awesome if we had the ability to invest some of our development time into the wholly different Chinese archetype. If we get things right, I believe some of our player base will naturally lead us that direction anyway. We’ll see how it all unfolds.

I’m hoping to see Dragon get the funding it needs during Early Access for the team to work full time on the game over the next 12 months or so — with new updates released to the Early Access players every 3-7 weeks during that stretch. I believe that would allow us to adequately attempt reaching the game’s full potential. We’d also really like players and the community to help shape this game. Just between our forums and Dragon’s greenlight page we’ve gotten a ton of great feature ideas from our awesome community. We’ll need the time to see what works, what doesn’t, what plays well together, etc.

Anyway, we keep talking to people who seem astonished that there really isn’t a game out there today that lets you gallivant around a large, active space as a legendary creature. We’d love for Dragon to be fill that void.

When would you expect the game to be ready for launch?

Hopefully sometime in the second half of 2015, but it depends on how Early Access (and/or any other subsequent funding efforts development may require) goes.