Team Lavapotion!

1) Please tell us about your studio, Lavapotion, and where you hail from!

Patrik Liljecrantz: The dream to create an epic adventure strategy game has been with some of us for quite some time and in 2017 we finally founded Lavapotion. We are a mix of games industry veterans along with people from other creative industries. Our studio is based in the heart of Gothenburg, Sweden. We are currently six employees, along with a couple of talented freelance artists and are currently working hard on our very first title, called Songs of Conquest.

An eXclusive screenshot just for us!

2) Songs of Conquest looks amazing. Tell us more about your decision to use pixel art.

Patrik Liljecrantz: We knew very early on that we wanted to make something that not only played well but also looked special and unique. We started off with a purist’s approach to pixel art, but after a while found ourselves experimenting with mixing 2D and 3D. Today we consider the game to be what’s called 2.5D. It was not a simple decision, and even though the game might look simple enough with its pixel art sprites, it’s been quite a challenge to put it all together. Displaying thousands of animated characters, buildings, trees and patches of grass at the same time is perhaps one of the main reasons the game looks the way it does, but it has also been one of our biggest technical challenges.

3) It looks and sounds like a bit of an homage to the Heroes and Might and Magic games. Can you tell us more about gameplay?

Carl Toftfelt: It resembles Heroes and similar games in its core loop. You control wielders, mighty sorcerers, who in turn control armies. Your wielders explore the lands, pick up loot and defeat opponents and monsters. Meanwhile, you build up your cities and settlements according to your strategy. In the end, you’ve hopefully fulfilled one of many win conditions to claim victory!

4) What do you consider to be the unique selling point of Songs of Conquest?

Carl Toftfelt: One of the unique selling points is actually that it’s an adventure strategy game, there aren’t that many out there at the moment. But we have some really interesting lore and mechanics that we feel really hopeful about.

Building cities will be based around the availability of buildings sites. Building sites can be small, medium and large and the more powerful a building is the larger a building site it needs. So there will be combos of different buildings, amongst your limited number, that will create different strategies.

Our magic system is called The Essence and your availability of spells will be based on two things: Your Wielders skill level and the type of troops you bring to battle. So if you want to cast a spell-like “assassinate” you need to bring a unit with the essence “Lethal” to the battle. And if that unit dies before you get to cast your spell, the opportunity will be lost. So when facing your opponents you have to consider many things when it comes to attacking what troop.

Another eXclusive!

5) Will there be multiple factions or races? If so, how will they differ?

Magnus Alm: Yes! We are still juggling exactly which factions to implement and in which order, but right now we are focusing on these four:

Arleon – Gallant knights united with the magical Faey of the forest. Defending their Island against all threats, inside and out.

Loth – An unholy coalition of the dead and the living. Fighting to restore the ancient empire of Aurelia.

Rana – The oppressed swamp frog people rising up. Gathering their might to bring vengeance to the humans.

Doneria – A merchant nation armed with gunpowder and mercenaries. Trying to bring civilization to the swamps of Rana.

6) Will each game be a free-for-all or will there be any form of diplomacy between factions?

Carl Toftfelt: This isn’t actually fully decided yet, we need to test the different game modes to see if any in-game diplomacy feels needed. At the moment we don’t think it will, but once more testing is done we’ll know for sure.

7) Is there a plan to support modding?

Niklas Borglund: Not in the traditional sense, no. But we will ship the game with a fully functional level editor that the players can use to create and share levels. However, there’s a big chance that you will be able to alter the level in specific ways in terms of stats, win conditions, etc.

8) Have you reached any internal milestones yet, like Alpha, that you can share?

Niklas Borglund: Yeah, we have reached a number of internal milestones, but maybe not such a big one as Alpha. Like when we changed our art style from pure pixel art to 2.5D, that was something we worked very hard towards and it was a huge milestone for us! Right now, the next big milestone is the alpha so that we can start putting the game into the hands of our community – which will be extremely exciting!

9) There’s an amazing song in your announcement trailer. How will music play a role in the game?

Carl Toftfelt: Thanks! We love it too 🙂 We’re so excited about the songs and how to implement them in the game that we actually have too many ideas right now. So we really want to test our ideas more fully before saying anything. The campaign will be based on, or in ways experienced as songs though. You’ll play through the verses of the song, so to say. Kind of like a longer troubadour song where you play the story of that song.

10) Is there anything else you can share with us about Songs of Conquest that you think our audience would want to know?

Magnus Alm: If you want to know more or even ask us questions I’d recommend visiting our discord server at https://discord.gg/soc. Also, you can sign up for the Alpha here: https://www.songsofconquest.com/

Thank you, Lavapotion, for taking the time to answer our questions! This game shot to the top of our most-wanted list after its discovery and hearing more about it gets us even more excited. Stay tuned to eXplorminate as we will do our very best to keep you informed of its progress and as Lavapotion gets closer to Alpha, we’ll be interviewing them via our Podcast. We can’t wait!

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