Soundfall is the upcoming debut title from Drastic Games, an indie studio founded by Nick Cooper and Julian Trutmann; two developer alumni of Epic Games with experience working on Gears of War and Fortnite, among other titles. Soundfall is a unique concept; a blend of twin-stick action shooter, rhythm game, and procedurally-generated dungeon crawler. During EGX 2018, I had the chance to interview Julian Trutmann about the upcoming title.

Drastic Games’ premise for Soundfall describes a fantastical setting fundamentally intertwined with music; “Soundfall follows the journey of Melody, a young audiophile who finds herself transported to the world of Symphonia. In search of a way home from this mysterious land where music comes to life, she becomes entangled in a conflict to save the realm from Discord, an unfathomable darkness that threatens everything.”

The game features a full, level-based story experience, with both single-player and up to four-player co-op. It also features RPG elements, with a roster of unique characters; “While harmonizing with Soundfall’s refrains, players search for gear and upgrades, like one-of-a-kind weapons and legendary artifacts with audio-driven powers. A diverse roster of playable characters, each with their own distinct playstyle and musical palettes, makes for compelling team-play in online and couch co-op for up to four friends.”

Drastic Games Co-Founder & Content Director Julian Trutmann on Soundfall

So, for the benefit of gamers who haven’t heard of Drastic Games, can you tell me a bit about how the studio got started?

“Yeah, absolutely! So myself and my co-founder, Nick Cooper, we left Epic Games roughly two years ago to start a studio and have been working for the past couple of years to build out the team around us, and obviously start working on our debut title; Soundfall.”

What do you think, first and foremost, sets Soundfall apart from other rhythm games?

“Great question; so, obviously Soundfall is a combination of rhythm-based game and dungeon crawler, so we’re combining a lot of the exciting games that I like – like twin-stick shooters – with a lot of the energy that comes along with rhythm-based games, and it’s something that we felt hadn’t been… it just caught our attention in the early days and we’re really excited about where it’s going.”

What would you say were the core inspirations for the visual style of Soundfall, and of course, the game’s soundtrack?

“Yeah, so the game in general came about pretty organically. When we started the company, I originally pitched Nick the idea of doing a Guitar Hero clone for mobile; at the time, there wasn’t a whole lot in that space. Since then, there’s some really great stuff that’s come out. But, while the mobile didn’t hang on, the audio elements did. From there, we thought about other games that really made us excited, and the twin-stick shooter was one of those things that we felt like the platform really would be extendable for future projects.

“So, we were left with these two things; the music and the twin-stick. Soundfall kind of naturally emerged out of that, and so to get to the question about visual style; the visual style was part of that kind of organic process. In a rhythm-based game, you really want to see all of this energy and these lights and flashing colors, but at the same time, there are a lot of bad guys on the screen, you need to know where the player is, and so the visual style really demanded trying to pare down or get rid of a lot of that extra noise. As a result, you can kind of see they would try to find this middle ground between stylistic and being as minimal as possible.”

Can you say roughly how much music is included in the game, in total?

“Yeah, so obviously here at EGX we’re showing off one of our main characters; Melody. But Soundfall has an array, a kind of whole ensemble of characters, each with their own musical styles and preferences. So the library that Soundfall will ship with will try and represent that entire gamut of different styles and preferences, so you can expect that the library will be pretty massive.”

Do you have an in-house composer, or are you working alongside composers and musicians from outside the studio?

“Both! Obviously the couple of tracks that we have here at EGX; two of them were produced by a gentleman named DJ Striden, and the other one by an awesome artist named Jovian, but our in-house audio producer did all of the FX, obviously, and then the track for our trailer, and it’s just been a blessing to work with all of those guys for this process.”

Can you tell me a bit more about the team that’s working on Soundfall?

“Yeah! So myself and Nick Cooper are the two principal developers but around us we’ve had the opportunity to kind of build out a pretty distributed team. So we’ve got a couple of guys working on animation, 3D modelling, things you’d normally expect like that. The team size kind of grows and shrinks from between two of us working on it full-time to sometimes as many as twelve, and then shrinks back down again as the situation demands.”

When it came to designing Soundfall, what made you decide to design it as a dungeon crawler?

“I think, as I was mentioning earlier, that kind of came about pretty organically. The music was something that… you know, Nick always really likes a challenge from the technical side of things, so the music was something that he had never tried to engineer before, and so that really stuck. From there we thought about what kind of platforms we can build that won’t be just, ‘Oh, we did it for one game and then we had to throw it away for the future!’ How can we really set the foundation, not just for the game but for the company?

“We felt that the twin-stick model was really flexible. It let us do everything from creating an ability system that we could then use in future projects. So, some of it was very practical thinking about, ‘Where do we get started now that we’ve abandoned the triple-A industry? How do we make it in this indie space that’s so new and foreign?’ And from there, obviously, the twin-stick has a lot of variety, and fortunately the game started really telling us what it wanted to be, rather than us forcing our ideas onto it.”

Clearly, the game offers a story-based, single-player experience, but it also features up to four-player co-op. Is that only available in a separate mode, or is it available throughout the entire game?

“Nick and I are both big fans of co-operative gameplay; it’s something that we knew we wanted from day one, so yeah, the plan of action is definitely to let you experience the whole game as four-player co-op. Today, as I mentioned, we’re showing off Melody principally; she uses the Audio Blade, which is our game’s narrative equivalent of the ‘Master Sword.’ But other characters within that space each use different Artefacts, which is what we call them, and they’re our way of expressing class in the game. So Melody’s sister Brite uses a shield, and we’ve got other characters who use bows and stuff like that, and so the interplay between those should lead to some really juicy gameplay.”

So, what would you say is your ethos when it comes to game development? What really drives the creation of a game like Soundfall?

“When Nick and I were at Epic, we realised that… we got to work on a whole variety of kinds of projects, and different team sizes throughout these development cycles. We found that working in the small teams in the early stages where you can make a really big impact, that those were the experiences we enjoyed the most. So we’ve switched over. Our real hope is to try and push indie development as far as we can with a really small team. So far it’s just been a real pleasure working with such a talented cast of developers.”

When can fans expect to see Soundfall launch, and on which platforms?

“We expect to release some time before the end of 2019, and we’ll be on PC and all three major platforms. So, you’ll have at least one thing that you can play it on.”

I suppose this might be obvious from the previous games, but for Soundfall on the Nintendo Switch, can fans expect to see local co-op available as a feature from launch?

“Yeah, I sure hope so! That would be fantastic.”

Finally, do you have any plans yet for post-launch content, or is it too early to tell at this stage?

“You know, music is really the driving element of this entire experience, so for us, everything from the procedural generations of levels to the music has been a mandatory way of making sure that players can have as much content for as long as possible. We’re only limited at that stage by how much music we can get into the game and the different ways that we can let players get access to that music.”