Review Fix Exclusive: Federico Mussetola Talks ‘Verbis Virtus’

Review Fix chats with Indomitus Games’ Federico Mussetola who discusses “Verbs Virtus,” which is set for an April 3 release on Steam. A voice-controlled wizard adventure, it’s a different type of first-person adventure to say the very least.

Review Fix: What was the development process for this game like?

Federico Mussetola: It’s been a long and complex process, and, of course, a bit chaotic at times. This is our first project so we were learning lots of things as we worked on the game. It has been a lot of fun so this definitely won’t be our last project.

Review Fix: What was the inspiration for this game?

Mussetola: We took inspiration from the prototype of the wizard in fantasy stories- all of whom use formulas to cast spells. On the artistic side, we took inspiration from real ancient structures but also from the work of artists like H. R. Giger.

Review Fix: What games did you play as a kid? How do you think they affected this one?

Mussetola: Our team is very diverse so we played every kind of game, from Zelda to Metroid, from Baldur’s Gate to Quake, and many others. The main effect of those games on our project is that we favor gameplay over cutscenes (which we think are abused nowadays) and that we decided to avoid guiding the player too much. We prefer to let them explore and discover the various elements of the game, and also to experiment with their powers to find out the effects they have on the environment.

Review Fix: How difficult was it to get this to work as well as it does?

Mussetola: We made many attempts on various aspects of the game like speech recognition, game design, graphics and performance. Every time we failed we learned something that helped us to reach this final result, which we are very satisfied with.

Review Fix: Who HAS to play this game?

Mussetola: Everybody who at least once dreamt of being a wizard and use his voice to unleash the power of magic- so everybody! Also being a fan of fantasy and/or puzzle games would be a good reason to play In Verbis Virtus.

Review Fix: What are your goals for this title?

Mussetola: Creating a fun, immersive and challenging experience for gamers. We also wanted to transform our passion for video games into our job, the players will determine if we’ll be able to!

Review Fix: Away from the voice control, what else is really cool about the game?

Mussetola: There’s magic, monsters, ancient secrets to be discovered… Oh and there is also a spell that lets you freeze your enemies, that’s cool right?

Review Fix: What else do you think you have to get this to be the game you want it to be?

Mussetola: Because of limited time and resources we had to eliminate many things we wanted to put in the game. On the other hand this allowed us to keep the game to its true essence, so in the end it is the game we wanted it to be.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Mussetola: We are considering the possibility to port In Verbis Virtus on next-gen consoles. Aside from that we a few top secret projects that we can’t talk about yet.

Check out screens from the game below:

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13821 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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