Review Fix Exclusive: Inside ‘SOLASTA: CROWN OF THE MAGISTER’

Review Fix chats with Mathieu Girard founder and creative director of Tactical Adventures, who breaks down the gameplay vision of the brand’s newest title, “SOLASTA: CROWN OF THE MAGISTER” and why it’s worth checking out.

About the Game:

The dynamic and mysterious world of Solasta features brand new elements of verticality, allowing players to use their surroundings as an element of strategy. Position ranged characters on high vantage points or send your thief down into shafts and caverns to scope out what’s ahead. Utilize light as a tool to explore the depths and hollows of dungeons or use it as a weapon against the creatures of the dark. Solasta is a unique team-based adventure where each character plays a critical role in the campaign and can be a hero. Players must take advantage of each character’s strengths and weaknesses if they are to succeed.

Players will have the opportunity to get in on the adventure before it even starts when Tactical Adventures launches its Kickstarter campaign at the end of summer. Players will be able to back Solasta: Crown of the Magister on Kickstarter and link arms with the developers, joining the Solasta community and being rewarded for doing so!

Review Fix: How was Solasta: Crown of the Magister born?

Mathieu Girard: Solasta was born from the passion of playing role-playing games, both on P&P and computer games. I started playing these types of video games back in the 80s, and the Gold Box is a strong reference for me. Although I have played and loved many cRPGs, I felt something was missing compared to the depth and possibilities you can find in a P&P game. This is what Solasta is about.

Review Fix: What was/is your role in the game?

Girard: On top of heading the studio, I am the Creative Director for Solasta. I somehow feel like a fraud saying that, because I have been mostly involved in programming and producing video games in the past 20 years. But since the team is developing my next toy for Christmas, I can assume that I am leading the vision of this project. Also, I have very competent artists, designers, programmers and producers working with me. It is a passion project, and I am very happy to have gathered equally passionate associates.

Review Fix: How did you get involved in the industry?

Girard: I joined the industry 20 years ago, when my résumé was accepted by Ubisoft. I actually showed them a prototype of an RPG game (developed in C++ and 3FX Glide) to demonstrate my skills. After, I worked on 11 games of different types and styles, but I still remembered my initial passion for RPGs!

Review Fix: What was / is the development like?

Girard: I started alone, in my sort-of garage. I wanted to prove that the project, and its pillars, were viable. So, in addition to writing down the vision and performing market research, I developed a fully playable prototype in 9 months, including rules database, character creation, dungeon exploration, combat and magic. This prototype allowed me to gather support, funds, and talented staff.

Review Fix: What makes this game special?

Girard: It is hard to explain in one simple answer, but what we bring in terms of verticality, lighting, and even party atmosphere brings a unique feel to this game. It is also a big challenge, because the amount of verticality we bring (climbing on walls, flying, shoving opponents) requires reinventing everything for cameras, pathfinding, AI and of course Level Design.

Review Fix: What games influenced this one the most?

Girard: The Gold Box was a huge reference. It is amazing how this family of games influenced the genre, even jRPG. XCom is also a big reference, both for the original game and its deep turn-based tactics and first attempts at verticality, as well as the recent remake and its immersion. 

Review Fix: Any fun stories or wild moments during development?

Girard: During the creation of the vision and the prototype, there was temptation to change the context of the game. Since combat and tactics was a strong part of the game, we wondered if we should make a “management” game, à la XCom, where you plan a lord/wizard recruiting heroes and dispatching them to dungeons, somehow like Darkest Dungeon (great game!). 

Review Fix: What were the major lessons learned?

Girard: In the end, we preferred to keep the party perspective, achieving an equip quest, as you would expect in a good old P&P RPG. Also, I have discovered in the past that it is hard (but not impossible) to introduce compelling storylines in management games.

Review Fix: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?

Girard: I think it does not make sense to reinvent the wheel, and it is critical to know these old game mechanics. First of all, there is always some wisdom to learn, and also you will appeal to old gamers like myself! More seriously, I think it is important that young game developers learn about the history of game design in the great schools which train them.

Review Fix: What’s your favorite memory as a gamer?

Girard: My favorite memory as a gamer is in creating parties of characters in RPGs: selecting a class, race, rolling 1000 times to get the perfect ability (don’t judge, you all did this). This is a great moment that we want to promote in Solasta.

Review Fix: How do you want this game to be remembered?

Girard: There are actually many complementary ways to do this: tell a compelling story to the players, make the characters and NPCs unique, setup challenging combat situations, create varied exploration situations, make sure every class / race ability is interesting and offers different solutions to the game. It is all in the sauce and balancing it out.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Girard: Obviously show more of the game. We are working very hard on a demo, we can’t wait to get feedback from our community!

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13820 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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