We’re working on a review for Woven, so I got in touch with Alterego Games to talk a bit about this release. Come check it out!
PS4Blog: Good morning! Thank you for joining us today. Could you help us get started by telling our readers a bit about yourself and your work?
Hi, my name is Dominic. I am one of the co-founders of the game studio Alterego Games. We have been working in the game industry for over five years, developing all sorts of entertainment and applied gaming projects. We always try to create experiences for our players that bring a bit more than just entertainment. Games are a fantastic medium to tell engaging tales and enfold our audience. That is what each of us working at Alterego Games loves doing.
PS4B: Woven is ready for its PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in November. How would you describe the game to someone who’s never heard about it?
Woven is the ultimate chill-out-on-the-couch adventure game with laidback gameplay supported by a great soundtrack, colorful look, and super cute creatures.
In Woven, you’ll go out to adventure and explore a world made of fabric, where stuffed animals once lived in peace. Everything in Woven appears to be well at first glance, but be warned, the colorful world is not all it seems to be.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1355836783/woven-solve-puzzles-by-reknitting-your-character
PS4B: It’s been… a while since Alterego Games took the project to Kickstarter. How much did the game change over the last three years?
While the graphics and overall quality of the game changed greatly over the years, the core of the game remained mostly the same. In Woven, the player sets the pace. Exploration is a very personal thing, so we want every player to be comfortable to do so however they please.
But that said, as we added all the major consoles as release platforms, we had to fully rework the controls. We do still support the Mouse-only control configuration but added the more conventional WSAD + Mouse as well as a controller scheme without losing the feel of being able to casually explore through the environments, which was our main priority.
PS4B: With Woven less than a month away from launch, is the team going to take a much-needed break from development, or are you already working on the design for your next project?
Yes and no. To be honest, we pride ourselves on that we never gave in to the industry standard “crunch time.” We had strict planning but were able to stick with it, including errors in judgment and porting setbacks. If, for some reason, we wouldn’t make this release date, we had a fall-back date. This gave the whole team a lot of peace of mind to be able to optimally focus on developing.
But being the founder of a game studio is more than just going to your workday by day. While Woven is nearing its launch day, I can’t help but feel the creativity ‘tingle’ again to start new projects.
PS4B: Is there a chance that Woven might see a physical release on Nintendo Switch or PlayStation 4 in a limited print run?
Unfortunately, no, at least for now. Creating a physical release for console platforms requires a lot of work that we, as a small game studio, feel is a very precious resource we first wanted to spend on creating a great game.
Don’t get me wrong, we would love to be able to offer physical boxes with copies console copies of Woven, but there are a lot of steps required for a physical release on all platforms, and we are just a small team. If there is enough hype for it in the future, who knows?
PS4B: How long would it take someone to play the entire game from start to finish? Any side-quests to complete along the journey?
We have seen, on average, playtimes from 10 to 15 hours. The world of Woven is big, and it’s packed with hidden fabrics for Glitch to scan, as well as backstory collectibles to find, so there is a lot to do! In Woven, players will not deal with quest markers, compasses, and maps, so they’ll be able to explore at their own pace, but there are enough hidden paths that you can discover if you want to go deeper.
PS4B: And that’s all the time we have for today. Is there something else you’d like to add before we go?
Absolutely, we would very much like to ask our (growing) community to help us to bring Woven out in the open. We’re a small company, so following our social media channels and retweeting/sharing/liking our content really helps it become more visible for other people.
And please be sure to join the discord if you want to ask us anything or just share screenshots of your personalized Stuffy once the game is out!
