I had a lot of fun playing ScourgeBringer for our review, so I got in touch with Thomas Altenburger to talk a bit about the game. Come check it out!
PS4Blog: Hi Thomas! Thank you for joining us. How are you doing today?
Yo Antonio! Feeling great, thanks for having me.
PS4B: ScourgeBringer is out now on Nintendo Switch. How would you describe the game to someone who’s never heard about it?
ScourgeBringer is a fast-paced action platformer with a strong emphasis on the state of flow. We spent almost a year working on the game feel alone with the intent to make you feel powerful and in full control of your character at any time. It’s a very arcade-y game, with very immediate fun and a story that develops with little chitchat. Compared to other roguelites, it’s a more streamlined game, focused on the action and your skill rather than grinding items and permanent buffs.
PS4B: How much has the game changed from the initial concept phase to the version we can now play on consoles?
Very little, actually. We converged pretty early on during its development to something the whole team was comfortable with. I believe that most of it was set about a month into the project, and the two years to follow were mostly production! There are, of course, elements that have changed, got removed, or systems that have been revamped, but the overall idea and game feel is something that surprisingly emerged rapidly and stayed throughout the whole project.
PS4B: With the game’s exit from Early Access and its console launch, a lot of new content was added to the game, but I do want to ask if you’re going to continue working on new content for this procedurally generated release or if the game is now presented as you initially envisioned it.
The game is very close to our early vision. We’ve been lucky enough to have very good support allowing us to make everything we wanted to make. A game is never perfect, though, and I guess every developer kind of thinks about the many things that could still be done to push things further. We still don’t know where ScourgeBringer is going to bring us, but what’s sure is that we already have improvements in the pipeline waiting to be released.
For instance, a comfort update will soon land on the Nintendo Switch to add more options, smoothing out the difficulty and notably a built-in achievement system so that the game can have the same incentives as other platforms.
PS4B: Any chance of getting a physical release for the game on Nintendo Switch?
For sure! We partnered with eastasiasoft to bring both a collector and standard Nintendo Switch physical release! The collector is coming with Joonas Turner’s soundtrack on CD, arts, a game box shaped keychain, and a nice packaging. The game itself will come fully patched on the cart.
PS4B: And now it’s time for us to go. Is there something else you’d like to add before we end this one?
We’re really looking forward to welcoming more players to Nintendo Switch! We believe that it’s a platform well suited for ScourgeBringer, so we put some extra effort into the port, like bringing 1080p at 60fps in all modes and achievements.
