Dev Log #8 | Behind the Creation of PvE Story Challenge

Today marks the release of the highly anticipated s PvE Story Challenge game mode and we are beyond excited for you to dive in and explore it. To gain insight into the development of this mode, we spoke with Brian, our Chief Product Officer and SVP of Game Development, who was a key player in bringing it to life. Sit back, relax and enjoy the secrets behind the creation of PvE Story Challenge.

Introduction

Hi Everyone — Brian aka Hack1ge here again! Unless you have been spending too much time at the pub drowning your sorrows in Kogaean Ale — you likely know I am the Chief Product Officer and SVP of Game Development here at Kryptomon.

The highly anticipated Story Challenge game mode has finally been released to the public. How did it feel to deliver the product to our community after so many months of planning and development?

We really do care a lot about delivering on our promises and producing high quality game play so it’s really amazing to see where Kryptomon has come from its initial conception to what this first gameplay mode brings. It has been a ton of work and lots of long hours but I think the final product has really been well received in the closed beta.

Although players haven’t quite gotten to the harder chapters yet so maybe they will end up hating me at some point — but you know what they say once a villain always a villain.

It has been a very large challenge for us as the original plan for the gameplay mode was much smaller. This release ended up becoming really what could be considered a full fledged game in and of itself. We set off with the goal of creating gameplay that could be enjoyed by both casual and hardcore players and that all Kryptomon trainers could experience but it became apparent pretty quickly more was needed to accomplish this.

We started by adding battle consumables as a way for weaker Kryptomon to improve their genes and take on stronger opponents which was already something on the roadmap for the future but much later. After some heavy simulations, we realized this wasn’t going to be enough and we added armor which required major additions to the games UI and battle engine.

What difficulties arise in designing a game with a narrative structure?

It’s funny because I was always that guy that rushed through quests in games and never read the story or dialogues and just focused on the game play but I’ve come to appreciate that without the story the game is flat.

There was this big hype about the metaverse last year but I always felt that in order to create an immersive world you needed more and I’m realizing more that metaverses have been around for a long time in games and that is really why we have taken the direction to heavily rely on storytelling to build up the world of Kogaea.

Our goal with this was really to have the story and the gameplay build off each other and I think any player that skips out on the story dialogues will be missing a lot of the fun of this game mode.

With the “vanilla version” already out, is there a plan in the near future to add additional mechanics to the Story Challenge itself?

This game release has been pretty extensive — normally I would have waited to release things like armor or consumables in update patches. Story Challenge itself is actually relatively feature complete but we are always looking for ways to improve or add uniqueness.

For example, Story Challenge is actually a framework and we will be extending that framework to build what we are calling “Limited-Time Challenges” that have unique themes and unique rewards. This will allow us to continue to expand the game ecosystem and add more variety of items / NFTs.

We have also had discussions with the Lore team regarding the potential for this initial phase to be just one of many stories and expanding the game to tell more of the unique history of Kogaea.

Additional Questions:

Who is your favorite character in the game?

Bo-bo but that’s a story for another day….

The kommunity is asking: Where’s Eva? Any clues? Spoilers perhaps? ;)

My lips are sealed — if I start leaking spoilers on Lore then I can only imagine what Carter will end up doing with the access he has to the game roadmap.

Have you completed Hero Mode?

I have played matches during testing and finished earlier versions but we are still in the process of tuning the game mode. We have some new additions to the battle engine coming out in the next few releases that will help us better dial in the difficulty level. Right now the bots I think are like level 75 or 80 and even in diamond armor it’s brutal.

Learn more about Kryptomon: Genesis at: https://www.kryptomon.co/genesis

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