Volker Wertich talked about his new game, Pioneers of Pagonia!
Volker Wertich, creator of The Settlers, returns to the roots of his genre with Pioneers of Pagonia. Speaking to Oyun Günlüğü, Wertich shared many details from his introduction to digital games to his 40-year industry history, from The Settler to Pioneers of Pagonia.
So how do you feel about Pioneers of Pagonia? Let’s listen to Volker Wertich.
Volker Wertich (VW) – Hello and thanks for the invite to this interview!
Ömer Faruk AKTAŞ (ÖFA) – First of all, we would like to get to know Volker Wertich better. Can you tell Turkish players a little bit about yourself?
(VW) – As a young kid I enjoyed creating some board games, and at the age of 13, while at school, I started learning to code, which means I am now already in the industry since 40 years. I learned Assembler and sold my first game at the age of 14 on the Vic-20, which was my first computer and the predecessor of the C-64, both by Commodore.
On the Amiga, my first famous game was Emerald Mine, but the real breakthrough came with Settlers in 1993 (age 24), which took me almost 2 years to develop. I also created Settlers III and, as team sizes grew, focused on Creative Direction around 2000 and we invented the franchises Spellforce and BattleForge beside multiple other games.
Since 30 years we create strategy games of many different types on several platforms. Nowadays, we have our own small independent studio consisting of 20 developers, most of them industry veterans with lots of experience, and we just announced our new game Pioneers of Pagonia.
(ÖFA) – How did your The Settlers story begin and of course The Settlers story came to life again?
(VW) – The Settlers story began really unusual. I was inspired by screenshots of the game “Populous” and in my imagination, I could see a game where the player can build houses and roads with a deep economy simulation, but the units act automatically. When Populous was released, it was completely different game of what I had in mind, which was even better since now the idea for a new game type was born and I was convinced this could be a great gameplay experience.
In winter 1990/1992 I visited the small german publisher Blue Byte, which was famous for the “Battle Isle” games, and explained the CEO Thomas Hertzler about the idea. He was excited and decided to give me a contract, and it took 20 months from there to the gold master. It immediately became Blue Byte’s most valuable franchise as both review ratings and sales were really excellent.
The story of the Pioneers of Pagonia!
(ÖFA) – Pioneers of Pagonia got us pretty excited. We are excited to learn all the details about the game. What can you tell us about the vision and story of the game?
(VW) – Originally, the countless islands of Pagonia are populated with scattered villages where the skillful inhabitants live in peace. A cataclysm of unknown origin caused the world to get out of balance:
Forests are infested with thorn tendrils, mountain passes are impassable by landslides, villages are invaded by robbers and cursed creatures are sighted in many places. This separates the villages from each other and causes their inhabitants to face serious challenges.
You lead your people as a visionary and travel by ship to the countless islands to support the troubled residents with the advanced craftsmanship and mystic knowledge of your tribe. The goal is to reunite the inhabitants of the islands by solving their most important troubles and eliminating dangers.
Exploration is a major feature in Pioneers of Pagonia. Initially, the whole map is unexplored and a mystery, except for the small area where your landing party arrived.
We focus on procedural map and objective creation, to ensure a high replayability value with unlimited variation instead of a limited number of manually created maps. Procedural generation of content is a very powerful tool which is already very important for many games. Some people mistake procedural generation with complete randomness. Instead, it means there is a designed ruleset which creates interesting content, and the quality of the content can be improved by better rules and algorithms continuously.
For Pioneers of Pagonia, a simulation with many different interconnected game systems, procedural content fits excellent. We procedurally generate map layout and terrain distribution, resource amount and allocation, locations for hostile and friendly inhabitants and their objectives. The combination of those challenges will be unique on each map. Another advantage of procedural content is that it leads to unusual situations, which a level designer may have never thought of.
“We defined the DNA of our game!”
(ÖFA) – Would you describe your game as a fantastic medieval colony and city simulation? Which games were you influenced by? What will be the aspects that distinguish Pioneers of Pagonia from other games of the city-building genre in terms of mechanics?
(VW) – Yes, it is a deep economy, exploration and game world simulation of a fabulous playful medieval world.
The player experiences a fascinating ant-hill of thousands of bustling units which execute the orders without commanding them individually or directly. The dynamics of all the interconnected game systems lead to proud achievements if things work out according to plan as well as unexpected surprises which challenge the player every time.
We did not really follow actual trends, e.g. “survival”, but instead we defined the “DNA” of our game to create a unique combination of gameplay experience.
As a summary, our DNA is defined by an engaging welcoming and mysterious game world which is fun to explore, a self-explanatory what-you-see-is-what-you-get-visualization in full detail, ingenious relaxing gameplay because your analysis and decisions matter instead of fast mouse-handling and finally playing with friends and family co-operatively.
Every game system of Pioneers of Pagonia has been freshly designed and offers a new experience. This includes exploration, territory gain, construction, transportation, job assignments, food supply, conflict, trade, objectives and many more.
(ÖFA) – Will there be Turkish language support?
(VW) – Not at the beginning of the Early Access phase, but we plan to extend the language support during Early Access step by step!
(ÖFA) – What would you like to say lastly?
(VW) – Thanks for your interview request, we really look forward to talk to you again as the game advances. We hope your readers appreciate our project, and I would like to invite everyone to join our Discord server for Pioneers of Pagonia. We already have a substantial active community contributing ideas and asking questions there. If you want to get notified about upcoming milestones and news, It is also helpful to put Pioneers of Pagonia on your Steam wishlist.
As Oyun Günlüğü, we wish Volker Wertich and his team success.
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