Third-person survival horror isn’t a common sight in gaming these days, especially pertaining to AAA titles. It’s just not a common genre as it once was. This may be disappointing for many survival horror fans out there, but there is hope. Salty Goal Productions new game, Captive in Devils Village, is aiming to bring it back. I sat down with game creator Sepehr Mani to discuss his thoughts on rejuvenating the genre and gain details on his upcoming title.
Hi Sepehr! Please tell me a bit about yourself and your company.
I'm based in Switzerland as you may have guessed. I started my indie gaming career under the name Sgamer Productions with my first actual game coming in 2015 which I kept updating for almost a year and my second game launching in 2016 along with the demo of my most recent game, that I released on last Halloween. I've recently renamed the brand to Salty Goal. I actually started showing interest in game development when I was a kid. A few friends of mine and I wanted to develop games back when we were twelve but we awfully failed…mostly because of our lack of experience.
Your new game is Captive in Devils Village which looks like it's bringing back that third person survival horror theme which we haven't seen much of lately. This is exciting! What made you decide to go this route with your game?
Well, I had noticed the recent trend of indie horror games becoming too similar to each other. Almost all of them are first person, they play in the present time, the player is mostly defenseless and it's mostly about walking around in a creepy house or hospital while nonsense jump scares pop up in every corner. I wanted to make something that differs from the mass amount of indie horror games. I first came on this idea to make this type of a horror game which takes place in 1896, when I watched old clips from that time and old photographs, which are creepy if you look at them today, but were totally normal back then. But let's be honest, my main inspiration definitely came from Resident Evil 4. It was one of the most memorable games I've played and I wanted to make a similar game which isn't just a copy of it, but brings it's own feelings and atmosphere.
Awesome. Can you go a little further in depth about the setting of your game?
Captive in Devil's Village takes place, as mentioned, at the end of the 19th century and what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of that era? Right, creepy pictures, the industrialization and old villages. I took a similar approach as Ransom Riggs, the writer of Miss Peregrine's. I wanted to illustrate the atmosphere with realistic looking photographs of that time period. Our writer also did a great job with building the setting of the game, as the game doesn't just tell one linear story from the events you encounter, but it simultaneously tells the backstory of the cursed village through leftover notes and objects from a person who visited this place before, named Charles Yort.
Please tell me about who we play as and why are we going to the Devil's Village!?
So the game is focused on the story of a journalist named Henry Wood. He has been sent to an abandoned area of Great Britain in order to write a report of an allegedly cursed village known as Hegis, or the Devil's Village. He goes along with two companions, a local general named Samuel Miller, who is supposed to protect the team and the coachboy, Jacob. As you may have expected, things don't go well for them and Henry has to fight through this situation and later gets involved in the deep backstory of this so called curse. I don't want to spoil too much but I can say that the player has the choice of how to end this story.
Can you go into the combat mechanics of the game? What and how will we be defending ourselves? I'm assuming the time period will have an impact on this.
The combat includes both melee and range weapons. Melee weapons being: Bare fists, a machete, an axe, farm fork, torch, and range weapons being guns such as a revolver and a double barrel rifle. However, as bullets are hard to find, you'll mostly rely on melee combat. There are also other combat elements such as kicking the enemy if needed.
What is the thing you are most excited about for this project? Something you really want the players to get excited for.
The story of this game is a masterpiece, I'm sure the player is going to love how the game plays out. That's surely something you'd be excited for and I'm mostly excited to watch peoples reaction on the game.
Any plans for other platform support in the future?
Assuming everything works as expected, the game is supposed to come to Windows first, which is pretty much guaranteed and if that turns out successful, it will be followed by MacOS and Linux with a short delay and after that, it'll be time to port the game over to Mobile platforms (iOS, Android and possibly even UWP) Consoles aren't on the roadmap yet.
Is there a way for fans to help support your game?
The best way you could support this project is to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and join the Steam Community group dedicated to the game.
Any chance we can get a release date?
We're planning to launch the game in Q2 2017. But that of course depends on the support we get from the community.
Thanks for your time Sepehr, Can’t wait for the final product.
Thanks for this great interview, Ross. Hope to meet you and the readers in the community pages.
GET THE FREE DEMO and check out the trailer down below.
