“What we really enjoyed was taking these opposing things and putting them together.” When I spoke to Creative Director Simon Dasan and his team just before Summer Game Fest, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn was just a month away, and with the specter of Shadow of the Earth Tree There is a dark undertone to the entire event, making it clear that developer A44 is keen to make its game a place in the increasingly busy Soulslike market.
This design philosophy is most evident in A44’s attempt to recreate the ‘Souls-lite’ as a separate entity from the soulsHow. For Dasan, this idea is “a way of combining the two genres – an action RPG and a regular Soulslike.” The studio had made the critically well-received Ashen in 2018, which was “very much Soulslike,” Dasan explains, and “had the idea of making it a little more accessible to newer players.”
It involved taking ideas directly from FromSoftware, most notably the “rhythmic combat” of Dark Souls, but also finding ways to bring in ideas from outside the genre. For example, protagonist Nor is faster than the typical Tarnished or Chosen Undead, much more mobile, can climb and explore much more freely than any Souls character; and powerful ultimate abilities – called “witherings” – “add a cinematic experience” that will be familiar to action RPG fans.
The countries after
While A44 is attempting to establish the “Soulslite” space by bringing two other genres together, its desire to combine “polar opposites” extends well beyond gameplay. Even the most basic idea behind Flintlock – an 18th-century army facing off against almost Lovecraftian divine forces – continues this philosophy. The team spoke to a handful of authors who write novels in the aptly named “Flintlock Fantasy” genre, but Dasan says that “the world we’ve created is all our own. We were really excited by this idea of the collision of two worlds that weren’t supposed to come together.”
This idea is carried throughout the world. Deputy Art Director Dale Pugh notes that there is a strong Mesopotamian influence in Flintlock’s architecture and world-building, but it is contrasted with flora and fauna inspired by the team’s homeland of New Zealand. Key to Nor’s journey are cafes, which feel almost anachronistic in this divine war, but were chosen “to create something quite unique in contrast to the rest of the game.”
The New Zealand rainforest hugs the desert, the ancient gods are fought with pistols and muskets. All of this fits with the core philosophy of the entire game, which, according to Dasan, is to “create these dramatic scenes that nobody thinks fit together. We took inspiration from everywhere.” Some gods are steeped in that Mesopotamian influence, others are “more Middle Eastern,” while others simply come from a more horror-focused space: “We cast our net pretty wide.”
Soul of the genre
No matter how wide the net is cast, the biggest fish in this particular pond remains the Soulslike itself. As I speak to Dasan, Shadow of the Erdtree is just days away, but the Flintlock director says it’s pretty easy for the team, based in New Zealand, to “just do our own thing.” Still, a stream of Soulslikes that began in earnest in 2023 and shows no signs of slowing down into 2024 means Flintlock faces plenty of competition. Dasan is hopeful, though, that Flintlock will find its own audience through its “lite” formula.
“We want to make games for as many people as possible,” he says, but admits that “it was really important to make sure we didn’t alienate the people who really like a harder experience.” Flintlock’s difficulty modes should help with that, including a hard mode that’s “really quite challenging” but is open to players from the start. Normal mode, on the other hand, is intended to serve as a “bridge” to action RPGs. Here, the difficulty “sneaks up on you, it doesn’t grab you right from the start.”
“There are so many people who are put off by the tough difficulty,” he tells me. “And we wanted to give them the opportunity to learn what’s so great about the genre. Soulslike is so much more than a combat mechanic. It’s the world and the narrative execution. I think it’s really gone mainstream now and has influenced so many games. Even if it’s subconscious.” For Dasan, it’s that wide-ranging influence, coupled with a clear respect for the Soulslike, that has driven this project from the start: “That’s how Flintlock was founded – ‘How can we put our own stamp on what we do?’ I don’t think we want to be locked into a specific genre. There’s so much room to move, iterate, grow and innovate in this space. I feel like we’ve found our own place, become our own thing. The mix has created something that’s its own. At the same time, this fusion of the two happens in a way that feels uniquely Flintlock.”
Find out if the risk was worth it with our Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn review.
