14 DAY TRIAL // An interview with Steven Peeler, the guy behind Kivi's Underworld, reveals that Soldak Entertainment had an easy task developing, or better yet porting the casual RPG title to the Mac. Moreover, Soldak released a trailer for its new game, showing off some gameplay highlights.
The folks at Tea Leaves were lucky enough to sit down and chat with Steven Peeler of Soldak Entertainment, who revealed that, for Kivi's Underworld, “[he] had to do almost no extra work for the Mac version,” thanks to some early experience with Mac porting that included Depths of Peril.
“I was hoping to eventually do a Mac port when we started Depths of Peril, so we planned ahead and used OpenGL and OpenAL,” Steven stressed on. “This ultimately made the Mac port (2 ½ years later) much easier. In mid March of this year (2008), I finally decided that it was a time to do a Mac version of Depths of Peril. It took about a week to finally decide this, order a Mac, and receive it. At that point in time, I had really never used a Mac before. Even with ramp up time on a completely new computer and OS, it took only a tad over 2 months from the day I received the Mac to when we were selling the Mac version of Depths of Peril. To me that shows how easy Macs are to use.”
When asked whether targeting the Mac proved to be a worthwhile decision, Peeler gladly answered stressing that, “From the beginning I viewed porting to the Mac as a calculated risk. I was hoping that, if Depths of Peril didn’t pay back the hardware and development cost, then at least the next game (Kivi’s Underworld) would. Looking back at it though, it was a very wise decision. The Mac version of Depths of Peril is nearly 40% of our direct sales now, and paid back all of its costs a while back. The Mac version of Kivi’s Underworld on the other hand is actually outselling the Windows version so far. I don’t suspect that this will last, but it’s interesting. So yes, I would have to say it has been a worthwhile decision,” Steven concluded.
Kivi's Underworld is an RPG game blended with hack & slash elements. While more of a casual role-playing title, players can either take the role of Kivi, a young lumen warrior who has to fight the unknown, or step in the shoes of any of the 20 playable characters with unique abilities and magic spells. Gamers are also able to create new adventures, classes, and powerups within the game, or download some from the Internet. They can adventure as one of the 20 character classes against a variety of enemies. You can watch the new Kivi's Underworld just below the download link.