14 DAY TRIAL // Speaking to Fidgit, Soldak Entertainment's Steven Peeler has offered more insight on the company's upcoming action RPG game for Mac, Kivi's Underworld. The game, which can also be described as a casual, hack and slash title, has players stepping into the boots of 20 character classes fighting against a “deadly race.”
Since gamers are always in the dark when it comes to feature lists saying a game boasts casual gameplay elements, but also those of more serious titles, such as RPGs and hack & slash games, the interviewers decided to focus (at one point) on the actual gameplay time.
According to Soldak Entertainment, Kivi's Underworld is meant to be played in 15-30-minute chunks, something that might not appeal to serious gamers. “Yes. We have broken the game up into separate adventures that last around 15 to 30 minutes each,” Steven Peeler revealed. “So you can play one quick adventure or you can keep playing as many adventures in a row that you want to.”
However, if the game gets too serious for players, the success of Kivi's Underworld is again questioned, since not many Mac owners are actual hardcore gamers. Therefore, Peeler was kind enough to describe a typical gameplay session to the interviewers.
“Essentially you decide which adventure you want to play and then choose which character to play,” Peeler began by saying. “You only have one character available at the very beginning though: Kivi. The other characters become available after you either recruit them in one of your adventures or unlock them in some other manner,” the developer explained.
“Each adventure usually has one to four quests, where quests can be required, optional, or even unknown,” Peeler continued. “An unknown quest is usually a character that is hidden in a secret area. Now you actually adventure, explore, kill monsters, find secret areas, try to stay alive, and solve the quests. When you have finished all of the required quests for that adventure, assuming you live, you have "beaten" that adventure. When you have beaten an adventure, your final score determines how many skill points you get to spend on your characters.”
Peeler also added that players would also be able to unlock “different things” as soon as they completed an adventure, like awards, bestiary entries, characters the player recruited during the adventure, and more. According to the developer, you can also play as one of Kivi's friends, “leaving the safety of the underground cities to rebuild the lost city of Defiance.”
Screenshots of the game are yet to be released by Soldak Entertainment. Kivi's Underworld is scheduled to be released in the 4th quarter of 2008.