As part of our coverage of the latest release from Xbox Game Studios and developer Stoic, I sat down with Trisha Stouffer (CEO and President) and Daniel McLaren (Game Director) to chat about all things Towerborne.
In this wide ranging conversation, we talk about the developers influences when it comes to Towerborne’s vibrant style and the teams hopes for the game as they begin their early access journey. You can read the full extensive review for Towerborne here.
Note: This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity. For the full version, please check out the video here.
On Early Access…
Jon: Towerborne is releasing today into Steam Early Access. How excited are you now that you’ve gone from all of this kind of pre build up, all of the time and effort you’ve put into getting to launch, to getting it out and into players hands in a more public environment?
Trisha: So excited. It’s always the dream to have the game in players hands and see how they respond and react and we can’t wait for that really. We talk about it a lot. We talk about it most every day, how we’re really looking forward to seeing what the reaction is, you never know. We think we’ve got something great.
Daniel: Yeah, it’s making games, man! Whoop, it’s a whole lot of build up for that release. And then everybody has all of their feedback and their thoughts and then it’s a whole lot of build up trying to meet expectations after that point. I love it – wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s nice to be working on something that you feel good about as a developer where you’re like ‘this is actually a really cool idea’ and ‘I really enjoy working on this sort of thing’ and I can’t wait for people to have that. There’s a lot of games I’ve worked on where I’m like well, glad to have done my job.
Jon: I suppose as soon as you hit early access, the real work begins, because the whole point of this, from Stoics point of view, is to get that community and build with that community. Understandably from perhaps the console side of the gaming world, there’s some Xbox players that are a bit like ‘ah shucks, you know, I was looking forward to playing Towerborne and they’ve got a little longer to wait. But for good reason, as I understand it right?
Daniel: Yeah, that’s been Stoic’s entire history. We started our first game Banner Saga and by we, I mean them. I wasn’t here for that particular awesome release. But they started on Kickstarter and the idea was, hey, if you support us, we will give you builds so that you can play this stuff early.
They built a whole separate game called Banner Saga factions, which was strictly just to have people playing in the combat so that they could refine it and get it to a spot where they were like this is the core element of Banner Saga’s combat system and so it just makes sense for us to give this to the players and have them play it. We’re just really lucky that this time we could actually build the majority of the game first and then give it to anybody and everybody who wanted to participate in this as opposed to, hey, if you missed the Kickstarter window, sorry.
Trisha: Little known fact: Factions is still out there. We tried to close it down and the community was like ‘no’ and ‘give us the code and we’ll manage it ourselves’. So we did. and it’s still there! So we’d love to have that relationship with the community and players. It’s done wonders for us.
On that gorgeous art style…
Jon: Speaking of Banner Saga, that game got quite serious at times, and the art style for Towerborne is similar, but feels more vibrant – punchier. It feels more light-hearted, even though we have things like the destruction of the city of numbers and the humanity running away from evil, giant frogs, things like that. Where did the inspiration for the art style come from? Was it a continuation of what Stoic was known for, or did it just feel right for this kind of game?
Trisha: Yeah, it’s a shift. Banner Saga was based on sort of 1950s Sleeping Beauty sort of art style. This is much more inspired by Ghibli. The inspiration was when you’re watching the game, it’s as if you’re watching an animated film. And so this is how we came to it. It started with Arnie Jorgensen, who’s our Chief Creative Officer, he was the artist on Banner Saga and just as we expanded the team and grew the art team more and more, it’s blossomed into something beautiful. I think that’s definitely one of the number one things we hear about the game; it’s just beautiful to look at, beautiful to listen to.
Jon: Yeah, the soundtrack is cracking.
Daniel: Yeah, it totally is! And I mean, it fits with that whole anime style too, right? Like, it was kind of the vibe, and I think you’d hit on it before; we were just looking for something coming out of Banner Saga that felt much more light-hearted, felt much more accessible to people. One of the big things we’ve talked about quite a bit is the founder sat down and said ‘you know what, we got finished making our depression simulator. We’d like to have something that we could sit down and play with our kids and just have a good time with and not really feel that heavy weight’. You come out of something like that and it really does weigh on you. How do you keep writing? How do you keep creating things that are that heavy? I suppose there are people out there who absolutely could, but for us, it was like we just needed a creative breather and we needed to step back and do something completely different. And that’s really where this game was born.
Trisha: A little palate cleanser if you will. 100%. Yeah, it’s something super fun. Easy to get into, you know, and anyone can play it, so it’s very, very approachable, but also very complex for, you know, very skilled players and players who have been playing these types of games for quite some time. I think everyone will enjoy that.
On Accessibility…
Jon: Yeah, it’s interesting as well that you mentioned about accessibility and being great for kids… I hope the NDA isn’t broken here, but my 10 year old has seen me playing and he’s like what is this and when can I play it? Towerborne has still got the complexity – and I want to make sure that I’m understood when I say this – it’s not ‘button mashy’. You can to a certain degree button mash to a point, then you’re going to hit a roadblock, and you’re going to have to up your game. But it’s so nice to be able to play something where everyone’s still having a conversation. In some ways, it reminded me of, like, the in-between carnage of Sea of Thieves voyages in that regard. Was that part of the plan or did that just come about naturally?
Daniel: I think it came about totally naturally. One of the things that I like to talk about with this is, you know, the core mechanics or the core loop of the game is about loot, and you know if you look at various games they use very similar systems, right? So like Sea of Thieves, and you know CoD and all sorts of stuff are like hey, ‘I’m going and I’m doing this thing to acquire loot and get more powerful, and to do these other things’, but how they represent the interaction.
You know, for CoD it’s shooter style, for Sea of Thieves it’s you know, that over the shoulder or first person whatever you want to kind of get into there. For us, we’re like, nobody’s really kind of done this core loop in the West, in a brawler side scrolling action setup. And so the mindset was we knew that there was never going to be the kind of intensity that being on a map 6v6 or whatever shooter – like that intensity, we knew that that wasn’t what we were going for, but we did want to strive for a level of mastery that felt like ‘Oh, my investment was worth it, I can’t wait to see what boss they’ll release next because I think I’ve got this whole game on lock’.
“I think we have an enormous amount of content ready for early access, about 40-ish hours – depending on how aggressive people play.”
Daniel McLaren, Game Director, Towerborne
You know, I mean, now we’re looking. We’re like, OK, people are able to do this and this. Let’s give them something that pushes that boundary. And simultaneously, we fully expect people to go: ‘I shall forego all gear and swear an oath to the Twitch gods. Then I shall beat this game naked’. That’s great. Like Godspeed, son. Like good luck. So yeah.
On being a ‘Living Game’…
Jon: So Towerborne is a seasonal live service game. It’s no secret that the industry seems to struggle sometimes with live service games. This is obviously a first for Stoic. Is there any nervousness?
Daniel: Look, the thing is, I hate the ‘live service’ because it feels so… This isn’t like a platform where I’m selling a bunch of household items that you need. This is a living game and it’s interesting. A lot of people ask us this question. We have a lot of people on the team who have worked on MMO’s and living games in the past. That’s been my whole career for 20 years, working on games that have been living and some of them are still alive. And some of them are not.
That is the way of it, but for us, when we sat down and kind of talked about what we wanted to do. We were a very, very small team. When this project kicked off like 12 people and so the reality was what can 12 people do to bring something to life. Now, by the graciousness of Xbox, they have allowed us to grow this team and continue to expand the content. I think we have an enormous amount of content ready for early access, about 40 ish hours depending on how aggressive people play.
But the idea was, it’s not enough. Like if this kind of game really connects with the players, we didn’t want to just say – Well, here’s your box DLC, and that’s $40 and you gotta give it to us. We wanted to actually see how people were playing, create content as people were playing and deploy it for free without obligation to pay. And just continue to expand this so that people could have a game that lasts for 10 plus years that they could just enjoy at their leisure as being as hardcore as they want or as casual as they want.
And we just continue to deploy that content. We didn’t want to really be restricted to a box on a shelf. So yeah, I totally understand. And really, when you get down to it are living games that much different than a boxed game? You spend a lot of years working on, you put it in a box, you put it on a shelf and it doesn’t resonate with players for a variety of reasons. Competition, wrong time of the year. People focus on something else, or it just didn’t click because it’s artistic as much as it is scientific. So you know, we tried to set Towerborne up in the best possible way that it could live for a very long time and we could support it.
“I think we recognise that with a living game, content is king.”
Trisha Stouffer, CEO & Rresident, Stoic
Trisha: I think we recognise that with a living game, content is king. If you run out, it’s hard to bring people back to the game. It’s hard for them to believe in the promise that there will continue to be continued content there. And so we’ve got, yes, do we have a road map for Towerborne? Yes. Are we going to announce it here? No.
We expect to remain fully engaged and communicative with the players and the community. McLaren and I are both… well, I’m probably more active than anyone at the moment on Discord and just talking with people, and we hear it loud and clear. You have to make sure that you’re engaging. You have to make sure you’re communicating. You got to tell us what’s coming. You know, why are we sticking around?
You know, we have a product manager here at Stoic who has worked on similar games, understands how to balance the major feature work, minor feature work, quality of life, things. But it’s very much what is the rhythm you’re going to get in because you have to manage all of those things all at once? And it can be a lot, but I’m confident in this team. I’m confident in what we put together.
Like I said, the core of this is so fun. It’s very entertaining, so that continuing to expand on that should be fairly easy for us, it’s just a matter of how do we get more content quicker, more features? What’s the next boss, what’s the next weapon? People will be hungry for that. And I don’t think we have any doubt in our ability to deliver on that.
On Building Towerborne with the community…
Jon: As we look ahead for launch, where can the community connect with you and the wider team?
Trisha: Well, if you’re interested in continuing the conversation, Discord is a great place to be right now. Very engaged there. Towerborne is on Steam, so please, please feel free to come and join us. I look forward to playing with the community. I have often said I’m Towerborne’s number one fan. I don’t get paid to say that – I just am, and I just really enjoy it and I can’t wait to see, hear, feel the reaction from players.
Daniel: 100% yeah. And not to be afraid to give us feedback. You know that that’s the big thing for the future of this game. We think we have a pretty solid content plan in mind – But people getting in and playing, and even if you play for 10 minutes and you’re like, oh, man, I wish you had this. And, you know, go into the discord, give us the feedback, let us see it. I think you’ll find that there are already updates we’ve made prior to launch based off our early, early players making statements to us. So it’s very important that if you want it to be shaped a certain way, get in there and play and let us know.
Many thanks to Trisha and Daniel for taking the time out to join me – as you can imagine, they’re pretty busy! If you’re interested in Towerborne, check out my full early-access review in progress, right here.
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