Small Interview
Interview added: 09-12-2022
Stadia GamesDB!: I think no introduction is necessary, but just in case, Can you tell us who you are?
Alexandra Dahlberg, Narrative Director, Marcus Billborg - Producer, Katharina Wunder - programmer, at the ZoinkGames branch of Thunderful Development, of the Wavetale team in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Stadia GamesDB!: What are Stadia players going to find when they first open that wonderful world of Wavetale?
Alexandra Dahlberg: They will be introduced to the small archipelago of Strandville. A previous metropolis that has sunk into the sea. Here, you get to meet teenage girl Sigrid and her quite cranky grandmother, trying to get by in a world that doesn’t have much left. But things take a sudden turn when a mysterious wave covers the area in a dark substance called gloom, and Sigrid meets a mysterious underwater shadow that gives her the power to walk on water!
Stadia GamesDB!: What has been your inspiration for the game, if you have had any?
Alexandra Dahlberg: Visually, we have stayed very close to home. Gothenburg and its rugged coastline and harsh but beautiful archipelago have a lot of similarities to Strandville. The big story is also very connected to our own lives and the current state of the world. Over generations, we have created a world that has now started to fall apart. That’s the heritage we leave to our children. How do we handle that, and how will they?
Stadia GamesDB!: How was the development of the game for Stadia? any difference from other platforms?
Marcus Billborg: For the most part, the core development process was rather similar to other platforms. The differences became more clear when it came to actually running the game. It was generally pretty easy to do continuous testing, which was great. Any build we made was available in the cloud and didn’t require anyone to download the project, or worry about misplacing files!
Katharina Wunder: This was beneficial for processes like QA but also just for developers spitballing. It's easy to get some feedback when you upload a ready-to-play build for the team to test whenever they have a free minute.
Stadia GamesDB!: How long has the game been in development?
Marcus Billborg: It was in development for a little over two years.
Stadia GamesDB!: A curiosity, those reflections in the water, have they taken a long time to the team?
Katharina Wunder: When it comes to the water we decided to work with a great open-source ocean system called Crest by Wave Harmonic. It is a highly optimized tool that has been in development for years with an active community.
While we modified it heavily to fit our visual and functional needs, a lot of core groundwork was provided by this system. One of those features is the ocean reflections with the beautiful distortion effect. That saved us a lot of time.
Adjusting the original planar reflections into something that is actually not flat and rather vivid caused a few headaches.
Stadia GamesDB!: Can we see another game on Stadia? (A while ago it was rumored that Fe could arrive)
Alexandra Dahlberg: We don’t have anything announced for now, but we always keep a close watch on all available platforms to see where our players are, and how they want to play our games. Outside of Wavetale, the full lineup of SteamWorld games is also already available on Stadia!
Stadia GamesDB!: To finish. What do you think about the Stadia technology, from a development point of view?
Katharina Wunder: We think Stadia and cloud gaming overall is a really exciting topic that can make gaming more accessible for a wide range of people, free from their hardware limitations. Our experience developing cloud-based was certainly a positive one.
Something we particularly enjoyed with Stadia is the community and how people really care about the platform. The reaction to the Wavetale release has been incredibly welcoming and people have been nothing but positive and constructive in their feedback. That was really great to see.
