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Crown Gambit
Crown Gambit is now even darker and more polished - We interview with Gobert
In this exclusive interview we learn a lot more about dark fantasy card game Crown Gambit with art director Antoine "Gobert" Tabouret-Loudeac, who talks us through the upcoming title's unique lore, art style, and mechanics.
Audio transcription
"Hi Gamereactor friends, card games are very trendy as of late, probably many of you are still playing Balatro and others and at Gamescom we learned about another game which is called Crown Gambit and we joined we met Antoine there and it's really nice to have you with us today, so thank you so much for joining us to talk a little bit about Crown Gambit and give us a little of an update from what we discussed at Gamescom to learn how the game is going and how you guys are approaching the 2025 release, if I'm correct so what can you tell us, you guys have progressed on from the game we took a look at in Cologne Yep, so when we were in Cologne, the version you were playing was one from much earlier this year so already at that point we had advanced quite a bit, but right now we've advanced a lot more we are actually preparing for a new demo release very soon for the Save and Sound event and you'll be able to see all of the new changes and a bit more polish on the game so most of the things that have changed are a number of phases, like the pursuit phases have changed completely a lot of UI has been added to the game, a lot of the previous interface was mostly placeholder so a lot of improvement has been done on this part, there's still a lot to do but we've gone quite a way I think a lot of optimization, balancing, the narration is being also reworked and improved to have a smoother experience with it, to have a few illustrations added to the story so there's a lot to look forward to and I think the game is starting to look more and more like the actual game that it's going to be in the end I think, so it's a very exciting time for us right now as we're speaking, most of the production for the assets of the main features have been finished and we're preparing to work on the extensive interface UI and the illustrations that are going to be cornerstones of the scenario for example I think we're already quite advanced, we have a lot of things to polish, to improve to have a really calibrated experience but the game is going along pretty well and I think we can be sure that it's going to come out next year I think without too many issues I'm excited about it And as I mentioned, I started off this interview by saying that of course card games are getting very trendy if they were ever not trendy at all, so people are still playing Balatro and of course we had Slay the Spire before and many other card games and would you say that the decision making, the choices in your game are the thing that are making it stand out in this newly crowded genre?
Yeah of course, if you think about a lot of card games, there's something very arcade about a lot of them they're very replayable as a sort of gameplay loop I of course think that Crown Gambit is going to be just as fun but it's also very much a heavy narrative game which is not as common A big inspiration for us was Foretales, another French game that came right before us and that also took this sort of narrative approach to the card game that was very original and interesting and we wanted to have our own twist on this sort of type of game so I think that compared to a lot of other games, you mentioned Balatro, you mentioned maybe Inscryption and other games like this, our game is much more similar to a regular RPG experience in the sense that it's got a great overarching narrative and adventure that is going on and that is basically the center of the gameplay that is going to define what kind of fight you're going to go through so in that sense you could say it's very close to a traditional tactical RPG kind of game but it does have this sort of interesting way of presenting itself as a card game that is quite efficient and interesting for us, especially for me as a 2D artist Before we talk art, I know you're eager to talk art and I am too but another little thing about gameplay is the specific mechanics that you guys are introducing I think you told us about the Ancestral Grace as one kind of fresh and unique mechanic that you guys are working on so what can you tell us about the specific mechanics?
Yeah, so the Ancestral Grace is basically a sort of power-up that you can unlock during fights so you have certain skills that you can use and using the Ancestral Grace will allow you to use a more powerful version of each and all of your skills depending on which one you use and depending on the strength of it you're going to increase the Ancestral Bar, the Ancestral Gauge, I'm not sure on the word and this influence that you're going to increase on your character is going to enable you to do some powerful power-ups during fights as well on your character as well as on your skilled cards but they will come at the cost of losing more and more control on your character on the narrative so essentially having a very high Ancestral Grace, Ancestral Influence is going to make you lose control over your characters so I think it's good to be precise about it, there are three characters with each their own influence to deal with but using each character's Ancestral Grace is going to increase this and it's going to make you lose control which is going to mean that during dialogues when you have a choice to make sometimes you will not be able to choose the dialogue option you wanted and sometimes before you can even decide what to choose on your character is going to make a decision for himself that you're only going to be able to see by going through this Ancestral Mechanic and this is going to affect the long-term and short-term adventure that you're going to go through because essentially talking with someone and deciding that you're going to cut their head off is generally going to have consequences, short and long-term so the short-term is probably going to be that you're going to have to fight people that you didn't want to have to fight and the long-term consequences is that you might get a worse ending for this particular character or for the actual world or for your own character so it's going to be important if you want to have a lighter outcome to be careful but you might as well decide that you don't really care and you just want to have fun and be a destructive monster and actually go through a sort of influenced character roleplay Reminds me a little bit of Fire Emblem, do you guys have permadeath for those characters?
So we don't have permadeath for all three characters because you wouldn't be able to finish the game without each and every one of them although it might affect their ending in quite drastic ways so you might be careful on that but yes, there is a little bit of a Fire Emblem inspiration in the narrative, I think you can say that You mentioned the overarching narrative and what you guys want to convey here with the art and the narrative but I saw this story trailer, I think it's more of a teaser of what's going to happen here so what can you tell me is going on in this world briefly?
It kind of gives me the taste of it, the taste of the world, the bleak atmosphere you guys want to build but at the same time I don't know yet what's going on here, so can you tell me about that?
So the game is about this kingdom, the kingdom of Mildred that is sort of inspired by the Mont Saint-Michel in France which is this huge sort of fort that's in the sea Our version is much bigger obviously but it is a huge kingdom, an important kingdom and in this kingdom the people, the nobility uses relics which are powerful artifacts that allow them to use supernatural abilities which enable them to have a lot of power over the people The king possesses the crown which is the relic that is able to control all relics so going through the game you will have to go through a quite profound conflict within this capital, within this kingdom which is a succession war essentially and so you will be tasked with finding some relics that belong to the king and you will be tasked with finding who you want to support as a next ruler So Crown Gambit is about navigating this world and this social conflict and trying to find the better option or maybe the least worst option you might say Obviously when we were starting work on the game, Dance of the Dragon, House of the Dragon House of the Dragon has just been released and so we really were in this sort of succession war and everyone is a little awful in their own way so you definitely have to find the one you find the least awful or the one you find awful in a funny way or in a way that pleases you maybe and yeah it's about finding out the right option in a pretty gritty world as you said Do you have any dragons to it?
We don't have dragons It's a pretty low fantasy setting Like grounded right?
The relics are most of the fantasy element that there is to it but a lot of it is pretty grounded Lastly of course, please tell me a little bit more about the art style It looks a little bit cel-shaded to me and then the drawings and the way you present the cards it's quite unique as well, it's pretty different to what we're used to seeing in the genre so how did you envision what you wanted to do with this specific art style?
I'm an artist that specializes in medieval and knight drawings particularly but I also work on many things in the game but when Corto, the director, came to me it was really in the spirit of doing a dark fantasy, a Berserk inspired world and we really went in with this sort of Lovecraftian and dark fantasy inspiration and naturally I came to my most important and influential artist Mignola for example, I think he's pretty known and has been an inspiration for many other Indie artists I really wanted this sort of darker mood and experience to it where everything feels like it's coming out of the darkness in a certain way it might be familiar also with the style of the Darkest Dungeon I think it's quite close to what we're envisioning here a little bit of Hades as well so I really wanted to have this sort of dark fantasy but also with the lighter, more anime-ish touch to it that I had been working with to give it a more modern flair to it and have a lot of interesting characters to look at, to see the list I don't know if I'm correct that you guys are trying to release in 2025 you said you're coming up with a new demo so what can you tell me about the status of the project and how you guys are doing at Wild Wits in France?
We're actually going along pretty well the release date has not been cleared but it's still for the next year right now we don't really have any issues with the development everything is going on smoothly we're making great advancement on the production most of the production has been done most of the chapters of the game and the story has been written the endings have been written as well there's not really a lot of work to be done on the production part the card has been drawn, the characters, the portraits have all been finished as well so right now we're on the polishing and balancing phases where we're trying to have the definitive interfaces trying to smooth out the interaction with the cards and the gameplay trying to add illustrations so that the story is a little more immersive as well so you can see a bit more of the world and adding a little bit of level design music here and there adding a little flair to everything and we're going to go on with this polishing as long as we can to deliver the cleanest experience we can offer I think Fantastic, I'm already looking forward to becoming the Crown Gambit next year so thank you so much for your time Antoine and good luck with the project Thank you so much"
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