Ontwikkelstudio Firefly Studios tracht via Gambitious momenteel geld binnen te halen om Stronghold Crusader 2 te realiseren. Wij kregen de kans om Nick Tannahill, de Marketing Manager van de ontwikkelaar, enkele vragen te stellen.

Gamed: What's the reason you choose Gambitious instead of Kickstarter for your crowdfunding campaign?
Nick Tannahill: The Stronghold games have always been popular in Europe. We always use the example of Stronghold outselling GTA 3 in Germany over Christmas, but we have a great number of players from France, the UK and eastern and central Europe. When Gambitious was suggested to us by a few friends it seemed like the perfect way to connect with those players and be part of the launch of Gambitious at the same time.

Gamed: Before going to Gambitious, did you have any contact with publishers? If so, what's the reason you finally choose Gambitious instead?
Nick Tannahill: No, we didn’t actually. It has always been the intention to self-publish Stronghold Crusader 2 and that was the plan from the very start of the project, which began in spring last year. Up until this point we have been funding development internally. Our reason for choosing Gambitious was to connect with the community and give them a chance to be part of the development of the game, which in many ways they already are. We have been taking and implementing fan suggestions such as the return to grid-based castle construction, so Gambitious and crowd funding was a natural extension of that.

Gamed: If you don’t gather € 100.000 within the timetable, will this effect important parts of the game?
Nick Tannahill: Our crowdfund has three purposes, these being a large closed beta, additional game content and extra development time. If we don’t reach our target we will have to reconsider the first of those three things, perhaps we will scale down the beta and try to include some of that extra content post release. We really don’t know yet as we’re still focussed on the raise. As for extra development time we are lucky that options like Steam Early Access exist for independent developers like Firefly, so there are options but obviously we would prefer for the raise to succeed.

Nick Tannahill
Gamed: You state on your Gambitious page that Stronghold Crusader 2 is the game that you wanted to make for more than ten years. What’s the reason it took so long?
Nick Tannahill: The first Crusader is by far our fans’ favourite game, it’s one they have been playing on and off for more than 10 years and still the game people use to benchmark other Stronghold games and castle games in general. To create a worthy sequel we felt we needed complete creative freedom and control over when we release the game, two things that only become possible when you are self-publishing. We simply weren’t in a position to self-publish our games until last year, which is why it has unfortunately taken this long. Hopefully it will mean that when fans do finally play Crusader 2 it will live up to their expectations. We really want to make a game that replaces Crusader 1 as their go-to Stronghold game of choice.

Gamed: You also state that gamers are asking for this game since 2001. Aren’t you afraid that those gamers moved on or moved away from PC gaming?
Nick Tannahill: That’s a really good point, but not one that is worrying us too much for a number of reasons. We released a HD update of Stronghold Crusader last year and apart from being something we had always wanted to do, this was also really useful in gauging people’s appetite for a new game. The free patch was downloaded by a huge number of people and the full game sold very well on outlets like GOG. Another thing that gives us confidence is that Crusader is still remembered in the PC gaming community. Whenever a new Stronghold game or a new castle game is released we always see it compared to Crusader, which suggests that at least for part of the gaming community that game is still the benchmark. If we can create a new benchmark for castle games then we’re confidence it will find an audience of new and old players.


Gamed: When you compare Stronghold Crusader 2 with Stronghold (2001), what do you see as the biggest improvement? And what did the team learn in those 10+ years that Stronghold Crusader 2 really benefits from?
Nick Tannahill: Good question! Aside from obvious answers like graphical advancements, new units and features the main thing that Crusader 2 improves over Stronghold is the balance between the city builder and real-time strategy elements of gameplay. When Stronghold first appeared not many games had combined these two separate genres into a single game and over the years we have learnt the correct balance. Go too far toward simulation gameplay and it becomes too much micromanagement, but if you simply get rid of that side of the gameplay it’s not Stronghold anymore.

The Crusader series is popular among our players because it prioritises combat while keeping the economic gameplay and resource chains intact. For Crusader 2 we are essentially recreating the equilibrium found in Crusader 1, while also making way for the new gameplay elements like physics and unit abilities that give the new game its own sense of identity.

Gamed: What are you doing to make Stronghold Crusader 2 true to the historic facts?
Nick Tannahill: We have bookshelves filled with historical tomes, diagrams and records in our London office in addition to the greatest resource of all, the internet. Whether we’re talking about a designer, artist or coder, the entire team is diligent in their research and historical accuracy. Hopefully you can see these things in the shape of the Arabic castle towers, the Sassanid Knight’s armour and the inclusion of historical characters like Richard the Lionheart. The most important thing above all else is to make a fun game, which is why certain characters are inspired by historical figures rather than lifted directly from history. Units are a mix too, so the Hussite War Wagon existed but the War Wolf is a creation of our own. Both, however, will be balanced and fun to use.

Gamed: If you could describe the Stronghold Crusader franchise, or Stronghold Crusader 2 in particular, in five words, what would those be?
Nick Tannahill: Castles castles castles castles castles! I could be more specific and say things like ‘skirmish’, ‘AI’ and ‘co-op’ but at the most basic level we want this to be the ultimate castle sim, balanced, bug-free and fun to play.


Gamed: Any last words for the fans that are really looking forward to your game?
Nick Tannahill: Follow us on Twitter! (@fireflyworlds) We are a small company who is lucky enough to be self-publishing Crusader 2, so if you’re interested in our games you can have direct access to us. Send us an email, post in the forums, check our YouTube or Facebook pages out and give us your input. We get to decide when the game is released and what features are included and we have always implemented many fan suggestions such as bringing back certain maps from Crusader 1. The fans know the games better than anyone and giving us your thoughts on development will only make for a better game.

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