Games like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim and Minecraft have thrived for over a decade thanks in-part to an endless wellspring of community content. Plenty of experiences have been affected by mods and ROM hacking, from replacing Resident Evil 2 Remake's Mr. X with Thomas the Tank Engine to the sea of custom "Kaizo" Super Mario World hacks. Dreamside Interactive founder Serge Korolev, who heads development on Frozen Flame, started his journey in the industry with modding over 15 years ago.
Skilled modders have long been a valuable commodity. CD Projekt Red hired modders to work on Cyberpunk 2077, for example, and Australian programmer Christian Whitehead became so well-known for his Sonic the Hedgehog projects that he began working with Sega on ports and titles like Sonic Mania. Korolev said his years working on mods and smaller projects were all preparation for his goal of making PC games. Game Rant spoke to Korolev about Frozen Flame's development and recent widespread exposure.
Building Up to Dreamside Interactive
Korolev cut his teeth on freelance modding projects for games like Half-Life and Warcraft 3 in the mid-2000s. "Anything that can be modded had our attention," he said. The developer would then work on publishing games like NCSOFT's Lineage 2 in Russia with Innova Distribution, and became "one of the first Unity 3D developers" in 2009 using a modded version of the software to help create browser-based Russian MMO Juggernaut (jugger.ru).
In the 2010s, Korolev focused more on producing and founded two studios: Arigama and Magisterion; startups centered around social and mobile games, respectively. All the while he tried working on indie games, but found "I couldn't make projects with enough quality alone." So, Korolev created Dreamside Interactive in 2017 with the intent of inviting other developers into a "more united" front with the resources to create something bigger.
"I could finally reach my goal of creating PC and console games. It took a long time to get enough experience, and I hope it was worth it."
It wasn't easy to assemble the team for Dreamside, Korolev said, as it reached for talent beyond Eastern Europe to "level-up our quality." While prototyping for Frozen Flame began in 2017, Dreamside also spent the first year or so raising money through outsourced work for bigger corporations. Five years on, the studio employs around 30 people according to Korolev, and he said devs from companies such as Blizzard have offered feedback for its ambitious project.
Balancing Genres in Frozen Flame
The initial idea for Frozen Flame was to create a survival game akin to Rust or ARK: Survival Evolved, but with more of a focus on the narrative and lore in its fantasy world of Arcana. During the game's first year of development, an alpha build for Iron Gate AB's Norse-themed survival game Valheim released, and Korolev said he "can't hide it, we were really impressed."
It led to Dreamside reworking the game's building mechanics, not to "clone" Valheim, but because, "We have respect for players' experience and want to give them quality they expect with more features." Compared to Valheim, he believes Frozen Flame has more freedom to build on any surface thanks to mechanics like magic-based floating platforms, but not as much of a physics system. Ultimately, Dreamside found its balance by focusing more on exploration than RPG or survival elements, all while incorporating narrative and environmental storytelling beats from RPGs like The Legend of Zelda (as well as Breath of the Wild's cooking).
Frozen Flame has gone through many iterations over three-and-a-half years, starting with little more than a purple-hued valley of ice where everything was deadly. Balance is tricky for a game that blends genres, as Korolev is cognizant that audiences will come from experiences as disparate as World of Warcraft, Genshin Impact, Valheim, or even Dark Souls - Arcana's Flames are collected like souls in the FromSoft series, allowing players to embrace a flexible class system. The titular Frozen Flames are sealed energy that can be used to power up one's resources.
As far as visuals are concerned, Korolev said the game changed graphical style early on since its first attempt "wasn't creating high expectations from players." THQ's Darksiders franchise became its main inspiration, which apparently led to comparisons with Epic Games' battle royale Fortnite and Phoenix Labs' free-to-play action-RPG Dauntless. Korolev welcomes the comparisons, feeling there aren't many titles in Frozen Flame's genre that look the same way.
Frozen Flame's Growing Public Spotlight
Though Frozen Flame has spent years evolving, streams and videos began showing off the project as early as 2018, and it has won recognitions such as Unreal Engine's "Innovative Use of the Tech" award in 2019. Some comments from playtests at conventions expressed the game was too hard; others wanted more of a challenge in the survival elements, as Dreamside focuses more on building bases to weather the night and prepare for combat than on "hardcore" aspects like managing meters and hunger.
Regardless of the varying feedback, Korolev said he's happy to get all of it so Frozen Flame can grow its community.
"Our first target was to understand what people like or expect. Even now, we continue to use that feedback to move forward."
In fact, Korolev feels the past response to Frozen Flame pales in comparison to its reception at the 2022 PC Gaming Show - possible thanks to Dreamside Interactive picking up Ravenage Games as a publisher. Between its appearance there and a successful demo release as part of Steam Next Fest, the survival-RPG received attention and feedback from all over the world. One Twitch stream by Ben "CohhCarnage" Cassell stood out to Korolev for how "cute" it was to see him play with his son.
A lot of feedback from Steam Next Fest was constructive, talking about issues like poor optimization (which Korolev said came from code broken prior to release), combat fluidity, and a lack of elements like bosses. Dreamside is working on fixing up as much of the experience as it can prior to a more robust Early Access release this fall, as Korolev would rather approach its Early Access like Raft - putting out a complete, polished game and adding on, rather than releasing the experience mid-production.
Among planned changes are giving players more way to embody their preferred classes, as well as expand the character customization and armor variety to allow "players to present themselves." Korolev also hopes to pay forward his time as a modder with elements like custom servers, or even full modding support once the game is in a good shape; alongside new modes like creative focused around building. "I think modding is a great thing, even today it has a lot of potential."
Frozen Flame is currently in development for PC, with a Steam Early Access launch expected in fall 2022.