Swedish developer Coffee Stain Studios may be best-known for its irreverent Goat Simulator, but that success opened its ability to do more within the industry. Coffee Stain went on to create the building/management game Satisfactory (with Goat Simulator 3 announced yesterday at Summer Game Fest), and it grew "horizontally" with Coffee Stain Publishing. This wing of the company has focused on platforming indie games by Scandinavian studios, such as Ghost Ship Games' Deep Rock Galactic and Iron Gate AB's Valheim. One of the latest ventures it published is Lavapotion's Songs of Conquest.
Lavapotion began its work with just four individuals aiming to create a strategy game inspired by 90s classics like Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders, and King's Bounty. Not only that, Lavapotion has depicted its fantasy world in "high-definition" 2.5D pixel art akin to Square Enix's HD-2D titles Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy. Lead game designer Carl Toftfelt said it has been hard to find a balance, but that the work "has been exciting." Game Rant spoke to Toftfelt about how Songs of Conquest found its path to a recent Early Access launch.
How Lavapotion Started Its Journey
Based out of Gothenburg, Sweden, Lavapotion was started by CEO Magnus Alm and technical artist Patrik Liljecrantz. The duo previously created Flash-based studio Muskendunder Interactive in 2007, renamed Free Lunch Design in 2012 - about two years before being purchased by mobile messaging app Palringo.
Alm became Palringo's CMO after the acquisition, but ultimately left in December 2016. He had contacts at Coffee Stain, and its investment in Lavapotion was one of the first big announcements for Coffee Stain Publishing around two months after it formed in February 2017. A statement from Alm at the time expressed relief at being able to leave the "free to play bullsh*t" behind. "Getting to work with an investor who cares more about the way we design spell systems rather than how we maximize profit is a fresh break from what we are used to,” he wrote.
The fourth member of Lavapotion's initial team, lead programmer Niklas Borglund, was a former employee of Alm's. Alm and Toftfelt's history goes further back; being childhood friends who wrote ideas for board games, roleplaying games, and more over 30 years. While gaming has always been a hobby for Toftfelt, pushing himself with difficult rounds of Dominions 4 or Civilization, he was a working actor and singer for 11 years prior to Lavapotion. His credits include a 2013 bit-part in the USA show Psych, as well as films like 2014's Black Mountain Side.
"I enjoy breaking games, so Magnus wanted to see if I could apply that to game design. And I did. And it was good fun. Now I just play relaxing games in my spare time, I get all my math interests going while working."
Lavapotion's core team has since grown to eight, still small enough that Toftfelt said they all do "a bit of this and that." However, he believes there could be enough freelance hours put into elements like audio to equal another full-time position or two.
Starting Over
Though little was public about Lavapotion's plans in 2017, its drive to make a game like Age of Wonders and Conquest of Elysium was there. In fact, Toftfelt said they were so struck by the lack of a genre name to describe those titles between 4X strategy games (like Civilization) and adventure games that Lavapotion coined its own: adventure-strategy. The studio received money from Coffee Stain early on to "try and crack these riddles for things we wanted to improve," according to Toftfelt, and after settling on an idea Lavapotion spent the next two years working on its gameplay and graphics.
"It could have been done maybe less than a year from then," Toftfelt said. But "we had a big change of heart on its looks and a couple of core mechanics." Songs of Conquest's pixel art had strayed from the "wonky fairy tale look" of its inspiration Heroes of Might and Magic 2, resulting in an "all over the place" style with art so complex it would have taken years to finish one of the game's four factions. Toftfelt refuted the perception that pixel art is used to "save time," particularly when an animation needs to be redone frame-by-frame. Luckily, Coffee Stain was willing to float Lavapotion's change of direction, leading to smoother sailing into Songs of Conquest's E3 2019 announcement and beyond.
"You can't ask for a better publisher. They're so focused on making a good game, one the team thinks is good. They don't want to work with games where they don't have a bunch of passionate people in their circle who want to be involved."
Solidifying Songs of Conquest's Mechanics
While simplifying Songs of Conquest's "modern, yet retro" pixel art was one motivation for its mid-development shift, Lavapotion also hoped to find one core magic system that combined previous efforts. Toftfelt said a lot of time was spent figuring out how to work his and Alm's love of deck-builders like Magic the Gathering into a strategy game. They wanted an experience with the potential to strategize and create "loops," but one that didn't force players who want to "just buy cool things and fight."
The magic system in Songs of Conquest defined how units in each of its four factions work, but Lavapotion also felt it important to include short story campaigns that offer a grasp on why its characters fought. Only two campaigns released alongside Songs of Conquest's Early Access launch on May 10, and it's "highly likely" campaigns for the Barya and Barony of Loth factions will follow. That said, Toftfelt did not want to make promises, and said Lavapotion hopes to have a content roadmap based on early feedback this summer.
One notable feature for Toftfelt is the titular "songs" that define the campaigns, unlocked verse-by-verse over each mission. He said it has been nice to use his theatrical background with Songs of Conquest's composer, becoming the game's "bard." Another benefit of working under Coffee Stain Publishing has been comradery through events like Christmas parties, and crosspollination between studios even as they're siloed off. For example, Toftfelt said fellow strategy game developer Box Dragon has helped with some design problems.
Coffee Stain producer Johannes Aspeby has also been an asset to Toftfelt, putting Lavapotion's spirit into Songs of Conquest more literally. A "very hidden little Easter egg" that fans can attribute to Aspeby is a set of Wielders (the game's magic users) from Rana whose names are anagrams for the team's founding members: M'Sugna, R'Lac, Rik-Tap, and Sla-Kin.
"I said, 'Johannes if I respell this it's just my name.' And he said, 'Yes. There might be more of them like that.' We didn't tell the others until we actually launched into EA, I think. They didn't notice."
Songs of Conquest is available now in Early Access on PC.