The Piraknights Games team were kind enough to talk to us about their exciting game, Sintopia, as well as their plans for the future. I already wrote praise about this game, about its cheeky humour and bureaucratic grind. Now, let’s see what Piraknights have to say about the game, but also what secrets they reveal about themselves!
Marija: Let’s get to know each other first. Could you describe each team member by using a single sin? For example, I’d probably be gluttony. I just love food too much sometimes.
The Piraknights Games: We are 17! That would take a while, however, I can maybe give you one for each sin:
- Wrath: The VFX artist, he tends to rage whenever game mastering or playing board games
- Pride : One of our programmers. They are brilliant people. Clever minds. Beautiful minds even. But there’s often a price to pay in pride whenever you know your brainpower is miles above a random Joe.
- Greed: The Producer likes money. So if you guys could buy Supporter editions to help him with his Sin, that would be much appreciated.
- Sloth: Myself. Hey, I make other talented people work for hours to iron out my crappy ideas. Isn’t that the sloth-dream, to make others work?
- Envy: Our Art Director. He might be the best, he is still never satisfied and always wants to be even better. Both a blessing and a curse.
- Lust : We have a bunch. Best not to give them away!
- Gluttony: Half the company really. And the other half lied.
- Omnisin : The 2D Artist. What can I say, some people are un-reedemable.
So as you can see, plenty of Sin to go around. But ultimately we’re good people. Mostly.
Marija: Who from Piraknights hates bureaucracy the most? And who actually kind of likes it?
So.. Sloth!: It is a tough competition. But most that want to claim that title only have to wrestle with it within their private life. Piraknights Games’ direction however has the pleasure of also administrating a company, which means twice the fun and twice the hatred.
As for who actually “kind of like it”? We did an internal survey following your question. We couldn’t find a single soul that “kinds of like it”. Sorry. Maybe it’s an unspoken criteria to join Piraknights Games?
Marija: So, tell me, who sold their soul to Hell Inc to get the idea for this game?
Sloth: Every Frenchman in the world had to lose a tiny part of their soul to the French bureaucracy in order for that idea to take hold into my mind. Sintopia is a cry of pain from a whole civilization. But hey, after talking with Japanese, Germans, British, and Americans (and many others), it seems we are all sharing that pain universally. It’s beautiful, the world finally united as victims of paperwork. I could almost cry.
Marija: What did Sintopia look like in its early stages and how different was it from the version we get to enjoy today?
Sloth: At one point (before we even had a prototype), Sintopia was all flat (we didn’t have the triangular shape for the worlds), and “the livings” “hell” “heaven” and “purgatory” were all lands like “realms” you could theoretically travel from one to another. It was way less iconic than what we have now.
At another point, an elevator was connecting Heaven / Overworld / Purgatory / Hell. Souls would go to one or the other depending on several factors. Again, we had to simplify it otherwise it would have been mostly unplayable. Two realms is already a lot to handle.
Marija: The game can get challenging. I quite enjoyed that aspect of utter chaos, sometimes it felt as though I was in hell too! So how did you go about maintaining balance with the building sim and the bureaucracy sim part of the game?
Sloth: It is indeed quite hard. Among the things we try to emulate are “emergent opt-in events”: Sometimes, stuff is happening and the game does not require you to intervene, sure you can, but you don’t have to. So if you are already trying to reign in chaos elsewhere, it’s okay to let go of certain things. The control freaks will either have to learn to let go or to master the game. It is designed in a way that you have to accept, to some extent, to make-do with the hand you are given, it’s not perfect, but it wobbles-forward and works. BUT ultimately, if you persevere enough, you should manage to get to that “perfectly oiled machine” most players dream of. If that’s your goal, we certainly give you the tools, but we’re not making it easy and it is not required to succeed. The contrary is even true, we want a playstyle that leverages chaos and bureaucratic non-sense, to be fully viable (if you spec into it).
Marija: What was the most ridiculous bug you’ve encountered while developing this game?
Sloth: I can’t quite pinpoint THE most ridiculous one, but “Attack of the oysters” was a fun one.
This is a sloth demon seen from below, and for a while they were walking on terrain “from the wrong side” leading to a moving Oysters about to destroy some Humus.
Marija: The tutorial for Sintopia manages to present all of the game’s complex systems in an easy to understand way. Thank you for that! But I’m curious, what was the biggest challenge while developing the tutorial and how did you overcome that challenge?
Sloth: This is a complex game with a silly outlook. Meaning that it will sometimes lure people that want to love the game but aren’t ready to have their brain cooked with complexity. Easing these people in the game without destroying their goodwill with a barrage of information, is a big challenge. If we don’t give enough info, they are lost and frustrated, if we give too much info,they are fed up and frustrated. Finding the right balance is an eternal battle that we still haven’t won, and probably never will. But hey, doesn’t stop us from trying.
Marija: I was blown away by the comedy of this game. Did you plan all the jokes out or did they come more organically through design?
Sloth: First of all thank you for the kind words, they mean a lot. We put lots of effort into it so knowing it’s appreciated is always nice!
Most jokes are embedded in the DNA of whatever we work on. Basically it stems from approaching most topics with the idea of “how do we turn something familiar for the player into something irrational or dumb or overthetop”, and once we’re in that mindspace the jokes tend to write themselves-out. The trick is to treat all that silliness very seriously. No matter how dumb, the world has to be consistent and to make sense with itself. Making jokes is serious matter, we even have a minimum amount of easter-eggs to put into buildings or it doesn’t get greenlighted.
Marija: Even with its complex mechanics, Sintopia could be made into a board game. Would you ever consider doing that?
Sloth: Oh we totally would consider that. Find us someone wishing to carry out that project and it’s a done deal (don’t quote me on that).
Marija: Will there ever be Heaven Inc? Do you have plans on expanding the narrative and/or locations?
Sloth: Heaven Co. is already part of the lore. It was even part of the very first (paper) iterations of the game, which we promptly removed for feasibility reasons. Maybe for Sintopia 2?
But beside Heaven there’s plenty to look forward to in the lore that we can tap into. The 7 planes of Sin, the void of the cosmos, the Homeworld of Mammon, the gigantic Dracoguaca, etc. We’re not short of ideas but of time to bring them to life!
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these prodding and somewhat strange questions. I cannot wait to download all Sintopia updates and play the full version! Yes, I am a full-fledged Administrator now, and I do not plan on ever changing that.
