You know we love spotlighting Indie games and Studios here at Gamer Social Club and this week I had the pleasure of posting some questions to Hvmana Industries MMD. We chatted about their studio and their upcoming game Tales of Old: Dominus – which you can wishlist on Steam here!

Can you tell us a little bit about your studio? What made you want to make games?

We are a new studio and we are very interested in being able to provide a realistic experience. We are separated between the USA and Europe and we have been working like this for almost a year and a half. We are always two or three people working, but for certain tasks we rely on freelancers to be able to move forward with the times, which is essential since the tasks to be performed are too many.

What was your inspiration behind Tales of Old: Dominus?

We believe that Tales of Old: Dominus has an interesting mix that more than one player may find attractive. To summarize it we can talk in terms of gameplay comparing ourselves to other titles, for example we look for the reality and immersion of titles like Kingdom Come Deliverance, but without falling into the parts that were perhaps slightly boring.

We added elements of survival, crafting and building like those we can see in Medieval Dynasty, but without making it seem unserious or extremely sandbox. We are looking for an aggressive combat as we can see in titles like Chivalry 2, but without falling into a waterfall of blood as if it were the elevator from "The Shining" which is no longer credible.

Finally, we add elements of conquest and management like those we can see in Mount and Blade to finish creating an attractive Game Loop with the player being the owner and defender at different points on the map. We believe that based on this short explanation our pillars are: Dark Realism, Conquest and Possession of locations and finally the Freedom to do what you want within the game within an RPG format.

We try to have a realistic approach throughout the game, obviously it is still a game and we aim for it to be entertaining, but the visual part is something important for us. That’s why we consider it to be a “soft simulation”, since to be truly a simulation we would only have to die from a single blow or an infection and of course that wouldn’t be so much fun!

If we have to make a list of games, it would be Kingdom Come Deliverance, Mount and Blade, Chivalry, Medieval Dynasty, Arx Fatalis, Witcher 3, Gothic, Ultima Online, etc.

And we can also talk about the seventh art, which we believe carries enormous weight in the feel of the game, with films such as: The Name of the Rose, Outlaw King (2018), The King (2019), Macbeth (2015), Michael Kohlhaas (2013), etc.

The game is an open-world RPG with stealth elements, what made you choose something so ambitious for your first project?

Initially, we started with a smaller game, more oriented towards an RTS, and it evolved until suddenly it was much bigger and more complex, which made it take much longer to get where we are today. It could probably be smaller, but we have to see how far we can improve certain mechanics to offer a good product. Obviously, we prefer to have fewer mechanics of good quality versus many boring or mediocre ones.

We've heard a lot in the last few weeks about funding issues for smaller titles. Is that why you chose to self publish, or was it more around the creative process?

To be honest, we haven’t started looking for a publisher or investors yet, but it could be a good idea to try. We believe we have a good product that looks great and catches the attention of gamers.

It’s also true what you say about the creative process; perhaps at some point a publisher could modify the vision of a game, but I think most of the time it should be for the benefit of everyone and to reach a larger audience. For example, the videos of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 have no blood at all, and it really takes away a lot from the game, but well, it’s a decision for everyone to make in order to reach a larger audience.

As far as we know, it’s difficult to obtain funding for games in general, so we’ll see what can be done.

Have you had any challenges in any phase of development? 

Regarding obstacles and changes in vision, at first we only wanted to offer a well-crafted linear quest abundant in narrative content. When trying this route, we obviously loved it because we really love this type of games, but then we decided to add the factor of location shooting, where the player is practically immersed in a second game that affects him all the time and in turn modifies.

Not only now must one complete missions but one is also responsible for the people in one’s charge and must manage these places or else one will lose them, either due to mismanagement or enemy attacks. We believe that this addition was a partial change of vision within the study and was something that really hindered us at one point, but then the result was better than we expected.

Can you tell us a bit about the plot of the game?

Basically our character returns from a battle called The Battle of the Brides, which functioned as a popular uprising against some decrees that implemented the right of stay in an area of "‹"‹the kingdom. Unfortunately this battle was lost by the most vulnerable and when you return to your village you find it in flames as revenge against the “rebels” of the area, losing everything is when the character realizes that he would never be the same again and He decides to change his life as a militia peasant to something new, this something is what the player decides to choose, but without a doubt it is a destiny of greatness and power.

The physical loss of his place in the world and also his loss of social position is the beginning of a new path, a rebirth and a forced growth that the player must go through. This threshold will turn him into someone new, ultimately it will be a decision of the player how to face the world, for better or worse, with a system similar to that of Fable where all decisions count.

And what about Side Quests and stuff not related to the main quest?

Well Tales of Old: Dominus has a fairly long main story which is filled with secondary quests related to the new places we visit as we progress, so there we have the first Game Loop which would be Questing, something classic in every RPG.

But we also have a second approach to the gameplay that makes us own different locations on the map such as camps or businesses in cities, which depending on how we build them, we specialize them towards a particular activity, this other Game Loop is from of the Possession of locations.

Between these two activities, the player has a lot to do and entertain themselves, creating subplots that affect the gameplay since the character’s skills change depending on the type of locations they want to improve, such as hunter camps, thieves, loggers, blacksmith businesses, merchants. ,etc.

In addition to many and quite deep secondary missions, the main story has several variable options which allows us to have different options when approaching solutions, which also changes how the narrative develops and gives us that added value to play it again with another type of character and decisions.

There’s a lot of conversation around game content recently. Have you had any doubt about showing explicit violence or sex or discussing more sensitive topics?

We believe that violence is an attractive element in many video games, for example we can see that The Witcher 3 is full of scenes of this style. Not only because Geralt tries to sleep with everything he walks haha, but also because of the violence in many scenes, the missions involving "Whoreson Junior" are explicit and cruel.

As far as physical violence is concerned, we try to show enough to be able to paint a brutal scene from an era, which is already considered violent by gamers of the genre in general (although it was not so). In fact, at first we wanted to add dismemberment but we’re not there yet!

Regarding sex, we believe that the scenes can be easily suggestive with images that are not really "strong". Good dialogue with sexual tension and some suggestive images, without showing anything excessive, we believe is enough to capture the idea of "‹"‹a loving encounter in the story.

What is the current status of development? Are you doing a marketing campaign?

With the development it will be almost more than a year and a half and we are advancing every day, we already have actors for the voices, the characters created, several quests implemented and the gameplay being polished every day. We also add new mechanics that are fun and give a better level to the game in general, we try to leave aside the things that bring a lot of problems, thus being able to advance in what matters. We were even able to test the game with very good visual results on a Steam Deck and the truth is that it plays the best.

We don’t really do advertising or Ads of any kind for the game, just the occasional post on a medieval blog, the truth is we have to get on with that because very few people know about it and we know that it has potential. It would be ideal to be able to find an influencer who can help us with this by playing and showing it a little.

In fact, we didn’t even want to create the Steam page for Tales of Old: Dominus since we didn’t have everything ready, but well, friends and people who know more about the subject told us that yes or yes it was time to at least show something even if it isn’t polished. , since one can improve the content, in fact we should make a decent trailer haha!

We are working on the demo every day and the idea is to have it ready for next June 10 (2024) where there will be a Steam Next Fest related to survival games. By that date we will be able to have something so that all of you can play and enjoy Tales of Old: Dominus.

Thank you so much to the Devs over at Hvmana Industries MMD for giving us a such an insightful interview. I know that I’m incredibly excited to see more of Tales of Old: Dominus as development goes on!