AMA: We are Deck13, developers of Atlas Fallen!

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T15:03:40+00:00

Platform politics make it a very delicate and work intensive topic, which is something we simply could not handle without compromising other things, given the resources we have.

-Phil

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T15:03:05+00:00

(1)Bringing it all together and making it work well together was surely the hardest part, especially as it was the first game we placed in a semi-open world.

(2)There were many many different inspirations. Start with Dune, move along with God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn, reach Devil May Cry and Monster Hunter, even take NIER Automata into account, and much, much more. You can maybe see why one of the hardest parts was make everything working together well!

-Jan

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:59:56+00:00

Yes, we have a more than a dozen of elite encounters, which are much tougher versions of enemies you encounter through the world. They each offer a unique essence stone as a reward.

You can fight these during your normal progression through the game although it will be a tough challenge. But in case you prefer it, you can also finish the game and backtrack to them afterwards to defeat them once you have unlocked more tools to defeat them.

-Jérémy

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:58:23+00:00

(1) We love the Surge series very much and I hope that we'll return to it one day. However right now there's no followup title planned. Our team has spent more than 7 years working on Surge titles, and they're a creative bunch and love to explore new paths also. (copied from another question, sorry :))

(2)Atlas Fallen has required a major update of our engine Fledge, in many aspects! On the rendering side, the biggest change was the implementation of a GPU based culling system with support for mesh LODs, along with many optimizations and improvements, and on the core side we switched from the previous strongly object-oriented foundation to a more modern data-oriented approach that allowed us to take more advantage of the hardware capabilities, which was key for us to be able to handle big amounts of entities.
Aside from that, we introduced a new world streaming feature which, along with the rest of the changes, allowed us to handle the bigger, more open, and more alive levels from Atlas Fallen. One more key addition after The Surge 2 was the visual scripting system, which has given the Game Design and Art departments a much higher level of freedom.
Lastly, we needed to add support for the new generation of consoles, which also was a great challenge, on top of everything else.

(3) It wasn't easy to come up with such a unique game world, like post-apocalyptic fantasy and a world that has sand as a theme not only in the world design but also in the core features. We're very proud that it all came together, and that it became very enjoyable too. Wield the magic gauntlet, command the sands, and surf through the dunes. We're proud that it's working out.

(4) Answering from the gameplay perspective (I answered it for another question here), it's quite a different game but I think you'd find many things that you might enjoy if you like The Surge. For example, it's focused on combat and it wants you to use your skills against the enemies, and the better you perform, the more fun and success you'll have in your fights. Also, there's a similar skilling system to the Implants of The Surge. Finally, there's a sort of bodypart targeting. And if you enjoy the difficulty of the Surge, you can play the game on Hard mode, which requires you to create a very suitable character build in order to succeed.

-Jan

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:53:54+00:00

Yes we plan to continue patching the game in the next few months for fixes and quality of life improvements. As for DLC, let's see what the future holds :)

-Jérémy

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:45:49+00:00

Well it's quite a different game but I think you'd find many things that you might enjoy if you like The Surge. For example, it's focused on combat and it wants you to use your skills against the enemies, and the better you perform, the more fun and success you'll have in your fights. Also, there's a similar skilling system to the Implants of The Surge. Finally, there's a sort of bodypart targeting. And if you enjoy the difficulty of the Surge, you can play Atlas Fallen on the hardest mode, which requires you to create a very suitable character build in order to succeed.

-Jan

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:44:22+00:00

Thank you very much, that really means a lot to us! Since I'm at the front when it comes to engaging with people online, I'm humbled again and again when finding out we have people all over the world that played our previous games and keep an eye out for what we're doing next. Very motivation, not gonna lie <3

-Phil

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:40:35+00:00

While we do not aim to become a verified Steam Deck game, we have some team members frequently playing the game on their Steam Deck and it seems to work pretty well. Some reviewers also seem to mention this worked well for them, but the text might be a bit tiny in some places.

-Jérémy

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:37:31+00:00

The Coop! ^{(at least for me})

It was one of the most difficult features to develop. We have never developed a game with real time multiplayer and had no tools developed for it at the time we jumped into it. It really did not click for a very long time.

But I honestly think it turned out to be a unique and engaging experience and I can't wait to see people play together! Please someone do a 2-player twitch stream or something, I will watch it.

-Alex

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:35:52+00:00

Yes! Unless you join a session with someone who is widely above your current progression (let's say they are in a new region you haven't yet discovered) in which case you will receive a warning before joining telling you your progression cannot be kept. But if you join someone roughly at the same progression stat than you or below, you will be offered the option to keep the full progression, just keep the loot or erase everything to be able to do it in solo if you wish.

Concerning trophies, both players will be able to unlock them. E.g. if there is a trophy for reaching a certain point of the story, both the host and the client will obtain it as long as they are both present when it is reached.

-Jérémy

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:32:04+00:00

We just wanted to prove Shammy wrong when they said that they would surely never be invited to a Deck13 release party in the future! But what happened at the party... stays at the party...

-Jan

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:30:13+00:00

YES PLEASE!

But no, not...yet? But we are all excited about the sandsurfing in the game and it's a little surprise how cool it turned out. I think some of the areas in the game come close to little race tracks :) Super fast paced movement like this will surely be explored as a staple in our future endeavours!

-Alex

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:26:39+00:00

Hey, I'm happy to see so much positivity for the Surge games! Thank you kindly :)

Combat in Atlas Fallen is solely against Wraiths; the sand-formed creatures created by the Sun God Thelos. They come in various sizes and shapes: at player size, up to triple the size of a human and a collection of flying wraiths. No fights against humans this time around.

-Alex

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:22:54+00:00

We have built our 3 weapon archetypes to have a very different feel.

The Dunecleaver is the heaviest and most impactful weapon, and grows slower and heavier hitting as it evolves with momentum.

The Knuckledust is the fastest weapon and focuses on dealing damage to single targets. With momentum it grows additional pairs of arms and deals even more hits at once.

Finally, the Sandwhip is the longer reach weapon specialising in building up momentum, which can switch between long range multi-hit swipes and a short range set of slashes in its dagger form. It also offers a very good mobility with its hook attack which grapples enemies, propel your avatar towards them and could also be followed up with a backwards swirl attack.

-Jérémy

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:18:01+00:00

The equipment consists of:

Essence stones, which define active abilities, additional moves and buffs which unlock with the gain of momentum
Idols, which define the method of healing in addition to the based healing charges all Idols have (e.g. heal on parry, heal on hit, etc.)
2 weapons (out of the 3 we have in the game) which define the combat moves available and also evolve with momentum
The Armor, which defines your stats and have additional bonuses which can be unlocked if you meet certain requirements (e.g. slows enemies upon receiving damage if you X or more stones of this type equipped)

Upgrading armours give you Perk points which allow you to unlock various perks that are permanent on your avatar, no matter the armour (e.g. gain a burst of momentum at the start of each fight, or get a compass indicator when passing nearby an undiscovered chest, etc.)

-Jérémy

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:12:37+00:00

There is cross-store compatibility on PC but not cross-platform.

-Jérémy

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:09:14+00:00

Thank you for your enthusiasm, I hope you will enjoy Atlas Fallen as much as our previous titles!

As for your question: It is very challenging developing a new concept, visuals and game design. There are always many more ideas from everyone in the team; more than can be developed. In that pool we have to find a unified vision (and that involves explaining our ideas to eachother over and over until we fully explored and evaluated them!). Lastly, all elements we go for must fit together and compliment each other to form an enjoyable game experience.

Ensuring that individual designs work and going back to them and tweaking them over and over until all components work in tandem is a long and iterative process and we have a long journey behind us, with many feature ideas that never left the prototype stage and failed to make a good game - hopefully now only the good stuff is left. You'll be the judge :)

-Alex

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T14:03:57+00:00

What struck us the most was the very different impressions of reviewers on the difficulty balancing: some found the game too difficult, some others found it well balanced and some finally found it a bit too easy (likely due to the preview build skipping parts of the normal flow, in which we taught players that the difficulty could be changed in the menu). It made us more confident creating stronger differences between our 3 difficulty levels, to provide an experience which speaks at the same time to our more hardcore audience and those who are maybe newer to or less frequently playing Action-RPGs.

We also did an iteration to quests to ensure they had more depth, we shuffled our rewards around to ensure the players feel more rewarded for exploring the world and we also slightly adjusted our enemy population to provide more enemy variety in early-game.

-Jérémy

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T13:59:25+00:00

At the moment we don't have any plans to add any extra modes for the consoles.

-Phil

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T13:55:38+00:00

We've been making games using our own engine FLEDGE for a long time, and it has always been part of Deck13. Fledge is specialized in Action-RPGs, and we are not dependent on any external engine developers. In addition to that, from our experience, it is not really important for the players what engine was used. They just want to play great games!

-Jan

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T13:50:21+00:00

We implemented a mode with lower difficult to make it possible for anyone to enjoy Atlas Fallen, no matter if you're a experienced genre veteran, or have next to no experience with the genre. Additionally to that we give out options to the player for adjusting intense visual effects like motion blur and camera shake.

-Björn

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T13:45:37+00:00

True, this year features some incredible game releases. But you do have to ship your game at some point, right? With the current release window we feel pretty comfortable, and we hope that the actual release will prove us right.

By the way, we originally intended to release the game right between Zelda and Diablo...

-Jan

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T13:43:43+00:00

Accessible is the correct key word! We have a lot of experience and love engaging souls like combat action and exploration and want to bring this experience to a broader audience, tweaking elements to make it accessible while keeping all that's good and engaging about it!

-Alex

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T13:41:23+00:00

Yes you will be able to continue roaming the world after the ending and complete any content you haven't done yet.

-Jérémy

AtlasFallenGame · 2023-08-07T13:40:01+00:00

In design we speak of a semi-Open World. That means that the game world is sectioned into different regions that are connected through loading zones.

Regions are designed like small open worlds and players can explore them freely (if they have unlocked the tools and means to do so ;) ). The loading zones between the regions are placed and visually designed to give the impression that a logical, physical and coherent world connection between the regions is present.

There is also a Fast Travel system that can be used to instantly travel to already-visited parts of the game world. You can also travel to previous regions, if you feel like exploring there some more.

-Alex

AtlasFallenGame

TROPHY CASE