SKALD: Against the Black Priory, fra High North Studios, er - som nogle Steam-anmeldelser bogstaveligt talt siger - et spil "ikke for alle". Det er et hardcore RPG med et mørkt fantasy-univers og en hyldest til rollespil fra 80'erne og 90'erne, både hvad angår grafik og gameplay. For moderne spillere eller folk, der ønsker en mere afslappende oplevelse, er det måske ikke den bedste titel. Men med 93% positive anmeldelser på Steam er det tydeligt, at alle, der gav spillet en chance og vidste, hvad de kunne forvente, endte med at elske det.
Det er ikke tilfældigt - det er nøglen til at finde succes som indieudvikler, forklarer Anders Lauridsen, CEO i High North Studios, der talte med Gamereactor på Devcom 2025 under Gamescom. "What I tell everyone, especially younger developers when they are starting out and kind of imagining their first project, is that if you make something that everyone likes but no one loves, it will fail."
Efter Lauridsens opfattelse skal man "have to be willing to make something that a lot of people will hate as long as some people will absolutely love." Men hvordan ved man, at man har skabt noget, folk virkelig vil elske?
For Lauridsen, der holdt et panel på Devcom med titlen "Design pillars in indie games", bør et spil fremkalde følelser hos dig, selv når du ikke spiller det. Alene eksistensen af spillet som et kulturelt artefakt burde få folk til at "sidde i deres biler og fantasere om det.""Like when you are in love with someone, you dream about them when you sit in traffic and you forget to drive when the traffic light goes green."
Han gav et eksempel: "I made a very retro style game, and there aren't a lot of games like this anymore. So for a lot of people, a large part of the sort of consumer experience of Skald was fantasizing about this game and taking them back to their childhood."
"Even more so than actually playing it, just the fact that this game was being created and someone was kind of reclaiming a part of the past was incredibly important to a lot of people in the community and that was sort of what made me think about this concept of how we fantasize about certain games and how that makes them sort of artifacts that are much bigger than simply the game we are playing."
Det er Lauridsens store råd til indieudviklere og unge spilskabere: Lav et spil, der fremkalder den reaktion hos nogle mennesker. Det behøver ikke være for alle - måske bare for nogle få - og andre vil måske ikke bryde sig om det. Men hvis man laver et spil "that is very polished, everyone is impossible to find something wrong with it, but no one is going to fantasize about it, it cannot succeed."
Du kan se hele vores interview med Anders Lauridsen, hvor han går mere i dybden med, hvad der gjorde Skald specielt, samt hans filosofiske syn på videospil, nedenfor.
