Endlessly Fun: Talking to Amplitude Studio

Recently Felix games was invited to the press tour of Amplitude Studios, who are promoting their two newest games in their Endless Franchise: Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Legend. We were able to discuss their upcoming releases, Steam Early-Access, Indie Gaming as well as the gaming industry as a whole. We were able to meet CEO Romain de Waubert de Genlis as well as Director of Marketing Max Von Knorring, and see some incredibly promising games!

First a little bit about Amplitude Studios if you haven't heard of them before. Amplitude Studios are a relatively small indie studio based in France. Having come together from various parts of the gaming industry, they have decided to create games that is creative, new and unique, allowing the community to have input into the game development as well. This led to the release of their first game, Endless Space which was released in 2012. A sci-fi 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) turn based strategy, it was quite well received and sold quite well for PC and Mac (it's still available on steam, so if you are a big strategy buff and haven't played this I would seriously considering checking it out!). However, these guys stuck a lot of effort into making this world deep with incredibly rich lore, so when they started working on their next games, they decided to remain within the Endless universe.

This is where Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless (both on Steam Early Access) step in. Chronologically Dungeon of the Endless is the first in the franchise with this rogue-like/tower defense hybrid telling the story of a prison ship crashing on the planet of Auriga. You must survive in true rogue-like fashion and try to find your way out of the your crashed space ship. The guys at Amplitude studios were able to show a run through of this game, and boy did it look great. The retro graphics looked really smooth, the gameplay was entertaining and the concept itself looked really good.

Now Endless Legend is set several years after the events of Dungeon of the Endless, dealing with the ancestors of those original prisoners, who have now evolved to several different factions all vying for the control of the planet. This game is also a 4X strategy game, but this time set in a medieval fantasy world. Given that we have had so much backlash with the missteps of Planetary Annihilation and DayZ in terms of Early Access, I was not sure what to really expect from this game. What I did get, was a beautifully, almost fully completed game that looked really great to play. The original concepts, the artwork and general gameplay that Amplitude studios came up with to make this game unique really intrigued me and I cannot wait to fully test them out!

However, we did not only discuss the games themselves but Amplitude Studio's role as guinea pigs to Valve's early access as well as their general overview how early-access/early development funding should work. Rather than using Kickstarter, or similar crowdfunding sites, which they feel inhibits the game's developers ability to fully complete their vision, they went with steam's Early Access. This way, they could get community feedback but still retain control of their vision. However, rather than failing miserably like other companies, these guys have done it right, supplying almost a fully finished game for a slight discount while simultaneously listening to the community and giving them the ability to play early. That is another big aspect that Amplitude Studios tries to nurture, namely the interaction with their community. They interact with their fans, take their ideas into consideration as well as answering to feedback from those who have played the game. Really commendable approach, that I hope others in the industry follow.

When talking about the gaming industry in general, CEO Romain de Waubert de Genlis remarked he thought that the creativity in the gaming industry was in the hands of the indie studios. Here in this scene lay the new original ideas, because these companies were that much closer to their fans, and were the companies that were unique rather than playing it safe.

All in all I was incredibly impressed with this opportunity to see Amplitude Studios new games, as well as having a chat about what they think about gaming as well. The games were gorgeous, and I believe will be a real success. Furthermore, the studio has been incredibly generous in giving Felix some free keys to these games, which can and will be won later on (more information on this later). I wish these guys all the best success.

For more information on reviews of these games, as well as how to win the free Steam keys, just follow this website and Felix Twitter!