Summary
The Last Spellwas a surprise hit when it was originally released into Early Access in 2021 thanks to an unusual but well-executed combination of game mechanics. Blending tower defense zombie horde slaying with deep turn-based classless RPG character builds wasn’t a simple task, but the small team at Ishtar Games managed to deliver a memorable hit that is as addicting as it is complex.
Game Rant sat down withThe Last Spellgame designer and producer Benjamin Coquelle along with Manon Bertin, producer of the new Dwarves of Runenberg DLC, for a retrospective look at theindie game’s successful Early Access run and its post-launch growth. They spoke about the game’s early inspirations, the challenges the team faced due toThe Last Spell’s unique gameplay, and how they approached the content inThe Last Spell’s debut DLC.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
How The Last Spell Got Its Start
Q:The Last Spellcomprises a unique combination of mechanics. How did the idea come to be? What were those early discussions like?
Coquelle:It was an idea from Matthieu, our creative director and CEO. We had just releasedDead In Vinland, our previous game, and it was a very narrative-driven game with a lot of text. He wanted to make a game with mostly gameplay and less focus on narrative. He was playing a lot ofBattle Brothersat the time and was like, “Why not make a tactical RPG?”
He also really liked theDynasty Warriorsfranchise where you fight hundreds and hundreds of enemies. That’s the starting point ofThe Last Spell: making a tactical RPG with hundreds of enemies and just a few heroes. Also during this time, in the studio, we were playing a lot ofroguelike games likeSlay the SpireandInto The Breach. It was a combination of genres we liked, andThe Last Spellwas born.
Q: What would you say areThe Last Spell’s design pillars? Are there certain things you believe are important for its identity?
Coquelle:It’s that feeling of oppression by the number of enemies. Every turn, you think, “Oh, I’ll never make it. I’m going to lose this turn.” But you actually do it. You play it out and you’re like, “Oh, I just killed like 14 zombies. Amazing! I managed to do it.” That’s really the feeling we were aiming for.
After that, it was the progression where we have meta-progression with a lot of unlocks, and it was important for us to have this reward to tell the player, “It’s okay, you failed, but here’s something new you can play with and you can attempt to win your next run.” I think that’s an important pillar.
We also wanteddeep RPG mechanics. Since the beginning, we wanted to make a classless RPG. You can build your heroes however you want. You can make a melee warrior using a magic wand and it’s okay. It will work. So that’s how the class system was born. You can choose from anything you want to build your characters. It was very important for us to have some deeper RPG mechanics so that you can experiment with and always try new things.
Q: Pulling off roguelike turn-basedDynasty Warriorsseems like quite a task. Did you encounter any challenges during development that arose because of the unique nature ofThe Last Spell?
Coquelle:We aremaking a zombie game, so enemies have to be not so clever but are still threats and there is a fine balance to find between that. For example, the base enemy will always stop at a barricade, but that’s okay because it’s just a stupid zombie and there are a hundred. If one stops at a barricade, the others will go through the center.
Also, a big challenge was to find the right gameplay for the day and night cycle. At first, it was seamless. We had the same gameplay during the night and during the day. To use the buildings, you would have to take your heroes and bring them to the buildings to use them. We tested it, and it was kind of bad, so we decided to implement a worker system where you spend a resource to use your buildings. The game is a unique combination, so we have to think of unique ideas.
There’s one more example with poison.Poison is a very interesting mechanicin RPGs, but you usually have fewer enemies. When you poison just one enemy in a horde it’s useless, so we had to think of other mechanics to make it interesting, like the contamination mechanic where you can apply statuses and transmit poison to other enemies when they die and things like that. It was interesting to take a genre that’s usually symmetrical with 3v3 or 5v5 fights and bring it to a much larger scale.
Q: When working on the game, are there any “dos and don’ts” you keep in mind where you want to see certain things or avoid others?
Coquelle:That’s a good question. It’s hard because we are always making different games, so the rules are always changing. I think a “do” that works for us is to always think of some deeper mechanic that a player can experiment with. That was a pillar forThe Last Spell, and I think it’s a pillar for all our games where you can experiment with our mechanics.
As for “don’ts,” maybe something that is not very common in AAA games is that we don’t like to hold the player’s hand and tell them everything, we want them to explore and experiment. Ourtutorials are very basic, but we do one important thing: we show everything. A mechanic is explained 100% in the tooltips.
But we will never tell the player, “Oh, you, you have to do that.” We prefer to show them that this mechanic works like that. You interpret and find a way to use it, rather than being told what to do. I think one of our “dos” is to always explain everything in tooltips. If you are wondering or asking yourself how something works in the game, you can just hover over something and it will explain to you how it works.
Bertin:In “dos,” I think it’s important to be iterative. We developedThe Last Spellover time through beta and Early Access. We didn’t start with a complete recipe. When we began working, we tested a lot of things and kept iterating over time, and that’s how we gotThe Last Spellas it is now.
How The Last Spell Handled Its Dwarves of Runenberg DLC
Q: Did you have any particular goals in mind as you worked on the Dwarves of Runenberg DLC?
Coquelle:During Early Access, we did a lot of system reworks. We released the game in Early Access and we had to completely rework a lot of things during it because players were giving us their feedback. Players were enjoying the game helping us improve the game, but we were running out of time.
The DLC is an opportunity to giveThe Last Spellthe new content it deserves. One thing we dropped during the development wasfantasy races like dwarves, elves, and goblins. Some things in the game hint at that, for example, with traits: we had elf blood and dwarf blood which had some bonuses. The DLC was an opportunity for us to develop this and make it a unique mechanic.
This DLC is dwarves, so we had to think about what a dwarf is and how we can translate it in terms of gameplay mechanics. It was good to have this theme for us because all the new weapons are related to the dwarf race and I think it was fun for the game designers to have this constraint, like, “Okay, it must be related to dwarves to make it to the DLC.”
Q: How did you decide what would be included in the free update and what would be DLC content?
Bertin:For the free content, we chose to give players an essential system. It was a system to choose which weapons they could have in the game. This had to be something we provide for free because it is a system that is essential for players as we’ve given them more content. It was a problem that appeared at the end of Early Access when we had lots of content, and we wanted to give players the tools to choose how to manage their game. So that was sure to be free.
Forthe DLC content, it’s new content and a new way to play, and it’s very different from the content of the base game. There’s a new medals perk system on items, and people can discover this system in the base game, and in the DLC we have new content created with this logic. So the free content is improvements of the game with the system to choose weapons, and teasing the new medals system they can experience more of in the DLC.
Coquelle:It was important for us to have a free update with the DLC. We have to make content for everyone and give them an excuse to boot up the game and take a look at the new content.
Bertin:The game has continued to grow since the end of Early Access, and a lot of people spend lots of time on it. We had to give something to those people. We don’t want to just add content and not take time for the people who’ve continued to play the game. We want to give you something, too.
Q: What do you feel makes a good turn-based strategy game? What do you look for in order for it to feel fun?
Coquelle:As Manon said, it takes a lot of iteration to have something great. I think I’m always saying this, but it’s the depth of the mechanics. If I feel that I can experiment and play with the mechanics and it’s not just a linear game, I think it’s a pleasure to play your game. I personally don’t like some turn-based games where I can’t build my characters. If I feel too restricted with my build, I will not enjoy myself when playing the game. But if the game tells me “Okay, now you’re able to play with our systems and try to find the best way to play your characters,” I think that’s a really good thing in turn-based games. It’s experimentation.
We also like the catchphrase, “Easy to learn, hard to master.” We wantedThe Last Spellto be easy to just kill zombies. You can take your hero and use some skills and it will have really pleasant VFX and sound and everything has good feedback and it’s cool to smash some zombies. But after that, you have to think and try to optimize every turn. I think that’s the pleasure you can find inThe Last Spelland great turn-based strategy games.
Q: Do you recall any moments during development where you were struggling with a problem and then something finally clicked?
Bertin:The content of the DLC was not evident when we started the project. We were thinking about what we would do now, and what people would want for the DLC. We didn’t know exactly what we could do. We had lots of possibilities, and I think it was very hard to choose the right path. It would set the standard if we wanted to do more DLC afterward, so it was very difficult to choose what the recipe would be for future DLC if we wanted them. We had lots of very cool ideas. We thought about some very cool systems like maybe a potion brew system.
I think we chose a good base for our DLC. I’m not sure if we had a “click” with the content like “Wow, this is the best thing to do!” but I think we found a good way to start with DLC and we are very happy to have the feedback from players with the systems we added. I think the click is that now the DLC is available, we can see all the possibilities. What people are waiting for with it and what we can do from here.
Coquelle:We are still hearing the player feedback to adjust for the next DLC. We can announce that it was the first and there will be other ones.
Bertin:It was the base of the system. We added a race, the new map, so now we can improve that. We’ll continue to add things to it, and I think it will grow more and more interesting.
The Last Spell Listens Keeps An Eye On Player Feedback
Q: In either the DLC or the base game, were there any features you tried out but ended up deciding against including?
Coquelle:At first, we wanted to make anarcade turn-based game. It had an arcade feeling, and you’d smash waves of enemies with quick turns and it’d be really fast to play. Now we see players are sometimes spending 20 minutes on a turn, so it was not really a good goal. But we had a combo system like arcade games, so the more enemies you kill, the higher your combo will get. You’d get extra resources if your combo is really high.
It was fun, but you played in completely different ways that we didn’t want. It was another game. Maybe we can revisit this system at some point. But yeah, at one pointThe Last Spellhad a combo system like a beat ‘em up game.
Bertin:I have one for the DLC. It’s a very small anecdote, but it’s very fun. We have a zone toward the left of the map when you start a new game. It’s procedural and you have different possibilities on the map. The game designer spent a lot of time on it, and he was very proud because he said it has 27 possibilities.
And no one sees that. Never. People never talked about that during testing or after the release. Nobody cared about that or saw it. I mean, we are not sure people noticed, because nobody talks about it. So we don’t know if it’s good or not because nobody cares. I think we can improve that.
Coquelle:You can launchThe Last Spelland go into a map, and you’ll see that to the left of the town the layout will always be different. It was a bit surprising we had no feedback on that.
Q: Is there anything about the DLC you’re especially excited about? Do you have a favorite feature or improvement?
Bertin:For me, the race is very cool, because I’ma nerd for graphicsso I see all the possibilities to having something different, and it’s very cool to discover something new with your characters and to have a distinction with your heroes. They have more personality.
Our intention in the base game was for people to have an attachment to their heroes, to want to find them and keep them safe. I think a new race can help give them more personalities and allow players to be more attached to them. The map is a new thing that gives more possibilities. We started small with it just to experiment, but I think we can go further to test other things and to give players new ways to playThe Last Spell. I think it will be interesting in the future to test new things.
Q: Your team is very tuned into player feedback as we’ve talked about a bit today. Are there any examples of player feedback that really helped you make a decision regarding the game’s direction?
Coquelle:A good example of that is at thebeginning of Early Access, we launched with only one map, it was Gildenberg, and the goal was to survive a 30-day long run. SoThe Last Spelloriginally only had one level with some procedural things, and the goal was to make a three-act run in this level. You play 10 days and fight a boss, another 10 days and fight a boss, and you have three bosses during a single run, and it was a long run.
The launch had only the first 10 days and people were enjoying it. We planned to make just one more level to add some extra content, but after that, we saw players were really enjoying the levels. They were like, “When will the new map be released?” So that’s from the players. We decided to make five maps for the game, and the DLC also has a new map.
So it was really the players who decided whether it would be a roguelike with one unique city you have to protect, or a tactical campaign with different maps, different bosses, and a different identity. The scope of the game was much smaller. Since the game has been a success and the players are wanting more, this is what happened.
Q: As you’ve mentioned,The Last Spellhas grown quite a bit and has seen some major milestones. Do you have any favorite memories from your time working on the game?
Coquelle:For me, the best memory I have is the first time players playedThe Last Spell. It was a demo forthe Steam Game Festival, and it was during the pandemic. So we were working on the game, and it’s really crazy outside, and you’re just focused on the game. It’s kind of a relief to work on this game and just not think about anything else.
We were very surprised to see a lot of players play during the event and really enjoyed it. It was a surprise moment. It’s really cool. We worked hard during this pandemic, and people are enjoying it and maybe also forgetting about the crazy things outside.
Bertin:I wanted to talk about that… [Laughs]
For me, it was the release. It’s very simple, but it was very cool for the team to see. We are a little different team working on the DLC, so it was the first experience for some of the people on the team to release the DLC project. It was very cool to see that work was appreciated by the players. We are very proud because people were very happy, and we didn’t have a lot of big problems with the release. It was a good release for us. So we are just happy to have good momentum with the game.
Q: Do you have any last thoughts you’d like to share before we wrap up?
Coquelle:I have something simple also. We are just two people interviewing right now, but it’s a complete team behindThe Last Spelland a lot of people worked on it. The studio is still alive thanks to this game. Wegrew as a studiothanks toThe Last Spell. We were 10 in the beginning, and now we have 40 people.
It really is the game that launched us, so thanks to the players and thanks to the rest of the team that worked on the game.
Bertin:Yes, we are very happy to have the opportunity to continue this adventure, because ifThe Last Spelldidn’t work, we would have the obligation to stop. Now we can continue to improve the game, and it’s very cool to continue this project because we overcame a lot of challenges with it, and we’re excited to continue to improve it over time.
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The Last Spellis available on PC, PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.
