“Some people just find it easy.”
The Banished Vault was one of last year’s best, and possibly most difficult, games.
But underneath, it was a game about maths.
Run at it with the expectation of easy progress and you will meet with an abrupt thump.
It wasn’t a game for everyone.
But the people who persevered, loved it.
Chris Tapsell called it “dense and brilliant, like a neutron star” in hisBanished Vault review.
It’s quite a unique concept.
Was this something you had buzzing around in your head for a while?
Where did it come from?
Nic Tringali:It came together in fits and starts.
And that stayed on its own for a bit.
I imagine it was quite a dry presentation in terms of people seeing it and being excited about it.
But what’s the alternative?
Because I didn’t really want to stick to the extreme realism kind of thing.
Kerbal was at 90 percent of NASA.
So it’s easier to simplify things.
So I didn’t want to do realism.
Then we just stumbled on Gothic architecture-
How did you stumble on that?
We were also thinking thematically.
So it couldn’t be a generational ship where there’s thousands of people.
But you still want big spaceships.
Then everything starts falling into place.
Then from there, every visual element of the game was accounted for.
The map: oh let’s go look at medieval manuscripts and inlays of churches and filigree.
The spaceships: churches and spires and stuff.
And the UI will look like it’s etched stone.
So it was about finding a theme that hit all the marks.
Did The Banished Vault always have a board game approach?
Yeah that was in from the very beginning.
And that goes back to the abstraction - like, I don’t want it to be too realistic.
And I like board games, and I like board game design.
So it was a matter of how can we do that effect but in a computer game instead?
I have to ask: did you ever think about making it into anactualboard game?
No, not really.
If I can get the calculator mechanically working in real-life, then I’ll make it.
That would be the prerequisite, probably.
When did that idea come up?
Really early - it’s just something I was thinking about for a long time.
And similarly, from the beginning, we knew how hard it would be to teach people the game.
A manual, if done right, can actually be extremely effective.
There’s a lot of different reasons why.
One, from a production point of view, tutorials are very hard to make.
Oh, why’s that?
Because a tutorial is constantly interrupting the normal flow of the game.
But the game otherwise doesn’t care if you do that three times.
So yeah, they’re quite time consuming and technically challenging.
The manual was started three months in and was consistently iterated and updated.
And it thankfully, did.
Because I love that.
It’s very old-school.
Oh that was also from the initial pitch.
And we were like, if it’s an actually laid-out book we could just print it.
Yeah, that was super-easy.
So it was always set up to be printed from the beginning.
That then informed the art decisions later on.
Did many people buy it?
Because it’s sold separately isn’t it?
That was way higher than our expectations.
We’re about a year on from the release of The Banished Vault now.
Do you remember how you were feeling back then, at the time?
Every element of the game was in and we were essentially balancing it and playing it.
And it was peak “I don’t know if this is gonna go well”.
I mean, the whole production was like, “this is a really weird thing”.
The balancing was like, “okay, that’s the game - we can’t take that out.
But how do we get people on board with what that’s doing?”
So it was a lot of figuring out, okay, what are the difficulty levels?
How generous do we want to be?
My expectations were confirmed when the actual game was out.
Some people just find it easy.
It works with their brain.
And that’s fine.
So the run-up was: how do we find the middle point?
Have you had any interesting feedback from players about it in that sense?
The main feedback is either it’s too hard or too easy.
And that’s fine.
If everyone is on a big bell curve, you’ll have people on either end of it.
Launch was a very nice surprise in that most people actually did understand what we were going for.
That’s the validating thing.
So that was good.
How did it do in terms of meeting your commercial expectations - has it been a success?
And we knew that that pool of people was not very large.
It was largely made by you, I think?
Yes, with 2D art bygarin- they’re really good.
But as far as designing and programming and everything, it was just me the whole time.
Heya!I have illustrated books, tabletop RPGs, videogames and comics.
Right now I have a lot of free time in my schedule, and looking for a work.
If you are interested to work with me, then feel to hit me up!
What is it - can you say anything about it?
But yeah, it’s ridiculously early for that thing.
Is it quite different to The Banished Vault?
Yeah, I think so.
That was the main thing I needed a break from, so to speak.
And how do you feel looking back on the Banished Vault with a bit of perspective now?
How does it sit in your mind?
No, I feel really good about it, honestly.
It ends up somewhere you couldn’t have predicted at all.
And that’s quite a nice feeling.
It’s fun in the totality but moment to moment, it’s quite frustrating or difficult.
