The return of a classic!

Bloodwars: Part one – The Vouds was a turn based fantasy strategy game on the Amiga platform. It saw first light in the beginning of 1990’s and was last distributed as a public domain beta in the Aminet in 1997.  Before that the game had got some attention around the world by downloaders. However, the development was halted and original authors left the project.

Now Bloodwars is coming back with the original developers and this time on mobile! During the years the authors had received positive feedback and even offers for volunteers to continue the project for them. Latest fan gameplay movie was uploaded to interwebs in 2016!  Somehow the game just kept on living. This encouraged the team to re-group and start creating a up-to-date version of the game.

Let’s hear the news from Jumahake Games programmer Make Turunen and pixel artist Jussi Valonen who are now finalizing the new version.

How did the Bloodwars project begin?

– I remember that one day at school, we were in college back then, Make told that he had something to show to us, says Valonen. Pete Määttä and I went to his home and he had coded a simple demo that had two castles where one could buy an army unit and move to attack the other castle. It was mind blowing! We were into all kinds of fantasy strategy games, table tops, RPG’s and 4x strategy games like Civilization and Master of Orion, but none of us had made any games by ourselves. The most played game in our gang or should I say a cult…

– Cthulhu Freaks, adds Turunen!

–Yes a cult you could call it, agrees Valonen.

– We played that hard, says Turunen with a weird grin on his face. But the biggest hit with us was Warlords. It was simple enough for everybody to learn and had multilayer that was essential to us.

– And man, did we play that game. I remember a session that lasted 18 hours with no breaks, Valonen sighs. Warlords was great but it had some really annoying features like the pace. It was so slow and the graphics were terrible.

– So when I got more experienced with coding we decided to make a game of our own, Turunen adds.

Where did the name Bloodwars came from? Why was it changed in the new version?

– I can’t recall for sure, but I think the letters B and W came from the idea to make Better Warlords. Naturally we could not use that so the name evolved to Bloodwars. Since we abandoned the project there have been at least three similar named games so we decided to avoid any hassle, states Turunen.

– And we did have blood on the field, says Valonen. When you lost a combat a puddle of blood was left behind.

– Bloodwars was ment to be the first part of a longer series of fantasy strategy games. We have had several attempts to claim that promise during the past two decades with no success. The new name VOUDS: The Bloody Wars revives that promise. There might be more to come…

What was it that made Bloodwars better fantasy strategy game than Warlords?

– Well, all the credit to Warlords, but it was too limited, says Valonen. Since we had no experience in video game design we used Warlords as an inspiration and tried to build on that. Luckily we had Pete who is a regular wizard-of-oz when it comes to gaming mathematics. He was able to tell us how the combat calculations were made in games by just playing them.  So we started out with a few simple formulas from which Make build the algorithms. At the first stages we added a lots of different units and tried to balance the game. Very soon Make coded a map maker software that I used to create more maps to choose from. More features started to creep in.  Players could make alliances with each other and hire mages that could cast spells…

– And scripted events, says Turunen. Warlords did have ruins to explore, but we added some background story to them. There were multiple choice questions by which players could react to an encounter. Basically every choice had several weighed random outcomes so the player couldn’t be sure which reaction was the best. Events had more replay value this way.

– Main reason for adding scripted events was that in Warlords or any other fantasy strategy game where players conquer land or castles the game is actually over when one player gets a lead. Resources get stockpiled. We wanted a game that everyone wants to play until the end. So we called for Balrog, Valonen smiles. I remember a game, where I had all the castles and there was only one event left to explore. Pete rushed for it and of course Balrog joined him. With that one army he started to raze and burn my keeps to the ground and eventually I lost the game.

What about this new version, is it a faithful remake?

– It has been over 20 years and the game was still remembered, wonders Turunen! It was about time that we did something about it. I thought that Bloodwars would adapt nicely to touch screen.

– We were already running the first tests when we made a search for games of this genre and found them almost non-existent nowadays, says Valonen. Naturally we found that there was a Warlords remake. Personally I think It did capture the authentic feel of the original, In good and in bad. What we wanted to do was to maintain the feel of the original Amiga game but add some modern features to it.

Valonen continues – It was clear that we would scale up the original graphics without any blending so that the look and feel would stay exactly the same. We are using only 16×16 pixel sprites, which is the same as it was in the original. One might think that this is pure madness these days! I personally love the challenge of minimalism. Let’s see how players will respond.

– Scripted events are still there, Turunen moves on. But the event engine got totally rewritten and is now more sophisticated. We found some fan made maps that were added to the game and some visual treat were created to give more boost to dragons.

– The original did not have any female characters so we added Amazons to fill the gap, Valonen explains. Well there were some hidden beauties for the most determined, but I am not too proud of them anymore. With this in mind, it might be wise to explain that we were hardly just eighteen when we created Bloodwars and some of the content came out a bit controversial. Times were also different. There was no graphic Internet back then and we had no idea that our game could survive this long. So some of the events and dialogue in the old version got self-censored in the new one. But the weird dialogue is still there. The game is still fun and as funny as the original was.

 

– All the old stuff is there, adds Turunen. And some very tasty new ones like The HYDRA. If you though that Balrog was the baddest you were so wrong…

– Not to mention the sound, Valonen points out. In Bloodwars there was only few sounds that we produced ourselves, the rest we really just borrowed somewhere. There wasn’t any background sound either. Now we have improved the quality of samples, re-recorded all of the old ones and added lots of new effects and sound schemes from quality freeware makers. I even composed and produced a title track King Frog, which rocks with heavy riffed beat that must be a huge hit among players, chuckles Valonen.

– Rocks like a Beast, laughs Turunen.

When VOUDS: The Bloody Wars fantasy strategy game coming out?

– Currently we are working on Windows, OS X, iOS and Android versions, tells Turunen. There might be more coming in the future, but these are now on the table. Single player and hot seat game types are almost finished and planning for the multiplayer mode has started. Hopefully we will see VOUDS: The Bloody Wars in AppStore and in GooglePlay at the end of the year 2017.