Check out our exclusive interview with Jon Loucks, a Game Designer for DropForge Games. We helped this company step out of the box with music and sounds for their new Loot & Legends, a flash to the past when true gamers played D&D in their basements with pizza to go around! 

What are some noteworthy features of the gameplay, design, art and audio that you think have contributed to the top-selling success of Loot and Legends?

JL: One of Loot & Legends’ greatest assets is the art style and tone. Our predecessor, Card Hunter, really embraced the tabletop RPG feel. Heck, you’re playing on a table! We’ve embraced the classic “game nerds in a basement” feel with 2D paper cutouts, classic adventure module with Gygaxian descriptions.

What do you think differentiates your game from others in its class?

JL: The core gameplay is pretty slick. Blue Manchu created a great game engine that blends traditional card mechanics with tabletop tactics. The addition of a game board allows for otherwise simple cards to have deep strategic implications. We also have a pretty unique equipment system that makes deck building easy and rewarding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhhoy-FpsYM

What role do you think audio plays in contributing to, and enhancing, the overall gameplay experience?

JL: For us, it was a lot about enhancing our tone. In Loot & Legends, you’re nerds in a basement for game night. A lot of our audio was inherited from our predecessor, but we were missing music on a lot of screens. The music we got from Somatone really helped drive home the mood on those screens, which is important for a game that relies heavily on charm and tone.

How did your team enjoy working with Somatone on the audio for this game?

JL: As far as I could tell, everything went smoothly and we’re happy with the outcome. It feels good to finally fill all the weird dead quiet spaces of a game with sound.

Anything else you’d like to share about this outstanding project, and what’s next on the horizon?

JL: We’re still hard at work on running Loot & Legends live, planning updates, fixing bugs, improving performance, etc. We’re also continuing to plow forward as a studio, and I think this will be a big year for us. We’re staffed up, in a great space, have a live game, and have other projects in the pipe. DropForge is firing on all cylinders now! It’ll fun to watch from the inside of this ride that started just over a year ago.

Loot & Legends is available as a free download on iOS, and is expected out on Android in the near future.

To learn more about Loot & Legends, please follow their Twitter, Facebook, #lootandlegends, and check out their website here.

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