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The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Defender's Quest
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Lars Doucet and Level Up Labs make a beautiful RPG/tower-defense baby with Defender's Quest. During the rest of January, Defender's Quest is $1 off for Joystiq readers; just enter the coupon code "JOYSTIQ" right here! What's your game called and what's it about? It's called Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten. It's a hybrid tower defense/RPG about a young woman who's dumped unceremoniously into a plague colony who then sets off to escape by gathering survivors to fight off the minions of a crazed necromancer hot on her trail.How important was a compelling story to you while developing Defender's Quest? Three of us previously worked on CellCraft, an educational biology game, which had a fun and silly story to help tie it together. While people like the characters, the story and dialogue was written by us programmers. For Defender's Quest, we wanted a proper story, so we deliberately sought out a writer.We wanted a narrative that matched our mechanics. Why do you have "defenders," and why are they defending this person? Why can't everyone just run away? So our setting was created to explain all that. You can't escape -- you're trapped in a plague colony. People want to help defend you because you're the only ticket out of there. We gave our characters real motivations for what they do in the story and in the mechanics.
