What gives, then? Volgarr the Viking II, a brand-new entry starring everyone's favorite grizzled Midgardian, is just around the corner, launching on the Switch eShop on 6th August. What changed the studio's mind?
Well, we sat down to speak with Kris Durrschmidt, co-founder, CEO, and creative director at Crazy Viking Studios, alongside Calvin Vu, producer at Digital Eclipse, to find out more. We delve into what makes the game different from the original, how newcomers can ease themselves into the brutal experience, and whether the rise of Soulslikes might have a positive impact on its critical and commercial reception.
So let's get to it.
Can you talk about how you got together with Digital Eclipse to work on Volgarr the Viking II?
Kris Durrschmidt: I was actually working with Digital Eclipse for a while. About six years ago Mike [Mika, DE's president] reached out to me and said, "Hey we have this new initiative where we're working on these collections and documentary games and I really need your help." So I started with that because I didn't know what to do with Crazy Viking Studios. I worked with Mike and Digital Eclipse for many years on SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection, Blizzard Arcade Collection, etc.
During that process, people got loud about wanting a sequel to Volgarr. And an external publisher to Digital Eclipse approached and said, "Hey, we'd like to offer you a publishing deal." That put me in a dilemma because I'm working these two jobs. I spoke with Mike about it, and Mike and Digital Eclipse have a history of making retro games so wanted to start doing self-publishing. They wanted to start doing things like Karateka and Llamasoft and, you know, publish under their own label. And so the timing was just really good. They made a counteroffer which was really good for me because instead of working two jobs, my two jobs kind of became one job, and a whole lot of stress went away.
Calvin Vu: Yeah, Digital Eclipse was looking to get into self-publishing, which was not something that it was known for before; we did lots of licensing and creating collections for larger companies. So Kris was just in there at the right time and happened to have an IP for which everybody was happy to make a sequel. So the cards just kind of lined up well there.
You mentioned you weren't sure what to do with Crazy Viking Studios. Did you always have a sequel in mind for Volgarr, or were you thinking about moving on to something different?
Kris: There's a little bit of personal history here. Volgarr did really well. When we made Volgarr — when I say 'we', it was Taron Millet and I back then — we didn't have any intention of ever making a sequel. We accomplished everything that we wanted to do in that game and we felt that it was a good standalone experience. If people wanted to play Volgarr, they could just play that game.
We were going to move on to make other games. This is probably something that a lot of people don't know, but we prototyped follow-up games with different characters in that universe, and they're all in various states. We were gonna expand the universe, make other sequels, well, kind of spiritual sequels, not direct sequels, but games in that universe where you play different characters that have different abilities and things like that.
So that put the company, initially, in a state of self-reflection, and try[ing] to figure out if we were gonna continue or shut it down or do a little bit of soul searching. I took a break, too. And it was at that time that Mike reached out about Digital Eclipse, so I've always been working on prototypes outside of that. I have several things that are in the works. But yeah, that's how that happened and where we ended up.
What was it that gave you the push to move forward with a direct sequel instead of heading in a new direction?
Kris: 10 years of getting endless emails and Twitter reachouts! "Where's Volgarr 2? When are you guys going to do something again? What's happening?" The thing with prototyping and making other games and things like that is, depending on what it is and what you're trying to achieve, you can't always do open development. I prefer open development, personally. But sometimes you can't. Like if a game is a particular kind of game, it doesn't work well for open development because the game in itself is a surprise. So we have a lot of prototypes and stuff that are in the treasure chest that we haven't spoken of because we haven't committed to anything.
So that's where that went. We had a lot of fans that, because we were so quiet, were wondering what was going on, because we never shut the company down. We were always kind of semi-active and talking about things. So they're like, "Well, where's Volgarr? How come we can't get more stuff? Make some DLC, make something." DLC doesn't work for that game, it's self-contained, so it would hurt it.
In my mind, I was never really gonna do that game in particular again. When the situation presented itself, it took several months of really deep diving into it and trying to figure out how a sequel could be made that didn't feel like it was just DLC or just more of the same. Volgarr II had to be Volgarr II, not Volgarr 1.5 or something.
Kris: In the original, there is a series of treasure chests that you unlock and you get particular abilities and armours in a certain order. The amount of hits that Volgarr can take has been changed. In the new game, there are more abilities, more armour, different magical items, and things like that. I could probably talk about this aspect alone for about an hour, but the second game is more complex, for sure.
In the original game, you start off with a wooden shield, and it could only take two hits before it broke. And then you take another hit and you die. The helmet gave you sped-up attacks and then of course you had the famous fire sword. In the second game, we added boots and a belt and those add abilities — I don't want to spoil too much about what they are — but they add new things that Volgar can do that weren't seen in the first game. Volgar can take more hits now because of the things that we've added to the game. So basically a larger health pool before he can die.
A lot of the things that I did in the second game were addressing the primary complaints, wishes, hopes, and dreams of what we collected from the fans and reviewers about what could have been done to make the game better. We went old school with the game design, like really old school, and several of the reviews said things like, "There aren't enough checkpoints." People were frustrated that you had to complete an entire map in one life to make any kind of real progression. The game only had one checkpoint halfway through the entire level. You transition from outside to inside with the boss fight. So if you fail in the boss fight, you're playing half the level every time, right?
That's how we wanted it, but we were surprised to see that so many people wanted a little bit more modern convenience. So there are more checkpoints in Volgarr II. But at the same time, to make the really old-school fans happy, we also allow you to destroy those checkpoints for extra points, lives, scores, things like that. So you can really be a hardcore gamer if you want, or if you need that little bit of extra help throughout the stages, you could keep them there and have more checkpoints.
The game is overall bigger than the original, but because there are more checkpoints, we felt that we could make the world bigger. You can run out of lives like in the original game's Valkyrie Path. In the original game, you didn't have lives, you just died over and over again unless you got to the proper path. But in the second game, you do have lives, you do run out, and you do continue. But you also have unlimited continues. So then someone might ask, "Well, [why] bother having lives or continues?" It's because it's tied into the narrative and what endings you get based on your performance. So it is beneficial for players to play as well as they can and it does drive that practice and speedrunning and that type of culture with the game.
That's interesting. I enjoyed the old-school nature of the original in the sense that each level felt almost impossible to get through at first, but you kept inching forward step-by-step until you could do it all without getting hit. It sounds like you had a lot of balancing to do with Volgarr II to get it right again.
Kris: I'm glad that you felt that way because there are folks that didn't quite get that. And that's okay, there's lots of games out there for everybody. But that was the goal. Of course, Volgarr is fun and it's cool, you're playing a Viking killing monsters and stuff like that, but the actual goal and the intent when I was trying to help make this was to make people better. To make people better at playing games and to give somebody an actual self-improvement skill of hand-eye coordination and all kinds of stuff like that.
It's like your gaming vegetables, I guess. You know, instead of everybody getting dessert all the time, there's a game out there that's gonna be able to get you your broccoli and stuff too. Which is not always that fun. You gotta try to mask it with cheese and put it in a muffin or something.
A lot of that, again, goes back to really thinking very hard about what would make this a good sequel. Because one of the things is speedrunning, I think the current world record holder for speedrunning the first game is like 14 minutes or something like that. For him to get his hands on this sequel - if not enough is different, then he's just going to walk through it because he's already mastered the skills of the first game. And so, yes, [veterans of the first game] are going to have an advantage playing Volgarr II, but it's not going to be a cakewalk because things have changed slightly, the challenges that come at them are different. That was one of the biggest balancing factors for the game; make it fun and exciting for new players, but also so fans of the original game didn't get bored.
Calvin: You have to build upon the experience of the first game and all the enemy types that existed there. I think a lot of work went into creating new enemy types that are a little bit different. There's so much push and pull as far as design and level layouts. Are the enemies in the right place? Do we have the right amount of chests? Do we have the right amount of checkpoints to make it feel like this is still challenging but not overwhelming? Constantly going back to how it compares to the original game.
Kris: In the first game, the way we introduced enemies was you had green, blue, and red enemies, and it didn't matter what level it was. And that's how players would recognise the more powerful enemies. We don't do that in Volgarr II; you actually need to observe the enemies for a moment. One of the funny tricks that we use is when a game starts, we introduce very familiar enemies you've already seen before. So if you've played the first game, you see something you're familiar with and you get a little overconfident and then something new shows up that behaves in a way that never behaved like that in the first game. So you can get really messed up if you don't take your time.
What can you tell us about the story in this game? I noticed there are multiple characters on the key art. Do they all play a significant role?
Kris: The characters that you're seeing in the poster are supporting character roles. You don't play as a character that's not Volgarr. In the poster, the Valkyrie is the one that brings you back from the dead and manages all the warrior souls. The other warrior Viking that you see in the background is a member of Volgarr's army.
The narrative from the first game was that Volgarr valiantly dies fighting an army of Lizardmen; he dies saving his village, but he does so with such valour that Odin takes notice, brings him back, and recruits him to deal with problems in Midgard with the Fáfnir Dragon and Giant Frost Trolls. He tells Volgarr that if he does this, then his place in Valhalla is secure.
Volgarr accomplishes that and so now in the sequel, some time has passed and he's a king now with his own army. The game starts where Volgarr is sitting on his throne, hanging out with Valkyrie and his army, they're all drinking mead, but they suddenly get attacked by a familiar enemy. So they basically go to war. So while you don't play as the characters in the poster, they serve important roles in the story.
The poster's stunning, by the way - who created that one?
Kris: That was Aaron Riley.
Calvin: Yeah, Aaron is an amazing match-up. Kris had an idea for the poster art that was very film-style. We were able to connect with Aaron who makes amazing art in the world of fantasy, high fantasy, Magic the Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, all that type of stuff. Their art styles just matched up perfectly. It was probably the easiest art commission work I've ever seen done. It was just two people of like minds and visual design - they just nailed it. It was great.
I painted this original poster where it had Volgarr on it and I released it as an April Fool's joke which actually made a lot of people mad. I thought it was funny and I didn't realize how seriously other people took it. So mad!
This configuration of the poster that you see from Aaron, it's a very similar poster and Volgaar is a lot older, his arms are outstretched, it's pretty cool but we got to a point where we needed to have a new one made for this game, and I didn't have time to paint it. So we were looking for another artist and Calvin and these guys found Aaron. I was really worried about it; it's unusual for me to allow other folks to do stuff like that. But when I saw his portfolio, I said, "Yeah, that right there, that looks like something I might have painted." And so we got together and it's really awesome, I'm super, super happy with it.
I noticed too that the in-game visuals have been beefed up significantly. What kind of approach did you take with this for the sequel?
Kris: A lot more people worked on this game than the first game. And to answer your question, I think if you go to do a sequel, there's always the temptation there to say, "Well, I'm gonna make it all vector art now." But with Volgarr and the games that I like to make, I don't make sprite games because I want them to look old. I think it's a compelling visual art style and you can make them look good on modern TVs now. It was a very conscious decision to make the sequel look better, but you also don't want to change it so much that it becomes unfamiliar to people who liked the first game.
One of the easiest ways that we were able to make improvements in the second game was through the environment art. In the first game, I spent 90% of my time just doing the character art and animations because that was the thing that you kind of focused on the most. And all of the backgrounds for the original game were made in less than a month, which is insane. So you can see if you go back to the first game, there were corners cut. In the opening level, the background layers of the jungle were just quick sketches with colours to make shapes that kind of represent trees. Then I would load that into Photoshop and add a Gaussian blur to make it look like it had a depth of field.
One of the easy things that we could do [this time] is have an environment artist actually work on making environment art. So, yeah, it automatically makes the game look a lot better.
Kris: The mantra is trying to make a triple-A game from 1994. If Volgarr II was sitting on the shelf and trying to compete with Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts from Capcom, would it sell? I don't know, but that's the question I want people to subliminally get. If you saw the two of them side-by-side, which one would you buy? Would this one impress you when you looked at the screenshots? Would seeing videos of this impress you back in those days?
But we also break it a little bit, because we want you to look back at it with rose-tinted glasses. Like going back and playing a 16-bit game with its limitations, yeah, they're still cool and they hold up, but they don't do as many cool things as you can do now, like have a huge screen filled with blood particles and explosions and stuff like that. So it still looks like a 16-bit game, but we break it a little bit.
One of the big features of Volgar II and the first game was we did the thing that we liked seeing in Neo Geo games which was have the action zoom in and full-scale zoom out and stuff like that which is really unseen in a lot of sprite games. Most people don't do that.
I'm curious as to whether you think Volgarr could potentially benefit from the explosion in popularity with games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls. Do you think people are more open to difficult game experiences these days?
Kris: Well, that's a really good question and my short answer is I don't know. And the reason I say that is because, yes, the Dark Souls games sell a lot and Elden Ring is very, very popular, but it's really weird to me to see so many people want those games, buy those games, and simultaneously nonstop complain about how they are. So, I don't know.
I can tell you that those games are very divisive. You're going to have people that either really love those games or they're going to hate them. And it's the same with Volgarr: people really love it or they really don't like it and, fortunately, there are a lot more people that do love it. In my mind, the most horrific thing that could happen is just people go, "Meh", like it's a lukewarm ball of porridge and they don't have feelings about it one way or the other. I want you to be mad. I love getting the hate mail, that's wonderful. So even if you're angry and hateful, I at least made you feel something.
So, yeah, I don't know if it's gonna benefit from that or not. I hope so because if the game sells well, then I get to keep doing it. If it doesn't, then uh-oh, I guess I have to go find something else to do.
The amount of frustration, hate, and negative reviews that the original game got when it got added to every player's catalogue is kind of comedic in a way. And I think when you ask that question now about the popularity of Soulslikes and challenges and stuff, I almost wonder and think that extremity of negative polarizing reception wouldn't exist today. I think today the concept of playing games that are challenging and punishing is more known, and the people who like that type of gameplay are more aware of it now versus maybe 10 years ago.
Kris: Yeah, that was really surprising for Microsoft, too. Volgar reviewed really well with critics and people who bought the game, but when it got millions upon millions of exposure where it was kind of pushed onto people who weren't expecting it and didn't know what they were getting into, all of a sudden it just dropped way down. There are just so many people going, "Microsoft, why are you giving us this?"
Back then, as Calvin was just saying, and how you were mentioning about more people being exposed to these games now through FromSoftware, yeah, they didn't have a concept of that. So they didn't know what was coming, it was just this angry, nasty thing. But thankfully, the original game has just been growing and growing even 10 years later. It's still doing really well, which is mind-boggling to me and I'm very grateful for that.
Finally, now that Volgarr II is done, is there anything else in the pipeline?
Kris: Well, Digital Eclipse is working on a ton of stuff which I'm sure you know about. As far as Crazy Viking Studios goes, yes, we have things in the works right now. I can't talk about them at the moment, but hopefully very soon.
