PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
Hey, I'm Nikolay Kuznetsov, CEO and game designer at Konfa Games. I worked on Despotism 3k, Despot's Game, Slime 3K: Rise Against Despot, and some other less interesting stuff before that.
TELL US ABOUT SLIME 3K.
Welcome to Slime 3K, an unhinged roguelite bullet-heaven set in the Despot’s Game universe! Build a deck of crazy weapons, grow stronger and devour hordes of pink puny humans as a murderous jelly blob on a warpath of death, violence and pretzels.
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
Slime 3K: Rise Against Despot is a game about a slime trying to escape from an evil AI that's sent waves of cloned humans and monsters after that slime. If you want to understand the lore better, check out our previous games 😉. As for the genre, it's a roguelite deckbuilding Survivors-like. You’ve got the shop mechanic from auto-chess, the deck-building aspect for available abilities from card games, hordes of enemies, and crazy overpowered builds like in Vampire Survivors. The idea came from an old note I had: "Crimsonland, but rogue-lite, where you slice through enemies like a hot knife through butter to get power-ups." When it was time to start a new project for Konfa Games, two things clicked: Vampire Survivors came out, and I loved it, but I felt it was missing a deep deck-building aspect. Also, I wanted to reuse some of the unit animations from Despot’s Game—we made a lot of awesome animations, and it felt like a waste not to show them off in a new light. That's how Slime 3k started: an old note about Crimsonland, a desire to reuse great assets, and the release of Vampire Survivors.
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
We're using Unity, and we’ve been working with it for a while now. It's important for us because it's easy to port to consoles, and we've already developed some best practices on it.
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
In developing Slime 3K, the hardest part for me as a game designer has been managing player expectations. We made a system for abilities and inventory that works very differently from Vampire Survivors (and other games), and a lot of people love the game specifically for its deck-building. But other players come in saying, "I just want something like that, but with your pixel art," expecting more of a clone. Now I swear off making games in "hype genres." Or, at the very least, we need to better communicate upfront that "this is something different."
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
Don't forget to think about the first impression your game makes. What will players expect from just seeing the first screenshot? Will those expectations be met or not? Will they be happy about it, or disappointed? It's so easy to forget, especially when you already know the project inside and out, but players will definitely judge by the "cover."
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
Good luck!
-Nikolay
❤️
