There is a little bit of buzz in the gaming world right now over a little gem of an RPG on Steam Greenlight called Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan by Cameroon developer Kiro’o Games. Michael gave us his thoughts on the game’s demo. Their story is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, they’re presenting the world with an uncommon premise for a video game: “African Fantasy” as they call it, where they intend to create their own unique cultural answer to the typical Feudal Asian, Medieval European, Viking era and Victorian steampunk you’re well used to seeing as RPG backdrops. Second, they’re essentially the first full-fledged game development company on the entire continent of Africa. Though Africa has given rise to a few talented mobile developers, this is the first time a developer from the region really looked towards the PC and beyond, setting out to create a rather ambitious type of Role Playing Game with plans to try and spark the fires of an entire media renaissance.
We were privileged enough to speak with the developers of Aurion, and get some deeper insights as to how they function as a studio, what drives their passion to make games, and a few of the unique challenges they’ve faced that are atypical to most game developers. Their story is somewhat reminiscent of the ‘wild, wild west’ pioneering startup days of independent game design. If you’d like to know even more about Kiro’o, please visit their website, twitter and take a look at their own published history of video games in Africa.
(Editor’s Note: With consent from Kiro’o games we have edited some of their responses for grammar and clarity.)
How did Kiro’o Games team get its start? What is your story?
Kiro’o Games opened their doors in December 2013 when the team first began work on Aurion. However our project lead MADIBA Olivier, had already been working on the game with some friends since 2002. You can watch the video showing how the project has evolved over the past ten years below.
Do you have previous experience in the industry or is this your team’s first foray into games?
Aurion is our first experience in the industry as developers, but many members of the team have grown up playing games and have a good grasp on mechanics and design as a result. The studio’s founder had been making amateur games for years and now this is our first professional production.
Your website comments on the state of video games in Africa as both a hobby and an industry. What sort of challenges did you face starting your own studio in Cameroon?
Before opening the studio, we already knew the sort of challenges that we would be up against:
- Convincing potential investors (especially Cameroonians) of the need to create a video game studio: There were many people who were sceptical, thus making fund-raising difficult, especially since our Indiegogo campaign failed. Over time a number of journalists have helped us gain a voice and credibility. Now it’s getting better and better.
- Training and aligning abilities of the team: There is no training school for careers in the field of video games in Cameroon. It was essential that we teach our artists how to draw on tablets, And we were in a similar situation with our programmers who had no practical know-how with game programming techniques. It took us two months, from December 2013 to January 2014, to properly train our team.
- Power outages: We live in a tropical area and usually at the beginning of the year, January through February, we experience a dry season. Because water is the primary resource that we use to produce power, it is very difficult to generate a lot of power during this season. As a result, power cuts become frequent and hinder our activities. For example, January of last year was a complete catastrophe for us, we were only able to work seven days out of the entire month.
- The digital divide: Internet access is inconsistent throughout the territory. Even at home, it is difficult to meet demand. As a result it’s not uncommon to experience outages, slow connections, etc.. We hope that with the advent of 3G, telecommunications operators will offer better services that can help us achieve our goals without hindrance.
Similar to Argentina and South Korea, it’s exciting to hear about a game developed out of Cameroon since it’s not the first on the list of countries most known for game studios. Have you found others in the industry and in your area are excited? Or are folks largely indifferent?
Yes there is a growing industry on the continent and we are trying to connect with one another. But our work on Aurion has made it a little bit hard to find the time to network. Developers in Africa mostly work on mobile platforms. Off the top of my head I can think of Gamesole, Kuluya, Afros, etc. which are all great studios.
People in Cameroon are very interested in the industry too. You know, our population skews younger and they really love video games even if they don’t yet have the same purchasing power as people living in other places.
As an American I’ve played titles set in the United States developed by studios based in Japan and France, and always felt they portrayed my country and our cultures in a bizarre fashion. Games have taken place in Africa in the past, have you played any of these titles and felt a similar disconnect in their portrayals? “This is almost right but not quite” or “This is entirely wrong.” for example?
Yeah, we have played some games like that where the developers only show stereotypical poor parts of Africa or the really old areas in the forest (We find it very humorous when someone really thinks we are living with lions here). And of course there is also the Egyptian aspect that was so overused in the 90’s. You will never find an Egyptian stage in Aurion, because we want to show another side of African lore.
What games, media and mythologies have you all been influenced by? What inspired you to make Aurion?
Like most RPG players in the world, we were very inspired by Final fantasy 7, the Tales series, and also Dust: An Elysian Tale for its beautiful aesthetics. However, we always wanted our gameplay to have its own unique feel (we hope you got the “Aurionic fighting spirit” while playing the demo). The studio’s founder is also a big fan of the Breath of Fire series, especially 3 with its gene merging system.
The combat system is a major draw, can you go more in depth about what players can expect from the combat and gameplay?
As we showed in our fighting gameplay trailer (linked below), Aurion will offer a fun and very dynamic battle system. You can actually feel your fighting spirit rising during combat. Enzo (the hero) is probably one of the most skilled heroes you could find in an Action-RPG but, the foes are badass too and will require that you maintain focus and land your combos. You can sum up the combat gameplay like this:
It’s a 2D side scrolling real time fighting system. You have the freedom to jump, dash, connect combos, and use simple skills. The player may transform into aurionic mode and get new skills and extra stats, and merge aurions to get news transformations. There is a real time counter magic system inspired by fighting games. Finally you may call upon your wife, Erine, for destructive magic and connect with her to destroy enemies.
Are there any other game design decisions you’re hoping players pay attention to? What aspects of Aurion are you especially proud of?
We are very proud to have designed an intuitive action oriented battle system and how we have integrated African fantasy into our world. You know, one of our first fears was that people might find the game “too exotic” and to address that we have put a lot of originality into a somewhat mainstream package for the first game. We will be more unique visually in our future projects.
Despite our side-scroller inspirations we have also made the choice to allow the player to walk vertically during the exploration phases in the game. The idea was to connect exploration and discovery from a classic isometric and bird’s eye view games such as Golden Sun, while maintaining the beauty of actual 2D High Definition games containing panoramas and fully detailed backgrounds.
How long has the team been working on this title?
As we said above, it was very important and necessary to properly train the team before beginning the game’s development. Therefore, from December 2013 to January 2014, there were training sessions. To date we can say that we have been working on Aurion for one year and few months (over two presently).
Do you have a rough estimate on when you expect Aurion to be completed and released?
It is our first game so you can probably imagine a lot of the challenges we have. We are working as fast as we can but aren’t quite ready to provide a release timeline yet. We will probably tell you more about it when the time is right.
After Aurion are you looking towards developing any other titles? Are there any other unique worlds you would like to build? Or is Aurion taking up your undivided attention?
Aurion is planned to be a Saga: Aurion 1.0, Aurion 1.5 and Aurion 2.0. If the 1.0 version is very successful, we will surely develop the others. Besides this, we aim to create other products based on the Kiro’o Tales such as cartoons, comic books, and video games for tablets and mobile platforms. For now we are working hard and hope that this first game will become a “best seller”.
Where do you see the future of Kiro’o games headed?
Kiro’o Games will be the first video game publisher in Africa. The challenge is to organize the African markets: with a bit of work African game developers will be able to distribute their games and in turn will allow American and European game designers to sell their games here in an organized circuit. The idea is to create a great media empire in Africa and for the moment, the lights are green.
