Hinterland: Orc Lords Interview

Hinterland: Orc Lords design director Jeff Fiske took a few minutes out of his day to answer Diehard GameFAN's questions about the recently released strategy/RPG crossbreed.
DHGF: What was the hardest part of this game to design? What was the easiest?

JF: Because the game contains so many archetypal elements of gaming, everyone has very strong opinions about what element of the game is the most fun. Some want more quest or story type play and plot-character development, others wanted more city building vs. RPG-character development, some loved the random elements while others wanted predictable pacing and balance. Deciding what was really important to everyone as a whole so the game was still fun was probably the most difficult thing.

The easiest thing in the design was that overall we knew that the dynamic of fighting and bringing spoils back to town for strategic purposes is fun, and as long as we did not over design and get in the way of that concept, the game would turn out right. Even at the very rudimentary stages, it was fun to kill stuff and spend the spoils on your village.