Mythic Legends Interview: exploring how Outfit7 kept its Strategy RPG title fun and accessible
As the eagerly anticipated Mythic Legends nears its global release this month, we’ve taken the opportunity to chat with some of Outfit7’s senior marketing personnel for a series of interviews about its upcoming, auto chess, strategy RPG, and learn why it looks set to be among 2022’s best mobile releases.
Having delved into the ideas and innovations which led to Mythic Legends’ development, we continued our discussion with Bor Kolari? (Senior Product Marketing Strategist for Outfit7) to learn how the upcoming RTS has been designed for every kind of strategy gamer in mind. So, regardless of whether you’re a complete strategy newbie or a grandmaster auto chess aficionado, here’s how Mythic Legends has been developed especially for you.
The most important part of any game is to find the fun, but it's essential to understand that for each game, what the fun is can change drastically. Players naturally have different concepts of what fun is, and as a developer we have to cater for those diverse tastes. This was a major consideration for Mythic Legends, where we chose to focus on the strategy as the source of the fun, but had to work out ways to bring this to a wide range of players.
We knew that the first time a player boots up the game, they need to immediately get a taste of that fun. For similar titles on mobile, the first-time user experience has to be approachable and appealing. Even if players know the genre, you have a limited window to get their attention and prove to them why they should spend time with your game.
Were there any particular pitfalls you were careful to avoid?There are many games where you need somewhere around 10 hours just to understand the basics, requiring a detailed understanding of the metagame and time pouring over guides to maximise your experience. But, from our perspective, that’s not what the best strategy titles set out to do; the best have simple rules, compelling progression, and constant incentives for players. To achieve this was the primary ambition behind Mythic Legends.
We worked diligently to get the balance between making the game accessible, but without undermining the engaging challenge needed to motivate players. By making the introduction to the experience compelling and easy to follow, so that players have everything they need early on to face the deeper challenges found later in the game.
You don’t have to be a hardcore strategy buff to compete in tournaments or to put together diverse, competitive armies in our game. And equally, the shorter session times and rapid progression aren’t just for casual players. It’s been designed from the ground up to be fun for everyone, no matter their experience level. It couldn’t be frustrating to learn, in fact, it had to be exciting and rewarding to develop your skills.
The game is designed around a system of visual signposts. Our amazing art and product teams developed the characters to make sure you can tell at a glance what class and origin they belong to simply by identifying their silhouette. It's a visual shorthand that users quickly grow accustomed to, and is an essential part of the experience. As chess fans will know, being able to easily spot patterns is important to plan out your next move and understand how events play out on the board. We expanded this logic beyond just character design, applying it to everything related to UI and user experience, so that what a player learns during their first few hours with the game can be applied throughout their later campaigns. With this, any player can soon learn to be a mighty leader, no matter how experienced you are. In Mythic Legends, anyone can be victorious!