Imagine a world where dragons and chimeras meet fierce warriors in the battle arena to decide the fate of a kingdom, and ultimately the entire world. That's the reality of the world in the upcoming WiiWare game Rage of the Gladiator from developer Ghostfire Games. I recently had a chance to talk with Scott R. Merriam, Ghostfire's Director of Marketing and Creative Design. We discuss the mechanics of Rage, how his company feels about partnering with Nintendo, plans for the future of the franchise, and which well-known actors would be the ideal choice to voice the game's hero.

Here you go:

Where did the concept of Rage of the Gladiator come from?

This game is a completely original concept.  Rage of the Gladiator is a fantasy-based fighting game. You play the role of Gracius, battling for his life in the arena.

Your equipment consists of a magical warhammer and a trusty shield. Wait for the right moment, then dodge, jump, or block your enemy’s attacks. Next, unleash your rage by brutally pounding your enemy with your warhammer and bashing them with your shield. Each opponent has a unique style and pattern that you need to pay close attention to. Learn to exploit the weakness of each enemy with the proper timing and agility, and you will triumph.

Overall our formula for making this game is:

  • Create a combat system inspired by some of the best ideas from games such as 1980s Punch Out
  • Create a fantasy world with interesting fantasy bosses, and an compelling storyline
  • Add-in music inspired from movies such as 300
  • Inject a theme system inspired by games such as God of War
  • Put in cutscenes inspired by games such as Final Fantasy for demolishing your enemy
  • Give the player a tech-tree inspired by games such as Diablo or World of Warcraft

Why did Ghostfire make the choice to bring RotG to Wiiware?

The WiiWare platform is very open to small developers like ourselves, and we have been building on our experience making Helix to develop more sophisticated and polished game in Rage of the Gladiator.  We have had a strong relationship with Nintendo ever since we started production of our first title -- Helix, a music rhythm game for WiiWare.  In Helix, you perform exercise motions to the beat of techno music.  It’s a great workout!

With "hardcore" games proving fairly risky on the Wii, why bring Gladiator to the system?

To be honest, it’s hard for us to resist making a high quality game that has a AAA polish level and engaging gameplay to appeal to hardcore gamers. We are life-long gamers, so we set out to make a game that we would enjoy playing. That being said, we also took the approach to make Rage of the Gladiator a fun experience for the casual gamer as well. The game is easy to get started with, easy to get hooked on, but so very hard to master.

What has been the best thing about working with Nintendo? Have there been any frustrations?

We have a good relationship with Nintendo and they’re very fast at answering our development questions and helping us get videos of our games up on the Nintendo Channel.  We couldn’t ask for a better partner. 

Can you explain the game’s skill tree system? Can a player advance more than one branch of the tree?.

There are dozens of different skills that you can acquire for your character.  These are unlocked via a skill tree, similar to World of Warcraft or Diablo.  When you defeat a boss, you gain skill points that you can assign to one of three skill-trees: Offense, Defense, or Magic.

Some of these skills are passive (such as dealing more damage) while others are active new powers (such as conjuring a raging tornado or summoning a fiery meteor).

Once you defeat the final boss, you must fight them all over again in Challenge Mode, where they get new powers and are much tougher.  You can continue to build your character’s skill-tree in Challenge Mode, but you can’t complete all the skills.  So the skill tree serves as replay value for the game, as you can try rebuilding your character in a different way.

Will the battles, including the boss fights, be adaptive, or will the enemies always use the same attacks?

There is a mixture of randomness and set patterns to each  boss fight, so that you can’t predict in which order the moves will come. Once you are able to beat the first ten bosses, you will face them again in challenge mode with new moves and some of the old moves upgraded and tweaked to be more difficult.  The second pass of the game is very challenging, even for some of those in our development team who helped create it.

How does the game take advantage of the Wii's strengths?

I’d say the biggest feature of the Wii that we take advantage of is giving you a choice of 3 completely different input modes:

  • Horizontally held Wii Remote: This mode is great for gamers that love quick responsiveness of buttons.
  • Vertically held Wii Remote with Nunchuk: With this mode, you swing the Nunchuk or Wii Remote to perform attacks.
  • Wii Remote and Nunchuk with Wii MotionPlus: The motion controls are enhanced here. You can strike up, down, left, and right by swinging the Wii Remote in that direction.

Are there any plans to make the game available on other platforms, such as Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network?

Currently we are 100% focused on polishing up this game and making  as fun and challenging game-play experienced as possible. Once we finish Rage of the Gladiator and gauge its success we will move forward from there. That being said, we very much enjoy working with Nintendo and anticipate continuing to do so in the future.

Are there plans for a sequel or multiplayer expansion?

No. Firstly, we don’t believe in having additional DLC, we want the player to get the full experience with one purchase, rather than string them along for continuing purchases. Secondly our goal has always been to deliver an amazing single player game and make it as fun and interesting as possible, rather than to sacrifice any of that game-play to accommodate a single and mutliplayer experience.

Did Ghostfire try to contact the world’s most famous gladiator, Russell Crowe, for voiceover work?

Our first choice was Patrick Stewart, obviously. Unfortunately Patrick was in France performing one of Shakespeare’s lesser known plays “An Ode to a Butterfly”, so we had to use some lesser known but equally impressive voice-acting talent.