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In dit interview praten we met Arberth Studios, de makers van de Rhiannon. We praten over Arberth Studios, het team erachter en natuurlijk Rhiannon.

Dit interview is in het Nederlands en het Engels (waarin het oorspronkelijk gehouden is) te lezen. Klik op de vlag om het interview in de taal van je keuze te lezen.

# We will start with the inevitable question: Could you tell us something more about yourself and Arberth Studios?

Arberth Studios is a three person team, consisting of Karen and Noel Bruton (that's me), a married couple; and Karen's brother Richard Lee. Karen and I live in West Wales. Richard lives 200 miles away in the South of England. We make a lot of use of Skype and FTP!

# Rhiannon is the first game from Arberth Studios. Why did you decide to make a game and why an adventure game in particular?

It was Karen's idea. She's been a gamer since the text adventures on the Sinclair Spectrum in the early 1980's. A few years ago, she played 'Scratches' and 'Barrow Hill' in quick succession and suddenly declared "We could do this - we could make a game." She had a clear idea of the sort of features she wanted to see in a game - certain types of puzzles and challenges, supernatural story. It had to be an adventure, because that was her favourite type of game. We also realized that an adventure lends itself more to a good story than several other genres, and we think a good story is vitally important. When she put the idea of making a game to Richard and me, we agreed immediately. Richard wanted to explore more widely his profession as a graphical illustrator and I looked forward to writing music and the code to make the game come alive.

(from left to right: Noel Bruton, Karen Bruton and Richard Lee)

# Did anyone of the team have previous experience in game development?

None at all. Richard had used graphical modelling in his job, and I had done a little programming and music composition. A few years earlier, Karen and I had worked together on a thriller novel and some experimental screenplays. But we'd never done anything specifically to do with gaming.

# Who did what and how within the team concerning the game? Did everyone had his own task or did you all work together on everything?

Karen is the gamer and the one who started us in game creation. She also does all the research, some of the graphics and a lot of the animations. Richard does all the graphical modelling and rendering, also animations. I do all the computer programming, the music and the press and publisher liaison. All three of us contribute to plot and story.

# When making an adventure game there are a lot of things to be considered. What aspect of making an adventure did you think was the most fun? And what part did you rather not do?

Building the story is great fun for all of us. We're all doing things that come naturally, Richard and his art, Karen and her research, me and my computers, so it's enjoyable throughout. There are little headaches - like when computers don't do what they're told, or graphics have to be re-rendered or when we have a difference of opinion in the group. But that's all part of it, so we accept the less pleasant side. On balance, we love it, and we hope people like playing 'Rhiannon' enough for us to do it for a living.

# The game was first called "Rhiannon: Beyond the Mabinogion". But the name was changed to "Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches". What was the reason for that?

That was an American marketing decision - it was felt that some people in the US might struggle with two Welsh words in the same title and that a lot of people might never have heard of 'The Mabinogion'.

# The studio is also located in Arberth. Did this have any influence on the story apart from the Mabiniogion and in which way?

Actually, the studio is based in West Wales, and 'Arberth, Glendowershire' doesn't exist - we made it up. However in the Welsh county of Pembrokeshire, there is a town called 'Narberth', which is known as 'Arberth' in Welsh. And the 'Four Branches' legends tell of the Pryderi family seat at somewhere called 'Glan Arberth'. And a stream called the 'Nant Arberth' runs through our garden. We took the name of the studio from the coincidence of 'Glan Arberth' in the Mabinogion and the name of the stream.

# Rhiannon takes place in Arberth, Wales. Is Ty Pryderi based on real farms, buildings and domains characterising the region?

For the design of Ty Pryderi, we took as inspiration the house and grounds of the farmstead where Karen and I live. The layout and geographical features are very typical of a lot of rural properties in Wales.

# Why did you choose an "outsider" as a player who needs to solve the problems?

It's a gaming preference. We want the player to solve the mystery, not some character we have imposed. This is for the same reason as we made 'Rhiannon' a first-person game and why the player will not meet any other characters in the game. But there will be messages from others - and some of these are still alive - but not all.

# The game really has an atmosphere with a lot of mystery and the feeling of loneliness. The lack of other humans and animals enhaces this feeling. Was this done on purpose?

Absolutely. The villain of the piece, Llwyd Cil Coed, is the spirit of an evil wizard who died nine hundred years ago, but still holds control over Ty Pryderi. Others have tried to defeat him and his magical spell and failed. We wanted to pit the player, almost entirely alone, against a really powerful enemy. The time is now right for the final battle to take place. You will use what the others learned and merge it with the present day to prevail over Llwyd, using a mixture of magic, understanding and technology. Advice will come from others, but we wanted you to play, and win, alone. By the way there are a few animals in the game - but at least one of them is not of this world.

# In the game we get acquainted with the old-Celtic ogam alphabet. Are the "translations" in the game correct or made up to fit the puzzles?

There is still some debate over the meaning of Ogam and there are excellent academic works examining it. The translations we used are a deliberate simplification of the much deeper work of Edo Nyland. They are representative of accepted translations, paraphrased for the purpose of the puzzles.

# The "hint-function", in which you can look at items but not pick them up before you know why, is brilliant. This is not common practice in other adventure games. How did you came up with this idea?

We wanted the action of collecting items to be like real life. You might examine something you don't need, but you wouldn't put it in your pocket. There are some 200 interactive items in 'Rhiannon'. If we had allowed you to pick up everything as you found it, the inventory would be so large as to be unplayable. It's also a memory game in itself. For example, there is a puzzle in Chapter Four, for which you'll suddenly discover you need Item X - now where did you see that? It's a good idea to keep notes.

# As an independent developer, did you encountered any problems in making and selling Rhiannon?

At the beginning, we knew nothing about making games. We initially started working in a game engine that we later discovered could not do everything we needed, so that had to be changed. Then we realized we must also improve the graphics resolution of our first efforts, so that was a lot of re-rendering. Then we had to stop midstream when Vista came along. There were a few false starts. But we started the marketing early, not even knowing that we'd need a publisher and that paid off. We got noticed by one of the US gaming sites. Then publishers started to approach us. We've been lucky in that respect.

# What is the best comment or criticism you've heard from fans or read in reviews about Rhiannon?

We read on the forums and in reviews that players have acknowledged that this is our first game and that we're a team of only three people. They understand that we can't match the graphical quality of the big game developers and their multi-million dollar budgets. They look past that and see what 'Rhiannon' has in terms of quality of story and puzzles. And that's great, because it's what we hoped they would like about our work.

# Do you like to play (adventure) games in your spare time? And if so, which ones are your favorites and why?

We prefer supernatural mystery in the first person, because we find it harder to identify with the imposed personalities of third person games. The first graphical game we ever bought, back in the 1990's, was '7th Guest' because it was such a gaming milestone. Now, 'Barrow Hill' remains a favourite, as is 'Dark Fall' - these two have Jonathan Boakes in common of course. Karen also like Nancy Drew, mainly for the first-person aspect.

# Dutch players are not familiar with the legends from Wales, like written in the "Mabinogion". In the game you can read the "Four Branches" in a book. This was very interesting to read. Are there more stories in the Mabinogion that would make a great adventure game?

We chose the 'Four Branches' because of the story arc in the lifespan of the 'Pryderi' character, along with the running feud with Llwyd. The Mabinogion is rich in other legends and I'm sure there's plenty more material there, albeit perhaps not quite as starkly 'beginning...middle...end'. I've not looked into whether the other stories could be lengthened or extrapolated into a game, but only because we already have a rather different, but just as intriguing idea for our next game.

# What are the plans for the future? Are you working on more adventure games?

We're developing the plot and scenes of our next project now, codename 'Rivercastle'. Not sure when it will be released yet, because we're not yet at a stage where we can show it to potential players and publishers. And we've other ideas for games beyond that too.