Silverfall Designer Diary #3 - Character Creation and Progression

Silverfall is an upcoming action role-playing game that will adhere to the hack-and-slash gameplay formula established by Diablo a decade ago. You'll create a fantasy character and then proceed to depopulate a virtual world of its monsters, with the added bonus of becoming stronger and better equipped and armed along the way. The game, being developed by France's Monte Cristo, has a unique look that makes it seem like a graphic novel come to life. And in this final edition of our designer diary series for the game, project manager Jehanne Rousseau returns to tell us about character creation and development. Silverfall ships next week.

Character Creation

By Jehanne Rousseau
Project Manager, Monte Cristo

To our team at Monte Cristo, creating a hack-and-slash game didn't mean that players had to use an archetypical character. As we wanted to really immerse players into the game, we made sure that they're able to craft the exact character they want. We also wanted to give players the opportunity to develop their character further throughout the game, without being limited to the confines of a single character class.

Four races are available in the game: troll, elf, goblin, and human. In addition to the general enjoyment that comes with playing as, for instance, a fun-looking goblin, the choice of race has a direct impact on your character abilities, as each has specific skills other races don't have. The choice of sex also influences gameplay--not in terms of skills, but rather in terms of the storyline, as some NPCs will react differently based on whether you play as a female or male.

The visual aspect is customizable, as well, to some extent. This has no influence on gameplay, except for making it easier to recognize your character in multiplayer games; for instance, a player won't confuse his red-haired, tattoo-faced goblin with his bald, untattooed friend with mechanical implants.

What makes the character progression in Silverfall interesting is that for each level gained, your character will earn attributes and skill points that you can distribute wherever you want, without any limitation due to character class. Your character building is really "a la carte" in that you can think about and build your character progressively throughout the game, evolving them as you wish. You even have the ability to choose your companions' skills so that they balance or strengthen each other. By giving you the ability to choose from nearly any skill (there are some skills specific to races or certain alignments), we're allowing for a high level of customization and giving you the ability to really build the character you want. To give some examples, you can be a spellcasting archer, a necromantic priest, and more. Everything is possible, even a troll spellcaster who roams the land in full plate armor.

The open skills system and the open character building possibilities required extensive fine-tuning of each skill and skill tree. We ran a lot of tests over and over again, going back and forth in the settings to be more and more accurate and balanced. To make sure the game was fun to play throughout, we asked gameplay testers who did not know Silverfall to come and play the game, giving us their feedback on how they experienced the game. During this process, we tested elements like level-progression speed, quests difficulty, usability of the user interface, and the strength and balance of skills. Obviously, as the team is composed of gamers, we also tested the game ourselves to provide feedback.

Silverfall offers the rare feature of free character building, allowing for near-limitless opportunities to evolve your character throughout the game. This makes Silverfall quite unique and also adds plenty of replayability to the game because, as you certainly won't be able to see all of the skills in a single game, you can experience a new character each time you play.