Steven Peeler, lead designer and programmer on Depths of Peril was kind enough to answer a few questions for us:

1. Thank you for your time. Please introduce yourself and tell us your position on the Depths of Peril team.

My name is Steven Peeler. I’m the lead designer and programmer on Depths of Peril.

2. Tell us a bit about the story and what type of gameplay is the game offering.

Story wise, an orc named Draaien gathered a huge army of orcs and a necromancer named Ciglio raised a horde of zombies and proceeded to decimate the peoples of the west. After destroying most of the cities and being on the verge of completely annihilating most of the races of the west, their alliance broke down and they started fighting each other over the spoils of war. The game starts after the west has lost, but the armies of orcs and zombies are still at war, so everything is in a pretty chaotic state.

This is where the player comes in. The player leads a faction (called a covenant in the game) within one of the rebuilding cities of the barbarians. Barbarians are very brutal and only the strongest survive. All of the leaders of the barbarians died during the war. Being the brutal race that they are, barbarians typically choose their leaders through fights to the death. The last covenant left alive rules the city.

Depths of Peril is an action RPG with a strategy twist. You have a large world to explore and solve quests in but at the same time you are striving for your covenant to defeat the others so that you can rule Jorvik (your city). You must use diplomacy and trade to keep the other covenants at bay when you are weak and go to war and raid the other covenants when you are strong, if you expect to live.

The Depths of Peril world is also very dynamic. It changes based on the actions of the player, the other covenants, and sometimes even the monsters.

3. What features makes Depths of Peril stand up from the crowd?

In most action RPGs you simply play through the linear storyline. Not so in Depths of Peril. There is a storyline and plenty of deep reading material, but what sets Depths of Peril apart from other action RPGs is mostly the covenant gameplay and the dynamic world.

You are not alone in Depths of Peril. There are multiple other covenants nearby that are plotting your death, so they can control the city. You have many options to deal with this threat including diplomacy, trading, wars, and raids. In how many other single player games can you participate in raiding another enemy faction?

Nothing is ever the same in Depths of Peril. The world is very dynamic and changes depending on many factors and even has natural consequences. If you don’t solve one quest, it might morph into another harder quest. If you wait long enough one of the other covenants might solve the quest first. In how many action RPGs can this scenario happen? An orc spy comes into town, the town looks weak and the scout has time to communicate to his clan and they raid the town. While raiding the town, the orcs poison the water supply, kill off the town steward, and destroy the Kindred Spirits covenant.

4. I’ve noticed that any skill can be selected no matter what level your character has. Why this type of skill system instead of a classic skill tree?

We tried something new because there are some problems with the classic skill tree. With a skill tree, initial skills are almost always pretty crappy and you waste skill points on skills you don’t want simply because they are prerequisites. It also always seems pretty arbitrary.

So in Depths of Peril we took all of that out. Every skill point is used on a skill you actually want, you can go straight for the more expensive skills at the beginning of the game if you want to, and all of the skills are fairly useful depending on what kind of build you want to make. 

5. How smart is the monster A.I. and how are the item drops implemented? Do only specific monsters drop some items?

What we tried to do in Depths of Peril was to make each monster type fun and behave in a different way. For example, male imps are usually pretty cautious. They typically attack in groups and use hit and run tactics. However, if you attack a female imp, they will get really upset, go berserk, and start attacking outright.

This also makes it so a skilled player will vary their tactics depending on what specific monsters they are fighting.

No, you don’t have to kill any specific monster to get a particular item. Some monster types drop more or less gold and items than others though. Also, rarer types of monsters like elites and uniques have much better chances of dropping items and especially magic items.

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6. Each covenant (faction) has two unique special feats. Are these the only differences between them? How does this impact the game?

Oh, there’s a good bit more differences than that. The two traits are just a good indicator of how that particular covenant is likely to act. Each covenant has a different level of aggressiveness, how much they like to trade, how much they focus on adventuring, how likely they are to betray a friend, what kind of classes they like to recruit and many other things. All of these impact the game in a lot of ways. The trading covenants tend to be friendly with a lot of the covenants. The aggressive covenants get into lots of wars and like many strategy games drags many other covenants into war with them. I’ll give you a couple examples.

The Sisterhood of Fate is a covenant that starts with fairly good relations with many other covenants. They are spiritual (stronger lifestone) and lucky (better items). They also only recruit females (rogues and priests), so they are an all women covenant. In general, they are likely to have a number of friends and lots of money and items.

Where as the Legion of Fear starts with fairly bad relations with other covenants. They are aggressive (go to war quicker) and demanding (more like to demand tributes). They also are much more difficult to keep happy. In general, they are likely to go the pure war route and destroy anyone they can, especially any covenant that is vulnerable. 

7. It’s clear that the game was created as a multiplayer experience, yet there is no multiplayer? Why? Should we expect any modifications or addons that enable multiplayer in the future?

I’ve actually heard this many times, yet I didn’t design Depths of Peril to be multiplayer. It just happens that the game that I designed seems to be a really cool multiplayer idea.

I would really like to implement some kind of multiplayer for Depths of Peril, but I can’t promise anything at this time. It would be really cool though.

8. Who is Soldak? Who are the people behind Depths of Peril?

Soldak Entertainment is a small company with a really small team. I’m the only full time person currently, but we have various contractors for writing, art, and sound. You can see the full list of people that developed the game in the game credits or in the manual (which is also on our website). The team is also spread around over various countries. We are very different than the typical developer.

9. What is your team currently working on? Any new project(s) in sight?

We are still updating and supporting Depths of Peril a lot. Other than that, everyone will have to wait and see. There are a lot of different games I would like to create and I still have a lot of ideas for the Depths of Peril series. So who knows what we will come up with.

10. Did we left something out? Anything else you would like to add for our readers?

We really do think we have made a cool, unique game. As far as I know there is nothing else really like it. Don’t take my word for it though; go to http://www.soldak.com/Depths-of-Peril/Press.html to see all of the good reviews Depths of Peril has gotten. Try the demo at http://www.soldak.com/ Just make sure to play long enough to see how the covenant gameplay and dynamic world works. If you don’t get to raid another covenant, fend off a raid, have the town attacked by monsters, or see many of the other random events you haven’t seen what Depths of Peril really has to offer.