Russian game developer LVR Studio is working on a new survival game called Pangaea: New World. They’ve been consistent and diligent in getting the word out about their new title, especially now that it’s on Kickstarter.
Pangaea allows players to create their own character, join one of three warring factions, participate in PvE and PvP scenarios, scavenge for equipment, food and supplies, as well as craft weapons and armor. The game will allow players to drive in vehicles across a 90km play space, and venture throughout wooded areas, open plains, mountainous regions, war-torn cities, makeshift outposts and rebel settlements.
The game will feature survival elements like DayZ, but also has artifacts and anomalies that players will encounter similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The game has some interesting concepts while also treading on familiar territory, and it’s being planned for release on the Xbox One and PS4, in addition to releasing on PC.
I was given the opportunity to get in some questions with the spokesperson and lead environment artist on the game, Victor Martianov. He answered the questions about the gameplay, some of the design concepts and dealing with the media while promoting the game. Check it out below.
One Angry Gamer: On the Pangaea website it states that players will need to study and observe the vegetation in Pangaea, and that some of the vegetation can be deadly. How exactly will this affect the gameplay and does this mean that players can consume plants that might turn out to be dangerous or step into a poisonous flower patch? Also can these plants be used to develop poisonous weapons or ammo types?
Victor: Pangea’s flora will include different kinds of both healing and poisonous plants and fruits that will be available for different kinds of usage. A player can create different kind of products with them, which can either save one’s life at a critical moment, raise some stats, or lower them. Poison can also be used for ammunition to create special poisoned bullets, for example. When wounded with such weapon, a player will not only loses health immediately but they would keep losing it until they find the cure. A character who is skillful and knowledgeable enough will always have means to survive even when the situation is very dire. Such player is a very powerful enemy that can cause a lot of damage to an opponent even before they engage directly.
OAG: It’s mentioned that there are high-tech weapons in the game from the advanced race featured in Pangaea. I imagine you’ll want players to discover these weapons on their own, but can you give a hint as to what these high-tech weapons are like and how frequently players will encounter them in the game?
Victor: High-tech weapon will be crated by players themselves provided that they have enough skills and experience. Using such weapons also requires knowledge and can be very demanding. Kinects are considered to be the most advanced of them all when it comes to creating such weapons, since they were first to start experimenting with it in the new world of Pangaea. Their weapons are known to be very reliable and precise, but they require a lot of valuable resources to craft it. Guns made by regular people are much less expensive, however less impressive in terms of stats. Mutants, on the other hand, can create incredibly powerful and devastating high-tech weapons, but they are not very reliable and can brake at any moment. We don’t have the finalized list of high-tech weapon yet, but we plan to implement laser guns and auto-aiming weapon, for instance.
OAG: While monsters are obviously present in Pangaea, will there be bosses or end-game content for players to face off against or is the game going to focus more on the constant struggle of survival between the three factions?
Victor: We definitely will have monsters that would be more powerful than others. Such beasts will be almost impossible to kill when you are fighting them alone. They will also use special powers. Such monsters will very likely carry unique items and artifacts. They are usually found closer to capsules or in locations which are so far from inhabited areas where is almost impossible to survive. Monsters found closer to arcs are drawn by the energy of anomalies, and their main goal is to protect capsules. Beasts lurking far away at the edges of the inhabited world are the result of hideous mutations and need to constantly destroy and kill everything around them to survive. It is clear that if players face such a creature, they are in trouble.
OAG: With the map sporting 90 square kilometers of play space, how many players will be able to fit onto a single server instance at a time?
Victor: All players play on the same server and affect the single universe, however, every player has its on reality, if you will. Realities work in such a way that they might converge at some point so that different players meet each other and fight, but these players would most likely be of relatively the same level. Such groups of players that meet each other in a certain location may be a few hundred players big, and their numbers can dynamically change depending on how players behave and what they do in that location. Players belonging to the same group have their realities converged automatically and can fight the common enemy, capture towns and forts and take on shared group quests.
OAG: A lot of survival games have identity issues these days as to whether or not they want a chaotic world or a safe one. Some games have it setup where anyone can kill anyone at any time, like DayZ, where-as other games have safe zones like Nether. Will Pangaea have safe zones or will it always have players peeping over their shoulders to avoid certain death?
Victor: There will be areas where players will feel relatively safer than elsewhere – these are territories that are controlled by the race these players belong to. That doesn’t mean, though, that people will turn invincible there. There is always a chance that a town can be suddenly attacked, or that you can be backstabbed by a treacherous mate. Such violators of peace will be punished with fines or even by turning into targets for other players seeking redemption. But technically, there are no limitations in the game that could stop players from eradicating an entire race, theoretically.
OAG: On the topic of death will the game support permadeath or will players simply respawn with all their skills and equipment and resume where they left off?
Victor: After a player dies, he or she will be moved to a teleport location where they will get a new body and can restore a portion of items they had carried – the amount and list of these items will be dictated by character’s abilities. You could also find your previous body in the game world and loot it, provided that nobody would have done that earlier. At any moment in the game you can open your inventory and mark a certain number of items that you would want to be restored in case you die, so that you increase your chances of survival in the world of Pangaea. Also, a player can activate a certain teleport so that when he or she dies, the new body would restore at this particular teleport location.
OAG: It’s mentioned that Pangaea is set to release on home consoles, PC and Mac… did the team have any plans to consider porting the game to Linux or SteamOS?
Victor: We are focusing on PC/Mac and PS4/Xbox One versions of the game at the moment. We do not have any current plans for developing the game for any other platforms.
OAG: In North America a lot of indie games seem to get ignored by the larger gaming outlets if they don’t hit certain checkboxes or push for some kind of political agenda. I’m curious what the press scene is like in Russia and have you had any troubles getting the media’s attention just based on the merit of Pangaea’s concepts and features?
Victor: We are working with a lot of media and are happy to meet and communicate with more journalists every day. We always reach out to the biggest gaming media worldwide and hope that we will interest them in our game. Attracting attention of bigger outlets is a challenge, but we will never stop trying. We are very open to any cooperation with journalists and would be glad to answer any questions regarding our game.
OAG: Getting the word out about a post-apocalyptic survival game seems like it would be tough in today’s climate given that DayZ and H1Z1 have a strong hold on the multiplayer survival genre at the moment. What would you say to the multiplayer survival audiences to lure them away from the current survival games to give Pangaea a chance?
Victor: We want to make Pangaea more lively than some of the other games existing in the genre. We want the game to be more logical and closer to the real world in certain ways, so we have developed complex and innovative systems of players’ interactions, fauna ecosystems, economics and wide variety of abilities and skills. We hope that thanks to all these systems, every player will find something uniquely interesting in the game, tailored to his or her specific play style. Pangaea is not only a game, it’s almost an entire virtual life. And more importantly, it is a story written by players. Nobody knows what awaits you around the corner, even we don’t know that.
Huge thanks to Victor Martianov from LVR Studio for answering the questions. Right now Pangaea: New World is going through the crowd-funding phase on Kickstarter. You can learn more through the link or donate to the game if you feel it’s something that strikes your interest.
