Kickstarter Interview: Project Snowstorm is the phone and tablet MMO you’d expect to find on consoles

Tired of your smartphone and tablet games not being up to par with what you typically find on your console of choice or PC? Are you into 3D MMOs with RPG storylines? If your answer to these questions has been yes, you most definitely will want to check out SnowFury Studios Inc’s new game in development Project Snowstorm. As of RIGHT NOW this game is on Kickstarter, and you can fund it you like what they have to offer.

Project Snowstorm is the first of a planned trilogy. In this game, your actions and choices will change the story. Combat will rely on a real-time strategy system, your reflexes, and your own personal ingenuity in an advanced pet battle system with 1:1 real-time combat, 3:3 battle timer and 3:3 turn-based options. There will be guilds, dungeons, and player vs. player shenanigans. The game will be available on iOS and Android phones, tablets, with cloud support to play anytime and anywhere.

With Hollywood composer Veigar Margeirsson working on the score and Edward Willett to influence the lore and writing, the game is shaping up to have pretty powerful core. Due to Project Snowstorm hitting the Kickstarter scene today, I sent some questions over to SnowFury Studios about the project, and founder William Diehl most graciously answered them for me. Check out the Kickstarter page, the video, and the interview below. If you like what you’re seeing, generously back it.

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What exactly is Project Snowstorm?

Project Snowstorm is an internal codename for the first in a planned trilogy of games that will bring a mobile-optimized Cloud MMO platform, interactive gameplay and a rich, adaptive story to mobile platforms.

Where did the idea for Project Snowstorm stem from? How long have you had a project like this in mind?

I'm a big fan of Blizzard's games, and when I first heard that Mists of Pandaria (MoP) was going to include a pet battle system, I was excited. I had this vision of playing these pets in the kind of first-person PvP style you'd expect from World of Warcraft—think of a pet battle system scaled up for adults. While Blizzard chose more of a stationary cool down battle style, Project Snowstorm is intended to realize that real-time vision and break away from timer-based or turn-based battles.

What games inspired you for this project?

For us, the inspiration has really come from the awesome capabilities mobile platforms have today. Games like Infinity Blade and Order & Chaos set the bar for mobile 3D two years ago. Our mobile phone and tablet platforms have just gotten more powerful since then, which inspires us to continue innovating.

Will there be character customization? If so, in what ways?

The level of character customization will scale as we hit various stretch goals, starting at $750,000 and going up to $3,000,000. Customization starts with character selection and physical attributes (body style, hair, skin, etc.) and expands to vanity items for your character, realm alignments (Runes/Tattoos) that give your creatures passive buffs, clothing and battle support spells such as healing, defense and resurrection.

Could you walk me though a 1:1 combat scenario? How is a fight initiated and what happens once it begins?

It's hard to make this one short, so I'll focus on fight prep and play style. Once you've challenged or been matched with an opponent, you will both have an opportunity to see the creatures you're up against and select the five to six spells, skills and abilities best suited for that battle.

We want the game to always be active and moving, so once you lock onto your target, it becomes your frame of reference and all movements are now in relation to your target. Navigation is based on directional swipes, and your character will continue in that direction until you make a change, allowing you to focus in on your attacks and defense.

Because we don’t want you sitting still spamming buttons, the attack system is charge-based with instant or very short cast times, allowing you to keep moving and fire your attacks at the most opportune time.

How will dungeons work? Will multiple players be able to tackle them at once?

We do have Hard Mode Dungeons in our stretch goals. These dungeons are tuned for group play and will require 3-4 players to successfully complete them.

How will talent trees affect gameplay and character customization? Will you be able to change your distribution at any point?

We want your pets to have diverse talent trees and allow players to customize their play style. However, we also want you to amass a diverse stable of pets to choose from. We will make talents changeable, but we will need to balance the cost of changing with the cost of acquiring and leveling a new pet.

How will the monster-hybrid system work? Can you combine any two you have?

The hybrid system will allow you to combine any two pets. The results will be based on their realms and combination of realms. There will be a great deal of chance involved in this process, and there will be common, rare and super rare results.

Will guilds be able to challenge each other in some way? Will there be a competitive leaderboard?

Absolutely, we want to deliver a great RPG game and story, but we don't want the experience to end there. Once you've amassed your arsenal of creatures, we want to enable ranked PvP battle for individuals and guilds. We also want these epic matches to have some really awesome rewards.

You are marketing Project Snowstorm as a phone/tablet specific title, would you ever consider Steam Greenlighting it?

Right now, we're focused on mobile phone and tablet, and it's unlikely we would directly transfer these games to the PC – there are a number of areas we would want to scale up. However, the story we're creating weaves a rich lore for the game and the universe. I could see us bringing titles to Steam in the future; exploring stories within the Elemental or Spirit realms, for example.