Perun Creative Interview: Kromlech
We catch-up with some of the team from Czech Perun Creative studio to discuss their upcoming game for 2025, Kromlech!
Welcome to Impulse Gamer! So what inspired the creation of Kromlech, and how does it reflect the studio’s vision?
With our first game, Hobo: Tough Life, we have discovered that we inexplicably gravitate towards making genre hybrids. Hobo was part survival game, part RPG, and it was actually quite hard to say whether it was an RPG with survival elements, or a survival game with RPG elements. We decided to lean into this with Kromlech as once again we are working on a genre hybrid – a rogue-lite RPG. While an unusual combination to be sure, we do believe we can make it work.
Kromlech itself evolved from an old game concept we had about a fantasy world facing an eternal winter caused by a demon. The player needed to help the NPC survivors in the freezing conditions, while also trying to get strong enough to defeat the demon. NPC survivors offered various services and help to the player, and with their deaths the player would lose valuable allies. This idea made its way into Kromlech, but on much larger scale. Crises and threats emerge and the player needs to make tough choices – spend time and effort helping the innocents, or focus on hunting down the prime evil responsible for it all?
Can you share any challenges the team faced during the development of Kromlech?
Major challenge we faced were difficulties stemming from our need to upscale our studio. We have developed our last game, Hobo, in a team of only a handful of people. However, our ambitions have grown and so our team had to as well. Our technologies have also improved, we have our own in-house motion capture studio, we’ve switched engines from Unity to Unreal Engine.
Kromlech is a much more daunting undertaking. With many more people on the team we can’t afford to just “wing it” like we did with Hobo. We needed to learn how to plan, manage, and allocate resources and man-hours appropriately. And we are still learning, every day, every month. There probably wasn’t a challenge bigger than the growing pains of an indie garage studio maturing into a AA production.
How does Kromlech differentiate itself from other dark fantasy action-adventure games?
We do believe that one major factor is the game’s setting, which does offer unique enough experience – both visually and thematically – to help us stand out. Most dark fantasy games are set in either Slavic setting, Viking (Norse) setting, or vaguely early to Gothic medieval setting. We decided to look further into the past for inspiration and based our game’s world on the Iron Age Europe, specifically the Celtic cultures of La Tene and Hallstatt periods.
This kind of setting helps us better evoke the sense of adventure and wonder typical for the swords and sorcery genre, and primal wildness of the still untamed world. It brings us closer in tone to something like the tales of Conan the Barbarian, which take place in a very similar kind of world.
What unique gameplay mechanics can players expect in Kromlech?
It is tough to isolate just one or even a few mechanics to discuss them separately, because they are usually part of a larger system, but there are a couple that will offer experience unique to Kromlech that we can mention.
First, our renown system. The more renowned the player gets, the wilder stories the inhabitants of the world make up about them. This is simulated through the epithet system. The player can select a “loadout” of unlocked epithets, heroic nicknames, and they activate one by one as the player gets more renowned. However, it is not just a leveling system. Renown can be lost or even used as currency. Every opportunity to gain renown also means a risk of losing it. To become stronger the player is encouraged (and also required) to seek out challenges, they can’t simply “grind it out.” The renown truly needs to be earned.
Second, our crisis system. We aim to simulate a living world teetering at the edge of total collapse. Various crises like bandit raids or restless dead can appear without warning and severely alter the face of the world, especially if left unchecked. Crises can make enemies permanently stronger, unlock new attacks or abilities, wipe out settlements and important NPCs, and even alter the landscape to some extent. We plan for many scenarios, each with its own challenges, quests, and rewards. The randomized rogue-lite nature of the game also means that the player will always get to experience a slightly different version of the world’s downfall.
Finally, our combat system deserves a special mention. We believe it is fairly unique despite clear similarities to other games in the genre. We do believe that we have managed to design a system that feels intuitive and somewhat realistic, rewarding precision and skillful play, without slowing the action down too much or overly complicating things. Defeating enemies is after all the point of an action game and we want our players to have fun doing so.
How has the Czech cultural heritage influenced the narrative or design elements of Kromlech?
Our cultural heritage contributed greatly to our decision to seek inspiration in the Celts. Even though Czechs are predominantly Slavic people living under the influence of our Germanic neighbors for centuries, Celts have an immense cultural influence and impact in our country. After all, the Celts gave the name to the largest historical region of Czechia – Bohemia. To the Romans it was known as Boiohaemum – the home of the Boii.
There are many open-air and living history museums dedicated to the Celts and re-enactments of the way they lived. We have even collaborated with the museum at Nasavrky and filmed our first live-action trailer for Kromlech there. Even though there was almost a thousand years between the Boii Celts and the Czech Slavs, who later resettled the lands of Bohemia during the sixth century, many people feel deep connection to the Celtic culture. Many folk festivals and re-enactments celebrating the Celtic culture are held all over the country, particularly around the Lughnasadh in summer.
What role does player choice play in shaping the story or outcomes within Kromlech?
While Kromlech is not an RPG game in the traditional sense, it is closer to action RPGs like Dark Souls, we plan to offer many opportunities for a player to make meaningful choices that will have an impact on the world at large.
However, in Kromlech, as would be appropriate for a game inspired by heroic fantasy, actions speak louder than words. Players can of course make dialogue choices during interactions with the various NPCs, but many choices players can make are not made in the dialogues, but based on what they do, or even what they don’t do. This subtler approach to decision making encourages players to think outside of the box and constraints of the dialogue system, and makes them consider possible consequences of their actions (or indeed inaction).
Can you elaborate on the immersive sim and rogue-lite elements integrated into the game?
First, the immersive sim. While we certainly can’t compete with the greats of the genre, we strive to offer an immersive experience, where the player has enough freedom to approach challenges and obstacles in many different ways. Calling the entire experience “an immersive sandbox” would be misleading. We’d rather describe the experience as a knot. The game world is one big tangled mess and the player is given many different tools to help them untangle it. They can patiently take their time, or they can pull Alexander the Great at Gordium and just cut the knot in half. The game’s story will reflect their particular approach and shape the world around them accordingly.
As for the rogue-lite elements, the game is based around the myth of eternal rebirth. Certain events in the game eventually lead to the end of that particular universe (unless the player finds a way to stop the process), which is then remade anew in the next cycle. The player can unlock various upgrades, features, and perks, which make subsequent playthroughs that little bit easier. The most prominent of these perks are epithets – heroic nicknames the player can unlock for overcoming challenges and difficult enemies. Each of these epithets has different abilities and serve not only as a remainder of the past deeds, but also as an important progression mechanic leaning into the idea that heroes grow stronger because stories about them ascribe them larger-than-life qualities.
How has the feedback from the “Building Kromlech” video series shaped the game’s development?
The reception of the series has been very positive so far. People enjoy seeing how the game is made a getting to know the people working on it through the individual vignettes of the team members. However, the series is still very fresh and ongoing so it had no significant impact on the development process as of yet.
What are the studio’s plans for post-launch support or expansions for Kromlech?
That will largely depend on how successful Kromlech will be. For now, we’ll be more than happy to just achieve our vision for the 1.0 version and of course offer patches and updates fixing bugs and maintaining the game in good condition post launch. However, we do have a couple of ideas stashed away for potential expansions or DLCs, so if there is going to be demand, we’d be happy to oblige.
What message or experience do you hope players take away from Kromlech?
Gameplay-wise, we’d like the players to feel a sense of pride after overcoming the challenges the game will set in front of them. They will be facing an uphill battle and we’d love for them to bask in the glory of their achievements once they pull off that “against all odds” victory. The epithets they gain will commemorate their triumphs and, ultimately, every player will get to write their own heroic saga.
Philosophically, Kromlech will explore various moral and existential questions and it is up to the players with what message they will resonate the most. If we were to pick just one, it would be to never give up in the face of adversity. Overcoming difficulties is how we grow as people, become wiser, stronger. A literal, real-life level-up.
Add Kromlech to your waitlist at https://store.steampowered.com/app/2406680/Kromlech/
About the Author
Andrew Bistak When he's not trying to save the world, Andrew enjoys travel (although loathes turbulence), going to the movies, reading and being a dad to his two dogs (and now twins) with his wife.
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