Hangame (NHN PlayArt) recently announced Soul Worker will be launching later this year in Japan, and that caught everyone by surprise as South Korea developer Lion Games remained very silent after showcasing the game back in 2011. Today, the official game website for Soul Worker launched, and several local game websites had the chance to speak with Lion Games. Here are some details.
Soul Worker was still in the prototype stage back in 2011 (the year Lion Games was founded), and full development only started the following year in 2012. Hence, the main development phase really took just 3 years. Several game engines were tested, and currently Soul Worker is running on Havok Vision Engine. Soul Worker was also developed having the Japan game market in mind.
Many questions were raised during development, since Soul Worker is an action game with a different combat system from the traditional “point and click” titles. Functions such as aerial combo, benefits of combo, damage taken when performing a combo and more, were taken into consideration. Lion Games managed to polish the combat system, and that was showcased in the 2014 game trailer.
Another major issue surrounding the combo system is the fun factor, and the team had to make sure it is not just about mashing buttons. At the end, a plan known as “action and reaction” was formed, which pretty much means players can take different paths when performing a combo attack. What skills would you chain together with your normal attacks? It is for the players to customize.
Finally, Soul Worker will start with 3 characters for its upcoming World Premier Test: Haru Estia (SoulumSword), Erwin Arclight (GunJazz), and Lily Bloomerchen (MistScythe). As noted by their names, you could guess the weapon each holds. For the Japan server, as seen in the debut game trailer, there will be voice actors (or seiyuu) providing the narrative for parts of the game and sound effects.
Hangame actually proposed the auto-matchmaking system found in the current version, which Lion Games was initially hesitant to implement. According to the developer, such a system was not popular in South Korea, and Hangame had to vividly explain the culture of Japan gamers. PVP in Soul Worker will also occur in instanced maps, with a fixed number of players instead of open world.
Certain art designs were altered for Japan as well, as seen in the art work below. The main heroine, Soulum Sword, appeared to be rather moody in the original piece (left), but was edited to be more like an anime heroine (right), with advise from Hangame of course. Apparently the art director over at Lion Games is an anime fanatic, hence he understood what was required from Hangame.
Finally, there is the personal room system where players can decorate. The exact benefits were not mentioned, but the development team is aiming to build a bathroom as well for this feature (not sure if serious). Another detail, Soul Worker is currently still not compatible with gamepad controller, but will be updated before Open Beta. As usual, no English server is currently confirmed.
