For David Fenn and Mark Foster, the two developers of Acid Nerve, comparisons with Dark Souls are not new. Even the Titan Souls published in 2015 had to endure that, as now Death's Door.
I think every game of this kind is now compared to Dark Souls, says Foster. There is always a way to compare it with Dark Souls, or with anything else, really. You can always compare every game with any other game because it's all games in the end.
Although Death's Door is an independent work, the two creators do not bother the comparisons. The game was inextricably linked to the legacy of the classics before him, both in his similarities as well as in the way it challenges the expectations of the players to the games that it refers.
After Titan Souls, Fenn and Foster spent a lot of time to try different ideas for their next game. In the end, they had an early version of Death's Door, where there were no crows and was very boss-oriented, with a Howl's moving caple-like door, each time they used them, changing the target. Finally, one agreed on a simple combat prototype, and added a rough model of a crow.
This pre-version was introduced to Publisher Devolver Digital:
I think you said, 'Finally, God, we've been waiting for you to suggest something. Come on ', says Foster.
Fenn adds: Before we sent them the pitch, we were really nervous and thought: 'Oh, what if Devolver continued?' For it had already been a few years. Maybe they are full now. And then we sent you the pitch, we have given us a lot of effort, and then Nigel [Lowrie] has just sent us a GIF from a guy who rolls in the money. Does that mean that you like it? What is that supposed to mean?
The original idea is a continuation of the top-down titanium Soult titan Soul was a game where the player has only a health and only one arrow. This DNA is still included in Death's Door. But beyond the story of the game largely organically created, Mark says.
We just have an idea, and then we just write a few things on, see what works, and cut things away, which do not work. It's like growing a plant, you feed them, she pours, cut off the leaves, the dying, and then let them grow.
In this type of development, it is only natural that the developers were inspired by other games. Foster is great Dark Souls fan, and both love Zelda.
You could say Dark Souls is a continuation of the very first Zelda game, says Foster. It takes this formula and transfers them to today's time. One could say that the games are all related in any way.
Death's Door has superficially the appearance and features of an aggressive, punitive challenge: the struggles are difficult, one has very little health, one collects souls of killed opponents that can be exchanged against upgrades, as an allusion to Dark Souls, and If you die, a huge Death text is shown.
But in Death's Door you do not lose souls when you die and is simply reset to the last door - which often happens close to the site where you died. Low health can be healed with easier places with fast access.
The aesthetics of characters and ideas reminiscent of some places to a Ghibli movie, and a soundtrack, which often supports on gentle piano melodies: All this makes Death's Door in many ways more likely to be a cozy than a criminal game.
Foster says that's all intention. He tells that many developers instinctively follow the Dark Souls model, where players lose everything in death, because it worked so well there. He says he has fought for hours against hard bosses of Bloodborne and Dark Souls, but he has become patiently with this kind of game with increasing age. And with Death's Door he wanted to make a game that would be fun for him personally.
I think it's much easier to do something really difficult, says Fenn. And that's something we somehow starred in. Because if you develop something for a game, it is always too heavy, and then it's an art to find out how it is for someone who does not have so much experience with the game how to optimize yourself, and then easy to optimize and improve to take this into account. That's something that we probably got better over time.
Foster says: The games will ultimately be more accessible because we can develop something that represents a challenge and addresses the brain of the players, without being so difficult to give up the players frustrated after they have lost 20 or more times . And this kind of game is just more fun.
Death's Door is a hug of the heritage and a challenge - a mixture of the history of games that love his creators, and an answer as they have developed over the years. And according to David Fenn all games together:
I think much of it is subconscious, he says. I come from the music industry, but one thing that was really aware of I was that many people wanted to go new ways and wanted to be completely unique. But in the end, these people make only music that nobody says something because they do not use the same language that people know.
I like the idea that everything you do is a merger of all the things you have experienced and learned. In the case of games is all that has played in the course of his life, and that's a language that has been developed, and the language that also has most target groups, because most have probably played similar games. So we use this to create our own thing.
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