GamingBolt spoke to BetaDwarf CEO Steffen Kabbelgaard about developing Minion Masters, what he believes stands out about the game, releasing for the Xbox One, the upcoming Xbox One X and much more.

"We’re very much avoiding pay-to-win, so all the solid choices are usually common or regular cards, with higher rarities offering special mechanics that require more knowledge to play."

What inspired the concept for Minion Masters and how do you feel it fits in with today’s MOBA-laden world?

The idea came from mods in Warcraft 3 and StarCraft 2. There were these semi-Tower Defense like maps with a more competitive aspect, mods like Nexus Wars, Castle Fight and Card Shuffle had these mechanics of real time strategy without the micro. You placed your units and they took care of themselves, so you just had to be smart about the placement.

They’re very far from MOBA’s, and we definitely don’t consider ourselves in that genre either, but we do have some MOBA-inspired mechanics like hero abilities and XP. The big difference is that they fit into what’s essentially a real time card game, rather than a real time action game, and of course the fact that they are 5-minute matches, as opposed to 40 minutes. Thus, we think it fits quite well, since we’re not actually competing for the same player-base, but can still draw on a few of the strengths.

How would you best explain the gameplay and what are some of the more effective strategies for new players?

In short it’s a real time collectible card game where you duel opponents 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2. You collect cards and build a very simple deck of 10 cards consisting of Minions, Spells and Buildings. Combined with your Master there’s plenty of strategies and combos. You gain mana over time, and can use that mana to play your cards. Minions handle themselves, so once you place them you don’t need to make any more decisions, you can focus on what you place next. Get your Minions to the enemy Master and deal enough damage to win, it’s that simple.

But don’t forget about the bridges, your Minions can claim them for you by simply moving onto them, which will make them generate XP to level up your Master and gain new abilities. Like any CCG, newer players have a lot of success with swarm decks because they’re relatively simple to play. Supporting a big unit by healing it and buffing it is also pretty popular, as it creates a clear goal for you.

As players gain more experience they can try out the higher rarity cards, which are harder to use effectively. We’re very much avoiding pay-to-win, so all the solid choices are usually common or regular cards, with higher rarities offering special mechanics that require more knowledge to play.

What are some of the different minions and Masters that players can use to gain an advantage?

We’ve got Minions in all ranges, from a simple Warrior that has plenty of health and average damage to a cute little Puff creature that doesn’t fight, but stands on the bridges between arenas to generate Mana. The Troubadour is a fun Legendary minion who taunts all nearby enemies into attacking him, allowing you to control the flow of battle. The impressive Demon Warrior is a powerful minion that starts out very weak but grows in power every time you play her.

Some of the Masters are known characters from the FORCED universe like Ratbo the Exterminator, a heavily muscled Scrat wielding a minigun and snazzy one-liner and Volco, wielder of the fabled Volcanic Hammer, who uses his barely contained rage to empower Minions.

We also have new characters like Milloween, a young mage with great powers and an even greater humor or Settsu, a bad-ass space marine who can jump onto the field herself to attack the enemy Master.

"We made some design decisions early that enabled us to handle network much more easily than our previous game FORCED."

How do the masters differ from one another with regards to their abilities? How does this inform the different strategies that players use?

I’ll give you a few examples.

• Ratbo – He is one of the simpler Masters. He summons a Scrat every time he plays a Minion, which allows him to swarm the enemy. He also has the ability to spray his minigun at one enemy unit, dealing damage based on how many Minions he has on the field. You’ll want to include plenty of small minions in his deck.
• Volco – An AoE focused Master, he deals area damage with spells and attacks, but he can’t attack air. This means you have to be very careful about what units you include in your deck, and for the opponent, it means he has a special avenue of attack during the match.
• Mordar – A lich whose Tombstones take time to activate, and then resurrect the next Minion that dies. They require a lot of timing to resurrect the right Minion, and the opponent can even counter them with stuns if he’s good. Since you want to resurrect big minions, you should include those in your deck but you can’t neglect small minions to grab the bridges, otherwise you fall behind on XP.
• Settsu – All of Settsu’s abilities focus on upgrading her Mech suit so she can enter the field and fight directly.

She’s great support for bigger minions or a rush, but her second ability also allows her to instantly reload her powerful gun when you play a spell, so you want to include those for some clever timings. At level 3 the first bullet even stuns, so she can combo enemies into submission!

What are the benefits of Early Access on development and how has feedback helped improve the gameplay experience?

Early Access has been a great period for us. It’s been giving us a lot of really dedicated players interested in helping develop the game. First of all, it’s got a great ambiance of collective development. Players finding bugs provide detailed reports and are ecstatic to be thanked in the patch notes. This understanding of a product in development is crucial to making the effort collaborative, rather than antagonistic when it comes to issues. It has allowed us to release half-complete features to test out the basics and see which direction we should move in, and even in the case of Guilds to get feedback before starting development on the feature.

We’re also using a very open approach where we discuss balance and possible solutions directly with active members of the community. Sage advice from these people who play the game more than us is crucial to reaching a good balance for a competitive game like ours.

How do you usually handle matchmaking, especially when it comes to pitting players against some one of their skill level while maintaining a good connection?

Luckily our game is relatively simple on a technical level. We made some design decisions early that enabled us to handle network much more easily than our previous game FORCED. This means connection issues are much more rare, so we can focus more on matching people based on skill than on location. This will also allow us to do cross-platform play without issue as we move forward.

How is the 2v2 mode currently working out and what differences in strategies have you observed with the variety of masters in play?

2v2 is great! We actually did a very early version of it as an event to try it out, but the players asked us to keep it around despite the missing things. We’re loving how playing with a friend changes your playstyle. There’s some obvious changes, such as being able to build your decks to synergize, essentially making a 20-card deck instead of the 10 cards we usually have.

Beyond that, Team Battles are generally longer than normal matches because it’s harder to use early strategies. This goes especially when matching alone for Team Battles, since you can’t really count on what your ally is using to bring an early rush to the opponent.

"Right now we’re hard at work on our exciting upcoming feature – Frontier Expeditions."

What can you tell us about the new Guild System and how it works? When can we expect to see it added?

We brought our initial design for Guilds before the community for feedback, and quickly realized that many of the mechanics would require a bigger player base than we currently have. Thus, we’ve put it on hold for now, but expect it to become more relevant as we grow the player base toward the release.

The short explanation of it is that you form Guilds with a limited number of players. There will be leaderboards for the Guilds, so gathering the best players and fighting for higher ranks can show off how good you are. Besides that, you work together to unlock special Guild Chests that provide additional rewards.

What’s next in terms of updates? When can we expect the game to exit Early Access?

Right now we’re hard at work on our exciting upcoming feature – Frontier Expeditions. It’s a whole new concept for CCGs where you gain supplies for playing online matches which you then use to move around in a map where you gather gold, cards, relics and even fight special PvE challenges. We’re hoping to release the game in Q1 of 2018.

Is there is a reason why you are not launching on the PS4 given its larger install base?

Quite simply we received a unique opportunity to work with Microsoft as they would really like to bring more games like ours to the platform. It’s a little explored genre and should provide players with a whole new genre of fun.

The game will be receiving Xbox One X support. Is native 4K and 60 frames per second on the cards?

Given the strength of the GPU we definitely have those options, but as always with indie development things change quickly, so I can’t make any promises on what benchmarks we can reach.

What is the resolution and frame rate of the base Xbox One version?

We expect it to run in 1920×1080 at 60 fps.

In terms of pure hardware perspective, the picture is clear. The Xbox One X is far ahead of PS4 Pro in terms of GPU and memory bandwidth. The differences in ROP counts and bandwidth are public knowledge. As a developer, who is the face of pushing visual boundaries, what is your take on the differences between the two and do you think this difference will be visible to the general audience?

The strength of the Xbox One X is surprisingly big, which logically would mean that the games on the Xbox One would look at lot better than the PS4. Chances are that developers that want to go to the limit will edge more towards the Xbox One X because of the relative ease of porting to PC and the other way around with the UWP. The main thing that would keep cutting edge developers away from the Xbox One X would be backwards compatibility, with the original Xbox One being a lot weaker. Then again, the same goes for PS4.

"Personally I expect many games to not use the full potential of the XboxOne X, just like most games run sub-optimally on the majority of PCs."

Generally, for smaller games the difference will not really matter, but for the big AAA games I do expect a higher, more stable framerate on the Xbox One, and most likely more games that will be able to run true 4k.

What are your thoughts on the Xbox One X’s 6TFLOPs GPU? What kind of advantage this has given you while developing this game?

As one of the programmers told me, the 6 TFLOPs “are of course nice, but the exact performance has yet to be seen as with every GPU before its release”. For our sakes, it’s allowing us to use physically based rendering comfortably, something we’ve been using before our engine supported it, so that’s perfect.

The Xbox One X features plenty of RAM too. 9 out 12GB is available to developers…which is undoubtedly more than the average found in gaming PCs. How has this helped you?

Again we have to think of the baggage of the backwards compatibility, so the full potential won’t be realized. However, as we’re already developing for PC with a wide hardware target, the Xbox One X will enable users to experience Minion Masters in what we call “Glorious” quality – the one that really pushes the limits.

Do you see games using the full potential of the Xbox One X, especially given that developers also need to support the older Xbox One?

Personally I expect many games to not use the full potential of the XboxOne X, just like most games run sub-optimally on the majority of PCs. With the consoles getting several versions the cost/gain from optimizing for the consoles becomes less efficient, meaning that optimizing for the weakest one and just letting the power of the stronger one make up for it will seem like a logical conclusion for a lot of teams. Especially the smaller teams that can’t afford to spend the time required to optimize for many different systems – and I think we fall in that category

I just wanted to take you back to the earlier Xbox One days. The console’s eSRAM was painful to work with. Many developers had issues with it. Is it still that much of a problem in your game?

Haha, those sound like days we’re happy to have missed, because it’s definitely not something we’re running into now, or even did when we ported our first game.

Is anything else you want to tell us about the game?

I’ve already rambled so much, but I guess I can mention that we’ve been very focused on rapid updates for the game. Since Early Access launched we’ve done a total of 44 updates, basically one per week, and we still have plenty of things we want to add to the game.

Enough has been said about who the Xbox One X is for and whether consumers will actually partake of it (which they seem to be, given how quickly the Project Scorpio Edition was selling). One thing that can’t be denied is the sheer power of the machine though. Even if it can’t do native 4k/60 FPS for every title, it’s pushing the boundaries of what’s capable on a home console by a wide margin.

GamingBolt spoke to Betadwarf’s Steffen Kabbelgaard, who’s working on Minion Masters: Forced to Duel for the PC and Xbox One, and asked him about the consoles memory. Compared to other consoles, the Xbox One X has a whopping 9 GB of GGDR5 RAM for use in game development, which is higher than the average gaming PC. How has this helped the developer in terms of quality?

Kaabelgaard noted that, “Again we have to think of the baggage of the backwards compatibility, so the full potential won’t be realized. However, as we’re already developing for PC with a wide hardware target, the Xbox One X will enable users to experience Minion Masters in what we call “Glorious” quality – the one that really pushes the limits.”

All talk of the Xbox One X’s power aside, why did Betadwarf opt to release Minion Masters: Forced to Duel on the Xbox One but not on the PS4? Considering the latter has a higher install base, you’d think it’d be more beneficial for the developer.

“Quite simply we received a unique opportunity to work with Microsoft as they would really like to bring more games like ours to the platform. It’s a little explored genre and should provide players with a whole new genre of fun,” replied Kaabelgaard.

The Xbox One X is out on November 7th for $499 with Minion Masters: Forced to Duel currently available for PC via Steam.

The Xbox One X is going to be the most powerful console ever made when it releases later this year. A huge part of the messaging around the hardware’s technical superiority has focused on the GPU. It is monster with 6 TFLOPs of processing power, far outdoing the original Xbox One, and the PS4 and PS4 Pro.

Developers in general have been fairly impressed by the new system, and the possibilities that it affords them- but of course, like with many others, there are a lot of developers waiting to determine the full extent of the GPU’s abilities before they pass final judgement on it.

We recently conducted an in-depth interview with Steffen Kabbelgaard, CEO of BetaDwarf, the developers of Minion Masters: Forced To Duel, Forced and its followup Forced: Showdown. When asked about his thoughts on Xbox One X’s 6TFLOPS GPU, Kabbelgaard stated that according to one of his programmers, the specifications are “nice” but the exact extent of its performance is yet to be determined.

“As one of the programmers told me, the 6 TFLOPs “are of course nice, but the exact performance has yet to be seen as with every GPU before its release”,” he said. “For our sakes, it’s allowing us to use physically based rendering comfortably, something we’ve been using before our engine supported it, so that’s perfect.”

So, does this mean that they will be targeting native 4K and 60 frames per second on the Xbox One X, given that they seem to be comfortable with the hardware?

“Given the strength of the GPU we definitely have those options, but as always with indie development things change quickly, so I can’t make any promises on what benchmarks we can reach,” he said.

Minion Masters: Forced To Duel will be an Xbox One X enhanced title. Stay tuned for our full interview with Steffen  in the coming days.

Ever since Microsoft shared more details about the Xbox One X, there’s been much discussion about the differences between graphics on the console versus that of PS4 Pro. After all, optimization and graphical enhancements depend on a number of factors like studio resources, the game in question and what have you.

BetaDwarf CEO Steffen Kabbelgaard, who’s company has worked on Minion Masters: Forced To Duel, believes that such graphical differences will likely manifest in bigger, triple-A style titles as opposed to smaller games.

When asked about the differences between the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro – especially as the former boasts a better GPU and more memory bandwidth – and whether these would be visible to the general audience, Kabbelgaard said, “The strength of the Xbox One X is surprisingly big, which logically would mean that the games on the Xbox One would look at lot better than the PS4.

“Chances are that developers that want to go to the limit will edge more towards the Xbox One X because of the relative ease of porting to PC and the other way around with the UWP.  The main thing that would keep cutting edge developers away from the Xbox One X would be backwards compatibility, with the original Xbox One being a lot weaker. Then again, the same goes for PS4.”

“Generally,  for smaller games the difference will not really matter, but for the big AAA games I do expect a higher, more stable framerate on the Xbox One X, and most likely more games that will be able to run true 4K.”

Then again, even in the triple A field, we’re seeing games like Destiny 2 which are reportedly not going to push the Xbox One X to its limits. Again, it comes down to developer priorities, resources and what they feel could work across all platforms. We’ll have to wait and see how this pans out for all third party games in the coming months.

The Xbox One X releases on November 7th worldwide and will retail for $499.

BetaDwarf’s PC indie hit Forced will be coming to Xbox One courtesy of Microsoft’s ID@Xbox development program.

BetaDwarf CEO Steffen Kabbelgaard stated that, “We’re super excited to be working with the newest console technology, and we are really happy to be able to let a whole new group of potential gladiators experience our game.”

The game funded through Kickstarter and a mix of personal loans – it went on to sell more than 150,000 copies on PC, Linux and Mac.

As for the Xbox One version, it “has been built from the ground up to support twin-stick controls, as well as online and local multiplayer, so the transition to console is completely natural. And with Xbox One, we won’t have to worry about shortage of computing power.”

Forced has no release date currently, despite the first wave of ID@Xbox titles arriving within the next few weeks. Kabbelgaard has stated that development will be faster for the Xbox One version though so stay tuned for a release date.

Opening up with a short motion comic-like sequence that details the story of the game, Forced makes a strong attempt to immerse you within its plot. Playing as a captured tribe member and raised from an early age to prove your worth as a gladiator, you play as a nameless slave chosen to compete in a series of trials. While this sounds strong and has the potential to be something amazing, it’s all to familiar and has been done to death. The games’ story may not win any awards but that’s not where its intentions lie.

"Where most games that involve puzzles often come with frustration and minor headaches due to repetition, Forced does not."

The story isn’t strong by any means and is not likely to be remembered. This may seem like a bad thing but fear not, the game itself doesn’t need it. It’s only purpose here is to give reasoning for playing, and I would have been just as pleased if it didn’t have one in the first place. Summing up the plot within its basic terms, it’s here to give you an arena based combat game so you can smash the guts of demons. The story isn’t meant to be taken seriously nor did I try too. The game’s high point lies in its gameplay, and this is obvious throughout the endless hours you may dedicate yourself to in experiencing it.

Not long after the game’s brief introduction you’re thrown into the life of your character, and are guided through a training-like tutorial that familiarizes you with the mechanics of the game. This is done by a character in the game named Balfus that takes the form of a spirit mentor. The humorous and likable nature of this character stops the game from feeling like a tutorial and more like an actual guide, or a partner. Although the game gives an option to skip the tutorial stage it would be wise to see it through as it introduces you to the concepts of the game.

Balfus also serves as a secondary item in the game that you control  to solve puzzles. It wouldn’t be fair to call these segments of the game puzzles, more like tactical objectives that require light thinking and a tight form of accuracy and control. Where most games that involve puzzles often come with frustration and minor headaches due to repetition, Forced does not. It integrates the puzzles so well into its level design and gameplay, and allows the whole idea of a gladiator based combat system to feel aggressive while remaining strategic.

"Taking the form of arena-based combat the purpose of each level in the game is simple, but regardless of its simpleness it doesn't fall flat at any point nor does it feel repetitive."

Its worth pointing out that this game has some stellar voice acting, and this carries on through all of the characters that speak out in the game. Particularly Balfus who has a human-like quality to him that’s easy to engage with. Balfus also acts as a hint system to aid you in trying to solve the arena puzzles for when you find your self stuck.

Taking the form of arena-based combat the purpose of each level in the game is simple, but regardless of its simpleness it doesn’t fall flat at any point nor does it feel repetitive. In each match you are given a set of objectives to complete which revolve around solving puzzles while being lumbered in combat. During all this madness different enemy types will enter the arena in a gladiator-like fashion, and will try their hardest to tear you in two. It’s both immersive and fun, and does well to keep you in the heat of action.

Level design is presented the form of halls each providing a choice of trials. Anyone of these trials can be entered so long as your character meets the required skill level. Skill level rises as you spend more time in the arenas and become more adapt to your weapon and class. While you play through the games arenas you are being timed and given certain challenges to aid in leveling up your character. Taking part in these trials allows you to earn crystals which are key in to getting your character to reach its full potential.

"Regardless of how much I favored a particular weapon, when you're under pressure by a horde of enemies and you are trying to complete a puzzle sometimes it's best to change class."

The more objectives completed within the level the more crystals are rewarded as a result. Although it’s not necessary to obtain every crystal it would smart in doing so if you wish to make your character become more powerful. As the game incorporates puzzle elements in its objectives, you must be wise with what class you choose beforehand. Different enemy types will have advantages as well as disadvantages to your chosen class, and this can become a pain when trying to complete the objective.

I found this out the hard way. Regardless of how much I favored a particular weapon, when you’re under pressure by a horde of enemies and you are trying to complete a puzzle sometimes it’s best to change class. But this is also the reason why the game emphasizes co-operative gameplay. Forced manages to blend challenge with gameplay in a way that other games would be wise to take note off. The effort placed into its gameplay is very noticeable and it’s here where the game wins its awards.

Forced deploys a very in-depth class customization that uses a perk system that can be set up for each match. Known as the preparation room you’re also able to adjust your character traits and change classes. During the match you can play with these perks also known as Marks and each one requires a cool down meter before being activated again. Despite the detailed customization options the game remains largely player-friendly and is more than easy enough to wrap your head around. Because of its easy going nature it’s accessible to just about anybody and those already familiar with these type of games will feel right at home.

"An obvious factor in the game is the visual theme and resemblance that it bares to League Of Legends. But this is nothing to be turned off by as Forced manages to house its own personality and its own style of play in doing so."

It’s a no-brainer that this game is best played with a team mate and the overwhelming number of enemies, that can appear on screen at once will prove this. Packed with variety of enemies all holding a resistance and a weakness to different character classes. Experimentation and getting to know all four classes is a must. Being strategic with your attacks and trying not to boxed of into a corner is something you would do well to learn as this is more likely to happen more times than you would expect.

Alongside the single-player and co-operative mode there’s a survival mode. This plays essentially as a series of enemy waves in combination with a time limit. While survival mode is a nice addition to keep things fresh, and serves as an alternative to the main story mode. It doesn’t do much to differentiate itself from the scenarios that take place within the story mode. Perhaps if this was elaborated more and gave options to those not available in the story mode, it would be more worthwhile.

There’s also the implementation of a scoring system that is visually represented through the thick of all the brawling. Numbers float from skulls of dead enemies indicating your points.  This goes hand in hand with its ranking system and co-operative centric style of play that the game influences you to take part in. Forced also gives you the option to stream to Twitch TV directly from its main menu. This contributes to its co-operative nature and will do well in building a fan base for itself. But as the game holds similarities to games such as League of Legends and Diablo 3, this may pose a challenge for it.

An obvious factor in the game is the visual theme and resemblance that it bares to League Of Legends. But this is nothing to be turned off by as Forced manages to house its own personality and its own style of play in doing so. Playable on a variety of PC configurations the requirements are scale-able across four different options. Appropriately labeled Ugly to Beautiful, these settings do not lie as the game looks fantastic and runs butter smooth at a solid and stable frame-rate.

"All in all, tactical combat for the fingers and a colourful treat for the eyes, Forced is out in full force."

Playing host to some very rich and detailed environments, Forced would fool you into thinking that it wasn’t a Kickstarter funded game. The level of polish is incredible thanks to its lovable art style that borders across cartoon fantasy and exaggerated realism. Being pushed to your limits in desert wastelands, lava flowing dungeons, and trap-ridden mazes, the game provides the player with a reasonable selection of environments to do battle in.

Key elements within the game such as ornaments keep the theme of the game on similar grounds across all of its arenas. Popping bold colours and a number of visual effects to compliment its gameplay, Forced is a force to be reckoned with. It may not be be breaking any new grounds on a technical level but nevertheless it’s gorgeous.

Supporting both a controller or a mouse and keyboard, its easy to say that a game like Forced is best played in a traditional fashion. Testing with both methods I found the controller to be more slow paced and awkward with certain weapons. Using a mouse and keyboard on the other hand serves up a satisfying method of control, as attacking enemies in the right direction is essentially crucial to survival. You click to attack in the direction you’re facing and are forced to be quick on your feet and keep moving.

All in all, tactical combat for the fingers and a colourful treat for the eyes, Forced is out in full force. Invest your hard earned money into it, but only if you are a fan of the genre.

This game was reviewed on the PC.