Creature Quest is one big nod to its creator’s first world — Might and Magic (update)

GamesBeat: You don’t see that in a lot of these games.

Van Caneghem: No, you don’t. Then we start the quest. We go into our adventure map. This is very Heroes-esque, something nobody’s done in a creature game. We have our map where you have to explore, but instead of moving a guy around, you tap and spend energy to explore new territories. As you uncover stuff you pick up all the treasure. There are little people you find, quests, and here’s the castle. The castle says, okay, I need a siege weapon to attack this castle. I have to go find, somewhere, a siege weapon. We’ll keep collecting gold and exploring. There are signposts. Okay, here is a creature blocking our way. We can’t go any further because he’s blocking us. Now we have to do combat. The combat is a turn-based strategy game. All the little creature stories behind them are really funny.

GamesBeat: So this is all strategy-based.

Van Caneghem: Right, all turn-based. Here we have the bad guys, up here, and the little numbers are how many turns until they go. Here’s our team of heroes we’ve assembled, our creatures we own. Everybody has all these stats that tie deep into the RPG elements. Lots of numbers. Sometimes they’re creatures, sometimes they’re humanoid. They all have a basic attack specific to the creature, which has all these stats and bonuses. I can press each player and they go. I can target someone if I want everyone to go after that same guy. And I can do what I call a swipe, which is convenient for just grinding away.

GamesBeat: Did I just hear a “wah-wahhh”?

Van Caneghem: Yeah. That was the bugle butterfly playing the sound effect. All the sound effects are pretty cool. Here’s the kitten mage. We’ll see what he says. [meowing noises] Okay, let’s get rid of this wight here. After we build up some mana, our special moves come on line. Each creature has a unique special ability that does all sorts of different things, from stuns to area effects to bonuses, negatives, debuffs. There’s a whole list. Typical RPG stuff. This guy does a bite attack on three different people. The phoenix sets everyone on fire. This valkyrie has a magical attack that gives you bonuses for the rest of the round. Our druid here has a heal, of course, for the party. And our wizard has this chain lightning spell.

GamesBeat: Now we have this dwarf here. He looks like he’s ready to attack.

Van Caneghem: Yeah. One turn, he attacks. If I go once, he goes, and he hit my guy here, but he’s not very powerful at the moment.

GamesBeat: So when a foe attacks, it lists their attack and they do what they do.

Van Caneghem: Right. They can cast spells, heal themselves, do all the same abilities. Whatever ability they have, if you have him in the party, he does the same ability. There’s also what we call our combo system. There’s all these combo dots across the top of the creatures that can be used for mana or, if you strip away all the dots, I get what’s called a combo. He does like 16 times damage. All right. Let’s finish this guy off. We’ve got one more wave. We have a three-wave battle. Then here’s the big guy at the end. Let’s try to get through this quicker. He knocked one guy out. My druid went down, which is unfortunate. She’s our healer for the party.

Above: That’s one way to make a monster closet. …

Image Credit: VC Mobile Entertainment

GamesBeat: Is the A.I. smart enough to know who to attack?

Van Caneghem: Yeah, yeah. But you can also cast spells to protect that person or draw attention elsewhere, stuff like that. He knows who he’s best at. He’s red, part of the fire group of creatures, so he’s good against earth creatures. They get set on fire. There’s a circle of colors in these games, something pretty common. We beat the wave. And we collect all the treasure from the creatures we defeated. We’ve got some EXP gems. So now we continue on our quest. He’s gone. There’s some more stuff to pick up and we keep going. You go through the entire map, of which there’s the wizard’s story here—let’s see. We have to find the catapult to get through the walls and fight the wizard here for the final battle. That’s one way to play. It’s our story quests. It’s very unique to this style of creature collection game. It has the Heroes-type feel to it.

GamesBeat: The games I’m most familiar with are Monster Strike and Puzzle & Dragons.

Van Caneghem: Yeah, you can see some similarities there. But they’re just encounters, not stories. We wanted to do the stories. Every day there’s a new story, and they’re kind of fun. There’s Pirate Plunder and Bewitching Bayou. She’s having a love affair with the wizard and you have to find her potion to make her look pretty. On and on and on. There are special ones with these genies that—it’s a lot of fun. A lot of humorous background based on the characters.

GamesBeat: Wish Vortex? Is that a rib on Grand Theft Auto?

Van Caneghem: Maybe? That’s our questing system.

GamesBeat: How long have you been making games now? What was your first game?

Van Caneghem: It was Might and Magic in 1986. Thirty years.

GamesBeat: And your humor is still intact. It hasn’t changed. It’s still there. That’s rare. This business eats people up.

Van Caneghem: Yes, it does. But I love playing games. That’s what keeps me into it. I love seeing all the new games come out. I love getting joy and inspiration from all the new people making games. There was a period there where I stopped, a very short time, about six months. I said, all right, I’m done. And all I did was play games at home. It was time to get back into it again. I’ve been re-energized by the whole mobile world, because it’s smaller teams. It’s a lot more iteration. It reminds me of the ‘90s in terms of the size of teams and the iteration ability. The ability to make something cool up, versus—today, in console and whatnot, it’s 300, 400 people on a team. It’s a monster of a business. You don’t have that ability to iterate and be nimble that we had on smaller games and smaller teams. That’s why it’s exciting. I’m looking forward to this game coming out, and making the next one and the one after that. I want to create a system where we can keep cranking out fun mobile games.

Correction, 6:08 p.m. Pacific: Jon Van Caneghem’s named was incorrect in multiple places. GamesBeat regrets the error.