Sovereign Tower dev talks about what makes it so unique and relevant

Sovereign Tower is a roundtable simulator from hit indie developer Wild Wits, which we reviewed recently and were really impressed by its wonderful art direction and novel gameplay. We were given the opportunity to interview the creative and art director Antoine Tabouret-Loudeac about some of the design decision made about the game.

Joshua Howard: How did you come up with the idea for a round table simulator?

Antoine Tabouret-Loudeac: After finishing Crown Gambit, we wanted to work on a project that used our strength and experience on the project, while being very different in terms of tone and ambiance. Sovereign Tower is like the opposite of Crown. Instead of being a story centered around knights trying to pick a ruler, it’s a story about a ruler trying to pick the best possible knights.

JH: Sovereign Tower has tons of references towards Arthurian legend and classic tales of knights and sorcery, did you have any direct sources of inspiration and how did this inform the direction of your game?

ATL: Yes, from classical Arthurian literature to more modern interpretations of these stories, we worked on a number of different inspirations. Which is why we wanted the game to be so playful and humoristic, as we felt this was the tone that old stories often had.

JH: The art style for your game is very unique, what were your inspirations behind it?

ATL: For this game, I used a lot of my favorite references, like oldschool illustrations from the art-nouveaux era. By taking inspiration from literal illustrated books about Arthurian tales and knighthood, mixed in more contemporary influences, we arrive at the sovereign tower look.

JH: When I was playing Sovereign Tower, I noticed that there was some modern lingo and some characters felt more modern than medieval at points. Was there a struggle to balance both styles in your writing and how did you manage?

ATL: Yes it’s a pretty complicated style to master. In French, we use a lot of this anachronistic humor, but not necessarily in other languages and countries, so it’s very difficult to balance everything out!

JH: What was your favorite Knight to create and could you share an interesting fact about them?

ATL: I enjoyed drawing Gwendan a lot, especially because his first design is based on a design of a character that was supposed to be in our previous game, but was heavily modified! It’s always nice to give a new chance to an old concept!

JH: How did you manage to balance the pacing with the rewind mechanic and the flow of the story?

ATL: We really can’t, sadly! As much as we can work on the pacing of the actual game, our only option when it comes to rewinding is to give as many options to the player to allow them to skip dialogues and take their ideas into account! However different players have different uses of the demon, and it’s impossible to satisfy everyone.

JH: Was there any cut content or features that didn’t make it in the final version of the game that you would’ve wanted players to experience?

ATL: Oh so many! But I’ll avoid creating too much unnecessary frustrations for the player, so I’ll only reveal a small one: The original sovereign archetypes were not supposed to be four, but as many as we wanted. It would’ve been possible to unlock as many archetypes as we wanted to make, but that might’ve been a little ambitious!

JH: What comes next for Wild Wits? Do you have any plans for DLC or even a possible follow-up in the same universe?

ATL: Sorry but I cannot say anything at the moment!

JH: Any parting words or advice that you would like to share with our readers?

ATL: We’d like to thank our wonderful community as always for carrying our game into the world, and for the many fan creations who keep carrying us into the future!

Thank you so much for Antoine sharing some words about this beautiful game that has resonated with so many players. It’s great to hear about some of the inner working on how some of our favorite art is made and we at Smash Jump are very eager to see what Wild Wits has cooking up in the future. Make sure to stay tuned to hear more interviews like this from the devs who make the games we love.

Joshua Howard