The sole job of designer Darius Monks, for example, was "digging stuff up" about the setting and time period of Empire of Sin. From researching the setting to looking into the real life figures of the era, Romeo Games is putting a lot of effort and time into creating an authentic-feeling reflection of 1920s Chicago. The character-driven experience of Empire of Sin is just as important as the strategy behind it. "There's a lot of tutorials, I find, in strategy games – if there is a tutorial – where you're just like, 'I don't even know I'm in a tutorial, and I don't even know what's going on.'" Overall, Romero and the team hope Empire of Sin will be a "strategy game with enough depth, but it will also have a good ramp to learn that depth". "We tried to make sure that the tutorial doesn't feel like you're climbing Mount Everest," Romero explains. I take my first opportunity to ask Romero just how easy it is to get stuck into the Empire of Sin, and I'm quick to get some reassurance when Romero explains that the whole team worked to try and make the game feel open to everyone, regardless of their familiarity with the strategy genre.įor example, to make less experienced players feel like they're on-boarded into the game, the team has been working to develop an easy-to-follow tutorial to help you hit the ground running. ![]() Before we sit down to talk, I wonder how approachable the systems behind running a criminal organisation will be. But this one, I spent two weeks on a boat – really! I spent two weeks on a boat, and that's when I thought, "if we put this, this, and this together, then we might have that." The 'that' here is the earliest concept of Empire of Sin as it exists today – a strategy game designed to appeal to a vast audience, stripped of many of the extraneous elements that have been known to over-complicate the genre.įrom my own experience of playing strategy games, they can feel quite overwhelming to start with since they often involve lots of overlapping different systems and mechanics. "I’ve spent my whole life in the game industry, so I’ve always been like, 'How can I make that period into a game?' I’ve had a couple of iterations, none of them had any real legs. Romero's mother never did tell her how The Place stayed open, "but what she did do," Romero tells me, "is create a lifelong interest in criminal empires."Īfter two decades of wanting to bring the prohibition-era to life in the world of video games, Romero started piecing how it could come together on, of all places, a boat. Romero explains that it was all the more complexing to her young self because the bar had large windows and people on the street could just look in and see what's happening. As you work to build up your very own criminal empire and increase your influence on the streets of Chicago, you'll have the agency to use any means at your disposal to make it to the top and stay there. You play as one of 14 crime bosses who controls a racket of your choosing – such as running speakeasies or protection rackets, to name a few. Set in the prohibition-era, during a time where big personalities were dealing in booze and money – among other things – in Chicago's seedy underbelly, Empire of Sin takes the world of gangsters and organized crime into the sphere of strategy games with publisher Paradox Interactive. ![]() "It was quite literally roleplaying," Romero continues, "and I think that Chris Gregan said, 'I want to rob a bank!' In that single play session, all the verbs of the game were born, which is the easiest way, in my opinion, to start a game." At the Romero Games studio in Galway, Ireland, D&D has become a big part of the team's culture.
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