HCG: Please introduce yourself and your team! Have you created any other products apart from Kreed?Dmitry Rekman: I'm Dmitry 'RCL' Rekman, one of project leaders of Kreed: Battle for Savitar project, responsible for technical side of the project and overall management.

The other team members are:

Ruslan 'Rus' Savinov - the second

Dmitry Rekman

project leader, responsible for visual design and look of the game

Dmitry 'AND' Andreev - a programmer who coded much of the graphics engine used in game.

Alexander 'Magum' Borodetsky - our AI guy, who also is responsible for implementing physic engine in the game.

Alexander 'L-Graph' Parfenov and Alexander 'Daddy' Severinov - level designers (L-Graph is also a 2D texture artist).

Dmitry 'ACID' Starodubtsev - sound director, who created unique audio climate of fear

A Burut

in the game.

Denis 'Dark Jedi' Malakhanov - a game designer, who is responsible for balance, playability and testing of levels.

Sergey Perov - an excellent animator, who created all the cutscenes for Battle for Savitar.

Battle for Savitar is not the first project for the most of team members. Majority of team members worked on the original Kreed game, some were involved in other Burut CT projects like Goldenland RPG. For me personally, Kreed: Battle for Savitar is the third project (after Heath RPG and Kreed itself), although I also contributed code to other our projects.

HCG: Please tell us how a day in your office looks like!

DR: Since we all are night people and don't like to wake up early :) (I guess the most of computer geeks are like this) our workday starts at 10:00 am. We had our own 'checkpoints' in the project once a week (usually on Tuesday, for Monday is not a favorable day for this purpose :). On such a day, we two (me and Ruslan), sometimes together with our Burut CEO Vladimir Nikolaev, checked the results of week's work of every team member to ensure that everything goes as planned and that we won't miss the major checkpoint of our publisher. It usually took us a few hours, after that the team members were able to continue their work.

We had a break for the lunch in the office from 13:00 till 14:00, which was actually used not solely for eating, but for playing Counter-Strike as well ;) This is de-facto the favourite game of the team, and we have some of local cybersport champions among our employees.

After the lunch (or Counter-Strike) break we had the other five hours of hard work. Every team member had its own plan and worked independently from others for the most of time, with the exception of programmers who tended to gather for brief discussion from time to time when they (we :) faced a common problem or bug. It was not also uncommon that level designer or animator called for help from programmers if he/she found (or, more often, just thought that he/she found ;) ) a bug.

Worktime ended at 19:00, and those who had not missed the checkpoint could go home. However, the most of people preferred to stay for an hour or few more, to finish their daily work or just to play games :)

HCG: How successful was Battle for Savitar in your country and the world? How many copies did you sell?

DR: Battle Of Savitar (we prefer to refer to our game this way, to distinguish it from original 'Kreed' game) has been waited for immediately after the original Kreed release (when we announced that we were going to make an add-on). We had players community support even before we actually gave out any information about the project. I am talking mostly about Russian players community, since original Kreed had not yet been published abroad back then. People had a lot of ideas about what addon should include, and we used the most interesting (and feasible in our timeframe) ones in the game (to name a few, ability of the main character to pull up himself on the obstacles, and ability to break glass by throwing a grenade thru it).

After the game hit the shelves, we had a lot of positive feedback from game reviewing portals, magazines, volunteer reviewers and just people from forums. Dare I say, original game roused less excitement when it was out. We sold 200,000 copies of Battle for Savitar in Russia, and we have some propositions from foreign publishers.

HCG: Which was the best and the worst part of Battle for Savitar according to the reviewers and the players?

DR: Every review emphasized its own favourite features of the game, just like every man has his/her own preferrences. However, most of reviewers agree in that the graphics, rag-dolls, AI and well-thought level design were the major features of BFS. The weak spot is the number of levels - people say they want more than those 8 missions we have :)

HCG: Where did the idea come from to make an expansion?

DR: We had some ideas which were not implemented in the original game. Some of them just could not be implemented because of limited time, some would require scenario changes in order to be implemented. That is why we decided to create an add-on and implement everything we wanted to add to the original game.

HCG: Please tell us the story of Battle for Savitar!

DR: By the end of XXII century, Earth civilization made tremendous progress in space exploration and colonization. Solar system had been colonized during previous century, and Galaxy-wide expansion began with establishing colonies at the key planet systems nearby. First contact with extraterrestrial civilizations occurred in 2140 AD, resulting in formation of Confederation, a commonwealth of several Earth colonies that declared independence from the mother planet and allied extraterrestrial civilizations.

At the beginning of XXIII century, Earth federation encountered the Tiglaary, an ancient expansionist race, which subdued numerous worlds across the Galaxy. Conflict soon arose, as insectoid civilization of Tiglaary considered Earth federation its rival. Tiglaary forces were superior in technology and experience, and Earth lost all of its star colonies after several major defeats. By the third quarter of XXIII century Tiglaary invaded Solar system and Earth civilization faced imminent collapse. Gaining decisive victory over Earth star fleet in the last major space battle at Mars, invaders took control of main communication routes. Earth forces were decentralized and war split into local conflicts.

In game, you are lieutenant of federal army, blocked in a still resisting garrison of Pluto colony. Cut off from any supplies, you are not likely to survive the next month. Suddenly, you are getting the news from your mother planet that the Tiglaary were pushed back from the Earth by the newly formed military organization, the Legion.

After a sudden Tiglaary attack, Pluto colony has largely been destroyed and you decide to leave for Earth and join the Legion.

However, your spaceship has been attacked by Tiglaary fighters and intercepted by Nomad patrol. You were captured by Nomads and imprisoned on one of their space cities.

You managed to escape, killing a few of your guards. Wandering across the enemy base, you freed a few of Confederate soldiers, who were also held as prisoners of Nomads. They told you that they were the crew of spaceship sent by Confederation to Earth with a special mission. Together with new fellows, you found their spaceship and escaped from Nomads.

On the Earth, you joined the Legion and were quickly promoted to officer. As a part of Legion forces, you participated in attack on Tiglaary base. After the base has been destroyed, Legion gained the momentum to build the cross-Galaxy portal for Confederate ships to be transferred to Solar system.

Your the last mission is to defend that portal while it is being built. Tiglaary will launch massive attack in order to destroy the portal, so you will get hard time defending it.

As you can see, the events take place long before the original Kreed.

HCG: What kind of new weapons and monsters can we expect?

DR: Basic set of weapons remained the same as in Kreed (although their parameters and sometimes effects were adjusted to match the new enemies), with a few changes: we added shocker, which is a contact weapon replacing the knife from Kreed, pistol (with semi-automatic mode) and assault laser rifle (my favourite, but be careful not to hurt yourself when using this weapon).

Monsters from original Kreed have almost completely been replaced by new ones. We decided to add more human monsters, since they are more pleasant to fight against than abstract creatures :) This way we got (aside from Legioners and Confederates from previous game) Nomads - technicians and warriors. Technicians have only light weapons and don't pose much threat, whereas warriors are pretty dangerous even alone (although they are often encountered in packs).We also have added three kinds droids - light, used mostly for reconnaissance, android, which is designed to relieve humans from combat actions and is able to use the same weapons humans use, and assault droid - heavy and powerful. These machines are tough opponents and good allies when they fight for your side.
Two new monsters have also been added to Tiglaary 'family': Tiglaary technician and Gerdge.

HCG: How many missions will be included in Battle for Savitar? Please introduce us a few!

DR: There are 8 missions in the game. All missions are pretty much different from each other in either design or gameplay. There are missions like escape from Pluto base, where you have to run across the subway up to the dock, fighting the guard droids - everything happens deep under ground of the icy world of Pluto. Then you are rescuing allies in the orbital city of Nomads, which is located into the asteroid belt. You have to fight your enemies jumping on the platforms high above the ground for the most of that mission. You will also have the mission to defend your own base from Tiglaary assault during the certain amount of time.

HCG: Will you improve the game graphics engine?

DR: We are pretty much satisfied with the capabilities of the X-Tend engine used in Kreed. Although the main graphics engine code (and thus requirements) remain unchanged, we have added more visual effects that we felt original game lacked, making the game more colourful and visually intensive.

HCG: Can we expect any other new features in Battle for Savitar?

DR: We enhanced player abilities to control the main character, comparing to the original game. You can climb the ladders and other surfaces that can be used for climbing (girders for example), you can pull-up yourself onto obstacles (by pressing 'Jump' when you are close to an obstacle). This allows player to reach virtually every location in a level (this was also a problem for our level designers :) and provides him with the possibility to find a shortcut (which is really useful in some missions).

HCG: How much time will the usual gamer spend to finish your game?

DR: The average estimation of the gameplay time is about 8 hours.

HCG: Will you improve something in the multiplayer mode? Will there be any new modes?

DR: Add-on is purely a single-player game, so there is no multiplayer at all :)

HCG: Can we expect a demo? If yes, when?

DR: The question about releasing public demo of the game should be directed to our publishers, Russobit-M. We can't decide here, it all depends on them. All that I can say is that we have an English demo of Battle for Savitar prepared.

HCG: When will the english version of Battle for Savitar be released?

DR: It is also a question for our publishers. They negotiate the deals, they set up the dates and they decide when it is Ok to disclose such information to the public.

HCG: Please tell me some cool confidential information about Battle for Savitar! ;-)

DR: I didn't want to give it away that early, but if you are asking... :) There is an Easter Egg in the game - a place where you can see all or nearly all of us. It's not that hard to find for a curious player, however. You just have to try pulling any knobs you see and explore the levels carefully :)

HCG: Do you plan to make another games after the expansion? Can you give us some details about that?

DR: Yes, we are in process of making our next shooter. I can't disclose much details at the moment, but this is not going to be a sequel of Kreed. It won't be future and distant space anymore, the storyline is about the events that could have taken place on Earth during WW 2. We don't want to create a typical war shooter, but a interesting story which happens during the wartime. Gameplay will be based upon some specific abilities of the main hero and the game will feature a lot of action, explosions, firing and blood.

HCG: Finally, would you like to say anything to our readers?

DR: Thank you for taking the time to read all this :) I hope you will enjoy playing the Battle for Savitar as much as we enjoyed creating it. Cheers.