Fredrik Norén

Dead meets Leed

Uqahs Keldyn Interactive is a small independent studio, could you tell us more about your studio? What games have you made so far?

Fredrik Norén Absolutely. Keldyn Interactive is basically four friends with a dedication to computer games and the skills to be able to create them. Some of us has worked together on smaller non-commercial projects before, but Dead Meets Lead is our first commercial title together.

Uqahs Zombies in 18th century - this is quite unique combination. Do you think this setting will bring players attention? There are many other zombie games, why should we play Dead Meets Lead?

Fredrik Norén Well, we found the setting very interesting, and we hope others do to. The difference between Dead Meets Lead and your average zombie game is twofold; the setting as you said is obviously one part but also the gameplay is somewhat different from most zombie games, and if I may say so, highly entertaining (we'll have to show you this through a gameplay video in a not too distant future)!

Uqahs On the forums I asked about your inspirations. I know that Alien Shooter, Pirates of the Caribbean, voodoo culture and books like The Buccaneers of America are among them. But you've also mentioned Diablo 3, so what 'diabolic' elements can we find in the game?

Fredrik Norén Diablo 3 is manly an inspiration for the art style and the graphics engine setup. The game is not a role playing game but rather a pure hack-n-slash skill game.

Uqahs What are the other zombie games that you've played and enjoyed? Do you know Polish game Zombie Driver which was also made by a small independent studio? Do you think that Indie developer + zombies = success?

Fredrik Norén Yes, I've played Zombie Driver and I was very impressed. I'm not sure if there's a set formula for success, but I do believe in hard work!

Uqahs I'm interested in game's mechanics. It's a shooter in third person view with elements of survival horror but is there something more and new to that genre?

Fredrik Norén We've work quite a lot with creating a set of abilities and enemies which creates interesting encounters, where you have to react and act swiftly to be able to survive. You often need to use several different abilities in order to survive an encounter, and at the same time dodge the zombies and keep up the tempo.

Uqahs You must have really good reason to introduce only two weapons in the game. In other games we used to have tons of weapons to annihilate zombies. Won't we get bored in DML?

Fredrik Norén Bored is probably the last thing you'll get in Dead Meets Lead, that much I'm sure of :) And from what we can tell from our alpha testing, these two weapons and their abilities are more than enough!

Uqahs You've mentioned that you are developing your own graphic engine (using .NET/DirectX9). I suppose it can't be placed near the newest id Tech or the Unreal Engine but I hope that it won't need a nuclear powerplant to run smoothly. By the way, comic style graphics look great!

Fredrik Norén Yup, we're developing it in-house, and we're working hard making sure that it will run smoothly on as many machines as possible. Happy to hear you like the graphics!

Uqahs What about the game's world? Can player freely explore it? Are there atmospheric effects or day and night cycle? How many types of environments will the players see?

Fredrik Norén There's a common misconception that the game is an RPG, but it's really a hack-n-slash action game. You won't really have time to walk around and look at the environment, you'll be to busy killing zombies!

Uqahs People are spamming on your forums about their zombie-animals. I suppose we are going to see a lot of zombified creatures. Can you tell us how many?

Fredrik Norén Yes, our fans are truly creative, there's a ton of great ideas in that contest and it's going to be really hard to select a winner. Other than that we can't really tell right now how many there will be.

Uqahs Are there any bosses in the game?

Fredrik Norén It's not central to the game but there might be one or two special encounters to spice up the game.

Uqahs What game modes can we expect? Campaing mode? Survival mode? Will there be a multiplayer mode?

Fredrik Norén The game is basically a campaign, but some of the maps have some creative level design applied so it's hard to label it. There won't be any multiplayer mode, but there will be online high-scores.

Uqahs Are you going to release any DLCs after the game's premiere? And when we will play Dead Meets Lead?

Fredrik Norén We're focused on developing this game now, what happens in the future is still too far off for us to detail right now. We haven't set an official release date yet, but I can tell you that we aim at a short development cycle, and the fact that we've started to accept beta applications might give a hint as to how far we've come with the game.

Uqahs As an editor of a website about the postapocalypse I must ask you about Fallout. Have you ever played any of the Fallout games? Or maybe there is another postapocalyptic (excluding zombie-apocalypse) game you've played?

Fredrik Norén I played Fallout 3 for a while, great game!

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