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Hammerting from Warpzone Studios – Interview with Linda Zetterman

This week I caught up with Linda Zetterman from Warpzone Studios to talk about her upcoming release Hammerting.

Please introduce yourself, your studio and Hammerting

Linda Kiby Zetterman, and I love strategy games. I have a studio called Warpzone Studios, that makes strategy games. Hammerting is our current project, and it’s a strategy game! It’s all about dwarves, crafting and exploring!

Linda Zetterman, CEO, Warpzone Studios

You’re a team of industry veterans, what made you go on this journey together? What choice did you make?

Us three in the founding team met at Avalanche in 2006. Since then we have worked at a few different studios, but at some point, we decided that we wanted to have our own studio. Get to decide the games we want to make, and what kind of culture we want to work in, as well as being our own bosses.

Hammerting is the first game from your new studio. What’s the development process of Hammerting been like and when do you plan to launch?

The development of Hammerting has been very slow, the first 1.5 years we focused really hard on getting the game engine off the ground. Yes, we chose to make our own engine even though the alternatives are quite nice nowadays. Fredrik, our CTO, was the engine lead at Paradox before we quit, so he had ideas on what he wanted to create, and knew what he was getting into. Then we did not have an artist for quite some time, so the game was… not pretty. Since our artist started in January though, he has made all of what you can see in the game now! We try to add features in layers around a playable core, to keep the game playable at all times. Right now we are at about alpha, and we plan to release some time 2020.

What have been those ‘eureka’ moments so far in the game’s development? The game’s music and visuals are electric

The ‘eureka’ moments happen almost daily! We love to gather around someone computer to check out the latest tweak in global lights or whatever, and it’s just so much better almost every time!

From The Blog we can see you enjoy and value being part of the indie scene, is being an ‘Indie’ important to you?

That depends on how you define indie. As I define it in the network I started, it is about being a small studio in number of employees. Not depending on where your income comes from. I just really enjoy working in smaller teams, where you can be a big part of the machinery and really make a difference.

What can the Indie community do to support you in the development of Hammerting.

We’ve had a lot of help from our indie friends. We discuss all sorts of issues together. Coding, where to find good sound fx, sharing cool articles, all sorts of things. But of course we have a huge network outside of the indie world too, and they are all very helpful and friendly too! Don’t be afraid to reach out when you have a hard time figuring something out – most people love to help out!You can find out more about Warpzone Studios and Hammerting here, Hammerting is currently in alpha and has a scheduled release date of 2020.