We had the pleasure of chatting with Tormentis all about the game, what it is like to be an indie creator, and overall goals! Check it out to learn more!

1.Tell us about Tormentis

Tormentis is a multiplayer action role-playing game where you train heroes, equip them with increasingly better equipment and play them to attack other players’ dungeons and try to reach the dungeon treasury alive. At the same time, players build their own dungeons, place traps and monsters and try to make them as difficult as possible for other players.

Older players may recognize Tormentis is similar to the old game -The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot- which was shut down back in 2016. The biggest difference is that Tormentis is not pay-to-win! Tormentis takes place in a darker setting and the game has much more opportunities to interact with other players. This includes trading options for equipment, as is familiar from MMORPGs.

2.What are your goals for your game?

I want players to enjoy Tormentis and that it becomes a game people talk about. A game that excites and captivates people, just as games captivated me when I was younger.

Players should have fun improving and optimizing their heroes with new equipment and enjoy taking on unknown dungeons and challenges again and again. That they enjoy interacting and trading with each other. In addition to the auction house, 1-to-1 barter will also be added in the release, so external trading platforms would also be conceivable.

As a father of three children, I know that it is not always possible to play for long periods of time in adulthood. It was therefore very important for me when designing the game that Tormentis could be played well for both long and short game sessions. For Tormentis, I hope that a positive community will be established that enjoys the game as well as new challenges through increasingly stronger heroes and further optimized dungeons.

3.What are some success stories you have as an indie game dev?

I’ve been doing this part-time game development for 20 years already. I started in 2003 when I published my first game called “Evergore” with a friend. It is a multiplayer fantasy RPG browser game that I developed and maintained for 11 years and still exists today. However, due to time constraints (starting a family), I handed over responsibility to the Evergore community, which has been managing the game with a small team ever since. During the heyday of browser games, there were over 15,000 active players in German-speaking countries.

When I got used to the role of being a parent and found a time again, I started to learn Unity and published a mobile game a few months later. Heroes and Merchants is a fantasy multiplayer crafting RPG that has 80,000 installations and still over 5,000 active monthly players after five years.

I’m used to maintaining a game long-term and providing it with regular updates and features. I have already experienced twice that even with smaller projects you can build a stable and loyal community that can actively help to continuously improve a game.

I’ve been working on Tormentis for two and a half years now. It is my largest project so far and requires the longest development time until release. The current target release date is in the second half of 2024.

4.What is a piece of advice you would give to new game devs?

The most important thing that aspiring game developers need to know is that such a project is not a sprint, but a marathon. Exhausting yourself completely for a few days and then spending weeks without motivation doesn’t get you anywhere. Not all days are the same and not every day you have enough motivation and energy to tackle big tasks.

I therefore recommend that developers create and maintain a board (Kanban, Trello, …) on which all known upcoming tasks are listed – ideally with a time or at least an initial complexity estimate. An important point is to divide large tasks into smaller ones! This can be very helpful in motivating yourself to start something bigger, even on difficult days. Completing a few tiny tasks can also lead to finding new motivation for further and bigger tasks.

My main job is as a software engineer and architect in an agile working environment. I can only recommend every aspiring game developer to familiarize themselves a little with agile working methods.

5.Where can people support your work?

You can support us by wishlisting Tormentis on Steam We also have a Discord server where early insights into development are regularly shared and we are always happy to receive honest and direct feedback.

We are currently working towards the Tormentis multiplayer demo. In this version you can already attack other players’ dungeons and use the auction house to trade with other players. The new version will be released during November.

Another big help for us will be if players leave feedback after playing the demo. This gives us the opportunity to improve the game already before the actual release.

Otherwise you can find us on the following social media platforms:

Youtube: https://youtube.com/@4handsgames

TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@4handsgames

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/4handsgames.bsky.social…

Instagram: https://instagram.com/4handsgames/

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/zodiac2k

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