Devs behind League of Legends' Stardew Valley spin-off say they know what life sim fans want: fishing and farming
Jan. 17, 2024Bandle Tale’s devs played a lot of life sims to prepare
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The developers of an upcomingStardew Valley-style League of Legends spin-off have said they know what life sim fans' expectations are, so they made sure to include the staples of the genre - farming and fishing.
In an interview withGamesRadar+, Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story’s creative director, Nikita Kulaga, and senior game designer, Amanda Jeffrey, speak about the importance of taking influence from other beloved life sims and balancing it with original concepts and ideas from completely different games.
Talking about some of the best-known games in the genre, Kulaga, who is also the developer of the management sim Graveyard Keeper, explains: “I made Graveyard Keeper without playing Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon. So I know that kind of game exists.” Despite this, Kulaga says, the two games have a lot of similarities.
In terms of what inspired Bandle Tale, which also shares a lot of resemblance to both Stardew Valley and Graveyard Keeper, the developer adds: “We just use our own experience, and maybe look to other games. Not necessarily the same genre - cooler ideas can come to mind when you play an absolutely different game.”
That doesn’t mean the team didn’t do their research: “We have to be aware of what players' expectations are for this genre,” Jeffries explains. “So we’ve played so many of the other games and we know what players consider to be absolute staples,” the game’s designer adds, before not so subtly implying that fishing is one of the big ones. “Every crafting RPG has farming,” Kulaga says, “and we have farming as well.”
“We were making sure we weren’t going to disappoint players who come into this genre and are like, ‘What are you guys doing? Why didn’t you include this thing?’,” Jeffries says. “So we keep an eye on it, we’re fans of the genre.”
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After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I’m also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.
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