“I“There’s a giant rock that fell from the sky on a Scottish island – they call it the Dragon Stone,” explains Raphaël Toulouse, director of Tears of Metal. “And the English army sent a general to examine it, but that general went a bit rebellious when he found that stone, a bit like in Apocalypse Now. He turned away from the English, took control of the island, and started extracting weapons and armour from that giant rock, but it also affected their minds. So the Scots organised themselves to take back the island, and this is where you come in.”
In Tears of Metal, you’ll be tasked with leading a Scottish battalion and hacking your way through the splintering English troops, getting ever closer to the Dragonstone. But as you get closer to the otherworldly meteorite, the beautiful green backdrop of the Scottish Highlands gives way to something more hellish. “It gets more and more eerie, and by the end it’s almost post-apocalyptic,” says Toulouse.
You start with a group of about 10 soldiers, but you can recruit more and they’ll get stronger over time. Tears of Metal is a roguelike, so if you lose, you’ll be back at the beginning of the game, but you’ll keep the army you’ve assembled for the next playthrough. However, just like in the alien-fighting series XCOM, if one of your soldiers dies in battle, they’re gone forever. The stakes are high, and you may have to rush to help your favorite character before they become permanently extinct.
The game is reminiscent of Dynasty Warriors, the series in which powerful warriors fight their way through hundreds of enemies in fantastic recreations of historical battles. Toulouse acknowledges that the series has been a “huge influence,” but says it relies less on “button mashing.” Up to four players can play together, each with their own army.
Toulouse is the CEO of Paper Cult, an indie studio he co-founded about ten years ago in Montreal, Canada. This begs the question: why is a French-Canadian indie studio developing a game set in Scotland? “It’s a good question,” he says, adding that the game was originally set in a completely different setting. The final decision to set it in medieval Scotland was down to a marketing issue – they wanted something instantly recognisable. But then there’s also the fact that Toulouse is dedicated to a particular Mel Gibson film.
“I was a huge Braveheart fan,” he says. “I used to watch it with my friend all the time after school – we would watch it over and over again. We liked the action scenes and the Braveheart soundtrack is amazing.”
Although Toulouse has no personal connection to Scotland, he says Paper Cult is working with a writer who has “a lot of ties to the Scottish people” and who visits friends in the country every year. “We’re trying to get some real Scots involved in the project,” he adds, particularly in the dialogue, something Scots who still remember the terrible William Wallace Campaign Voiceover In Age of Empires II, you’ll be relieved to hear it.
Paper Cult has been working on Tears of Metal for about four years, and it’s still a long way off, with a planned release date of next year. But Toulouse has been blown away by the public response since the game was revealed at Summer Game Fest in early June – he says it’s already been wishlisted over 100,000 times on Steam. “In the first few days[after the announcement]we surpassed the lifetime wishlists for[our previous game]Bloodroots,” enthuses Toulouse. “We’re really excited.”