‘There’s this 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 take [a look], but that general turns a bit rogue when he finds that stone, a bit like Apocalypse Now. He cuts himself off from the English, takes control of the island, and they start mining this giant rock for weapons and armour, but also it affects their minds. So the Scottish people get organised to take back the island – and this is where you come in.”
Playing as the leader of a Scottish battalion, your job in Tears of Metal is to hack and slash your way through the breakaway English troops, making your way closer and closer to the Dragon Stone. But as you near the supernatural meteor, the beautiful green backdrop of the Scottish Highlands gradually gives way to something more hellish. “It gets weirder and weirder, and by the end, it’s almost post-apocalyptic,” says Toulouse.
You start with a band of 10 or so soldiers, but you can recruit more, and they get stronger over time. Tears of Metal is a roguelike, so defeat will send you back to the beginning of the game, but you’ll retain the army you’ve assembled for the next run. However, much like in the alien-battling XCOM series, if one of your soldiers dies in battle, they’re gone for good. The stakes are high, and you may have to rush to the aid of a favourite character before they’re permanently extinguished.
The game recalls Dynasty Warriors, the series in which powerful warriors carve through hundreds of enemies in fantastical recreations of historical battles. Toulouse acknowledges that the series has been a “big influence”, but he 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 10 years ago in Montreal, Canada. Which begs the question: why is a French-Canadian indie studio making a game set in Scotland? “It’s a good question,” he says, adding that at first, the game had a completely different setting. The eventual decision to settle on medieval Scotland came down to marketing: they wanted something instantly recognisable. But there’s also the fact that Toulouse is devoted to a certain Mel Gibson movie.
“I was a big fan of Braveheart,” he says. “I used to watch it with my friend all the time after school: we were watching it over and over. We liked the action scenes, and the soundtrack of Braveheart is incredible.”
Although Toulouse doesn’t have any personal connections with Scotland, he says that Paper Cult is working with a writer who has “a lot of links with the Scottish people” and who visits friends in the country every year. “We’re trying to get some actual Scottish people involved in the project,” he adds, particularly on the dialogue, something that Scots who still remember the dreadful William Wallace campaign voiceover in Age of Empires II will be relieved to hear.
Paper Cult has been working on Tears of Metal for some four years now, and it’s still some way off, with a release date pencilled in for next year. But Toulouse has been bowled over by the audience response since the game was revealed at Summer Game Fest at the start of June: he says it has now been wishlisted more than 100,000 times on Steam. “In the first couple of days [after the announcement], we surpassed [our previous game] Bloodroots’ lifetime wishlists,” enthuses Toulouse. “We’re super excited.”
Tears of Metal is in development for PC; release date TBC
