Funding Announcement

EA, Epic Games, Riot Games, and Square Enix Leaders, Launch Spectarium and Raise 5M Euro Seed Round To Build Cross-Platform Action RPGs

The Company’s Flagship Game, Myths, Leverages AI Tools to Customize IP and Enable Unique Game Experiences For Individual Players 

FINLAND, September 20, 2023 — Spectarium, a remote-first company building best-in-class cross-platform action RPGs, today announced a 5M euro seed round led by BITKRAFT Ventures with participation from Delphi Digital and Framework Ventures. Founded by Romain Schneider, Mark Peterson, and Plarium Co-Founders Avi & Gabi Shalel, the Spectarium team boasts decades of game development and design experience, with members from EA, Epic Games, Riot Games, and Square Enix. The funding will be used to scale the team and further develop the gameplay of the company’s first RPG title, Myths, which is scheduled to soft launch to specific targeted audiences in 2024.

"Eight years ago, the Spectarium core team came together with a shared mission: to create a game envisioned by our community. This journey fostered a deep trust with our global player base and solidified our team's passion for crafting games that resonate. While we remain community-centric, the studio has evolved and is committed to developing cross-platform, mass-market games that captivate gamers worldwide. By merging standout visuals with generated content, we aim to craft unique and endless gameplay experiences,” commented Spectarium CEO, Romain Schneider. 

The company’s flagship title Myths, is an action RPG game that puts fun and endless gameplay at the forefront. Inspired by ancient mythology and beloved classic games, Myths is an epic dungeon-crawling experience with unique twists. Characters, equipment, and portals absorb the properties of defeated bosses, introducing a novel strategy element into the gameplay. Additionally, the first players who find and defeat legendary new bosses can own, upgrade, and make them available to the entire game community, ensuring in-world fame from the entire player base.

A fundamental concept underpinning the game's design is the creation of an engine that tailors gameplay activities and the proprietary Mythological theme IP to match the preferences of each individual player. As a result, one player's journey might revolve around engaging in boss battles within the realm of Valhalla, while another embarks on a journey through the intricacies of a Mayan temple. Similar to the TikTok algorithm, the Spectarium game engine intuitively aligns gameplay experiences and thematic elements with the specific preferences of players, essentially making every game unique and personalized. 

Spectarium’s innovation lies in the symbiotic collaboration between AI and storytelling. The AI serves as the narrative backbone, dynamically tailoring the storyline to players' choices and the evolving game maps. “At BITKRAFT, we believe that content generation is one of the most promising forms of AI-enabled creativity and a paradigm shift in studio economics. Spectarium’s approach unlocks highly personalized and endlessly customizable gameplay experiences while expanding on proven ARPG systems with the team’s deep genre expertise, and harnessing the global IP of ancient myths to engage diverse player bases across platforms,” commented Jasper Brand, Partner at BITKRAFT Ventures. 

Spectarium’s culture is built around the belief that people are its greatest asset and has a 97% retention rate for employees who have been with Spectarium for one year or longer. The company has deployed a Feel Good Officer and a Feel Good KPI system to ensure high morale and attract high-caliber talent.

For more information regarding the open roles at Spectarium, please visit the Careers page. 

About Spectarium

Spectarium is on a mission to develop cross-platform mass-market games that players worldwide will love and remember without compromising gameplay experience and quality. Founded by leaders from EA, Epic Games, Riot Games, King, and Square Enix, Spectarium merges standout visuals with generated content to craft personalized and endless gameplay experiences. The company’s flagship title Myths, is inspired by ancient tales and offers an action RPG experience where players can shape their own adventures. Powered by Spectarium’s innovative game engine, every player's journey in "Myths" is unique, adapting to match the preferences of each individual player.

About BITKRAFT Ventures

BITKRAFT Ventures is a leading global investment platform for gaming and Web3 according to research from InvestGame and Drake Star Partners. Founded by industry pioneer Jens Hilgers, BITKRAFT serves a worldwide network that spans many of the industry’s forward-thinking startups and founders—including former executives from the likes of Activision Blizzard, Riot Games, Epic Games, Google, and Apple who are working to build and operate the virtual worlds and economies of the future. BITKRAFT operates four venture funds with a total of over $830M in assets under management and has over 100 companies in its global portfolio as of August 2022. BITKRAFT’s experienced international team works closely with exceptional entrepreneurs to create significant value through early candid partnerships, unique domain experience, entrepreneurial history, and a global ecosystem of strategic partners. Find out more about how BITKRAFT and its portfolio companies are pushing the boundaries of Synthetic Reality® by visiting https://www.bitkraft.vc/vision.

Unleashing the Imagination

Developing Stylized Mythological Creatures

Before we kick off I would like to say a big old thank you to all the people who read our last blog, we had some fantastic feedback, so please keep it coming, and I hope you enjoy reading through part two and taking a look at some of the great artwork the Spectarium team have been producing these last few months.

So… I love my job. No, really! I don’t care what anyone else says, working in the games industry and even more so having the privilege of being an art director, well, there’s nothing on Earth quite like it. Sure, there’s good days and bad days, like any job, but WE MAKE GAMES! How amazing is that? Plus, I count myself very lucky to have a great team to work alongside with.

There’s a load of great information out there on the web about the psychology of shape language, primitive emotive silhouettes, using colour to define your characters persona, etc., so i’m going to try and offer up a different slant and talk a little about the who and not so much on the how.

As any art director will tell you, being involved at the very start of a project, opposed to joining mid-way through development, and having the privilege of building a new team is a rare occurrence these days. You for sure head down a lot of dead ends with the team when working on a new project but surrounding yourself, as you do, with amazing people, stories and historic myths is such a great and unique learning experience and you pick up so much ambient knowledge along the way, you just never know what's going to come in handy. For example, did you know:

• Thor dressed up as a blushing bride, and Loki was his bridesmaid.

• The Nordic ship Naglfar, which carried the army of the dead, was made from fingernails.

• If you squint a bit at the sky, clouds look a little like brains because they really are, there’s bits of giant brains floating up there, apparently.

See, told ya, this is my day job!

Many mythological stories are based around human or at least human-like characters. My personal perspective on this is that hominid characters offer more of a relatable connection to an audience, us. By personifying abstract concepts or natural phenomena, the most memorable fables use characters to communicate complex ideas and moral lessons in a way that resonates with the listener. These characters become vessels for human emotions, desires, and real world struggles, allowing audiences to see themselves reflected in the stories and identify with them on a personal level. All the best movies and TV shows have characters you can relate to, sympathise with or at least all jointly hate in one way or another. Who doesn't like a good scar faced antagonist and an equally evil cat sidekick? A narrator will engage audiences through storytelling, embodying symbolic meanings, jointly exploring and exploiting universal themes.

“What the heck has this all got to do with developing stylized mythological creatures?” I hear you ask. Well, those same rules apply, we're trying to accomplish (in a roundabout kind of way) the same thing.

In our case we wanted to embrace some of the fantastical but relatable heroes and creatures from Norse and other mythologies, not just cherry pick the most aesthetically pleasing or popular ones.

So forward winding a bit, through extensive (and fun) research we have a smashboard of characters and creatures established, tick! These creatures also have to align to our combat designers' needs, there’s little point in making fantastical creatures that look awesome (and they do look awesome), if they don’t serve a purpose and offer contrasting combat opportunities. Playing a game where you only have undead archers relentlessly firing arrows into your face is going to get pretty dull very quickly, and your head is going to end up looking like an oversized porcupine, which no one wants.The giant Nordic Jötunn had long been on our list as a firm favourite, they tick a lot of our boxes. Do they look awesome? Yep. Do they give us an interesting combat mechanic? Yep. Do you want to take on a huge tree wielding giant? Of course you do, what hero wouldn’t.

        Above: Some early exploratory design sketches and ideas for various versions of the Jötunn before we committed on our final style

The two headed, three armed version of the Jötunn, despite being a tech artist's nightmare and an animator's dream, is still a firm favourite with the team but ultimately only one of them really fitted our brief.

Above: Shortlisted sketches and potential game camera perspective version

Including a bit of humour in certain characters was our aim.. Being a giant, we wanted an easy show of his strength, so what could be better than effortlessly ripping a indigenous tree from the ground and using it as a brute force club.

Above: Final concept art rendered from a game camera perspective

It was only later down the line when our in-house concept artist took these designs and realised them inside our world that the Jötunn felt more at home in our universe and his true character emerged. Pot belly, petulant faced and his mighty arrogance on full show.

All our characteristics have to be readable on a mobile device and their silhouettes instantly recognisable by our players so they can adjust their combat stance accordingly, so finding a diverse balance of sizes, shapes and movement types to keep our world interesting and feel less repetitive is key.

Above: Jötunn in-game 3d model and final texture

At some point we'll also share some material from the last step in character development, animation, and that moment when I was sent the Jotunn’s walk cycle for the very first time to review and I actually laughed out loud (and scared the bejesus out of my dog).

So we have our heavy in the bag and he’s worked out pretty well, but a game is not built on one enemy alone and the designers were already asking for more creatures to support our combat. We needed a grunt, a creature that could work well in a horde and give us melee and ranged combat. Luckily at this point we are Nordic creatures experts and it's not too difficult to whittle it down: the Draugr… Da-Dan-Dahhhh!

The Draugr is a ghost with a physical body, a corporeal ghost with similar physical abilities as they possessed in life. They refuse to follow the prescribed path of death, selfishly staying in the physical realm when they are supposed to move on. Apparently selfishness is an important attribute of a ghost… excluding Casper.

Above: Draugr design sketches before they were given the in-game treatment

This is perfect for us, we can arm the Draugr hordes with melee and ranged weaponry, they can share the same rig (the in-game skeleton that we use to animate them with) and there’s a great opportunity here for some great stylised animation.

Thus, our Nordic army of the dead were brought screaming to life, same rules apply here as to our Jötunn, low detail, easily recognisable silhouette but this time around we have the same basic creature with two very distinct combat mechanics.

Above Left: Melee Draugr concept art

Above Right: In game final 3d model and texture

Our undead friends' combat traits work in our favour here. When they were alive, our close combat warriors would have had some form of armour about their person, but we didn’t want to cover them head to toe in metal plating and lose their undead characteristics, so we used this sparingly, enough to tell a backstory but not so much as to look like you’re in combat with a generic warrior. I’m sure the rest of their rotting armour would have fallen from their corpses as they crawled from their graves.

We use the same lens for Draugr archers, the hood is a call back to their previous life, nimble and mobile, they would have been lightly armoured. Keeping the quiver on the back is a great way of telegraphing their intent, and we have enough uncluttered space to show off their nasty undead-ness. That's a word, right?

Above Left: Ranged Draugr concept art

Above Right: In game final 3d model and texture

Now, there’s always exceptions to any rule... The design team asked us for a small flying creature that can act in a swarm and have the potential to overwhelm the player. Great stuff, a flying creature gives us some diversity when it comes to combat and, from the art side, something radically different when it comes to animation.

Off we jolly well trot then, with our research goggles on to see what we can find! Ah… erm. While there’s plenty of big epic flying bonkers creatures, there’s really no timeless stories of mighty nordic warriors bravely fighting small flappy creatures, it's just not, well, heroic enough.

Our principal artist came up with the cracking idea that we could have tunnelling worms (pin that one for later, love it) but the design team had their hearts set on something flapping and flying so we turned away from the mythical world and focused our gaze to the real one.

After trying a few ideas, deformed birds, fat bloated bees, etc., an oversized bat seemed to fit the bill nicely and once our creature concept artist worked his magic, we had something that the art team and design team were both happy with, and we had our first combat triangle of creatures.

Above: Final concept art for the bat and elite version should we need it.

My point here is, don’t get comfortable with a process, there’s always those edge cases that test you, keep you on your toes and make your day that much more interesting.

So wrapping up this episode and something I recommend to anyone producing creatures that are going to inhabit the same space with in your world, regularly check them all in a jolly line up, it's a surefire way to see if things are drifting stylistically but more importantly for me: could these creatures exist in the same world?

If your line-up has a cute, wide eyed post-Impressionist Momonga squirrel sitting next to an art deco robot space mermaid then you’d have to question “What happened to these two to bring them together?” and if this is what you really do want, well then I’d ask the same question. Even if this is never explained to your audience, setting these rules helps you define your world and gives you helpful boundaries to work in. If it's a stylistically eclectic mess you're after then make sure your line up reflects that, it's those edge cases again, but then that's art for ya.

Above: Character line-up so far with our hero in the centre to ground them

I hope you enjoyed this one and it wasn’t too rambly for you (I’m like this in real life), let us know what you think and what you’d like to see next.

Martin Severn

Art Director

Spectarium Games

A new world

Early tentative steps into a new world.

Anyone who knows me or who has ever worked with me, will know that I'm like an excitable six year old at the best of times and I've been itching to share with the world what the Spectarium art team have secretly been working on for months now. “Write a blog” they said, “it's easy they said”, I can’t lie, ChatGPT was looking pretty attractive, but what we're working on right now is far too exciting to trust in an AI to, so let's crack on.

 So the team have been furiously busying ourselves behind the scenes in recent months building a world class art team and producing visual targets for our new crossplatform IP in partnership with some truly inspirational visual development teams from around Europe, in fact it's so new we’re still sorting out an official name.. 

I’m desperately trying not to give away too many spoilers this early on and want to leave that to our great design teams, so without further ado, I'd like to reveal the first of many key images produced in conjunction with the incredible talent at Umeshu Lovers.

Nordic mythology has always been a rich source of inspiration for artists, writers, and filmmakers. From the gods and goddesses to mystic giants and hard nosed dwarves, the stories of Norse folklore have captivated audiences and gamers alike, I personally have spent far too many hours inside Assassin's Creed Valhalla when I probably should have been doing jobs around the house, that tap in the downstairs loo still drips… “I’ll just finish one more side quest, just one, honest”.

Our first image below, and one of many to come, showcases the first of our beautifully handcrafted painted worlds in our Nordic universe, elegantly torn apart by a cataclysmic disaster and revealing all manner of long hidden secrets within. Opening in our Nordic landscape our narrative see’s the hero exploring a wide range of distinctive other realms, some would say a smorgasbord of beautiful worlds, all with an underlying theme of epic destruction running through them.

        Above: Nordic plateau, visual target and final lighting pass.

One of the key elements of our Nordic fantasy world is the sense of mystery that permeates just about everything. From the whispers of ancient spells to ancient abstract designs and intricate knot-work patterns that would weave their way into our ambient storytelling and lore.

It was surprisingly quite challenging producing these early concepts, we knew from initial story treatments that the world had been ripped apart and pockets of life still existed floating around inside this turmoil. At least twelve months would have passed before our hero would return to this world, but we didn’t want to fall down that post apocalyptic rabbit hole and create a dull lifeless grey world. Despite being torn apart, to quote Jeff Goldblum “Nature finds a way”, and potentially these lush pockets of life would contrast well against the rest of the destruction around you.

We were trying not to get too hung up with the technical details at this point (sorry tech team) and the “how on earth are we going to build this”, focusing on providing visuals for a game that we all wanted to play and was going to challenge us creatively as an art team.

Below: Nordic plateau sketches and colour rough. Above: zoomed out version showing more of the terrain but less detail.

In fact it became a bit of a mantra within the art team when reviewing concept art, if anyone said “Yep, I know how we’re going to build this, easy-peasy mate!” we’re not pushing ourselves enough and it was back to the virtual drawing boards. Which i’d also love to share with you all one day, some of the ideas on these huge virtual white boards are proper crazy and about the size of Nebraska!

Above: Boss fight final lighting pass. Below: Early sketches and layout ideas.

In contrast to our beautiful torn lush world we have some early visual development work for something a little more brutal and intimate. We join our hero inside a dilapidated and snow drifted temple. His weapon fully charged, and about to strike a devastating god like electrical blow to fire giant pulling itself from a volcanic sinkhole below.

Once again when you extract the content the subject matter here is also quite dark, we wanted to find a solution in which this doesn’t become a torch lit dark and dingy dungeon but naturally lit and, like the other images we’ve shared, it had to have the energy and richness of a hand painted world, a joy to explore but also not be so busy that it felt cluttered and noisy.

It's so easy to get wrapped up in your own cleverness and end up with a scene that feels more like a page out of a Where's Wally book (or Waldo if you’re state side). Keep it simple, Hollywood moonlight, volcanic up light and a nice cool bounce.

Translating these images into the 3D world and keeping the feeling that your seamlessly walking through a well crafted, and i’m going to say it again, hand painted and beautifully lit world (lighting has been the key element to nail down) has really stretched the 3D teams both artistically and creatively, I can’t wait to share some of our results a little further down the line with you all IF they let me lose in the blog space ever again.

I can’t share everything all at once or we’re not going to have anything left for later. “You can’t have your pudding, if you don’t eat your dinner” but I hope whether you're a fan of Norse mythology or just appreciate some beautiful artwork, our hand-painted art style captivates, even possibly inspires you and leaves you thirsty to check back in later for more.

So was it a good idea to get a dyslexic art director to write Spectariums first blog to the world…? I’ll let you all be the judge of that. Stay tuned for more updates, insights and just good old purdy pictures, we’ve got lots more to share if they let me.

Martin Severn

Art Director

Spectarium Games