Talking to Jenkins and Sunsfan brought back some of my happiest childhood memories—me and my brother spending hours coming up with game ideas, mechanics, spells, character designs… all of it. He was into spaceship games; I was more into Barbie. But our love for game design was stronger than any of that. We’d meet in the middle and come up with the weirdest, most out-there ideas—somewhere between Barbies and spaceships.
In the duo of Sunsfan and Jenkins, I don’t know who’s more of a Barbie type and who’s the spaceship—or maybe they’ve just been perfectly synced from day one. One thing’s for sure: Relic Arena is their most beloved child. In the tiny EWC press room, they were just bouncing off each other, laughing, interrupting, and doing their best to explain the madness behind every part of their game.
They talked about how the idea started, how running into legal and monetization issues with Dota custom games made them realize they had no choice but to build something of their own, the bugs that turned into sleepless-night obsessions, and how deep their fixation goes when it comes to every pixel and every line of code.
— How did you guys come to the idea of making a custom game initially?
Sunsfan: I played a custom game in Dota called Atomic War, also an auto battler, and there were a few things that really annoyed me — stuff I thought were bad game design decisions. Over time I just got so annoyed, I was like «Okay, I’m just going to make my own version.»
Jenkins: He has mental illness. If something annoys him, he’ll go to extreme measures. It can be petty, but it’s a motivator. Negative things can be motivators. Depression is a motivator. I can tell you that.
Sunsfan: So anyway, I really liked the idea of their… I think they were called «Lords»? I really liked that. I thought we could capture an audience of more competitive auto battler players — where you could mix and match abilities to create the combos you want to play with. That’s how it started.
Jenkins: You thought of that on your own. Then you contacted me and were like, «I can’t afford to make a game on my own. It’s financially devastating. I need a partner. And by the way, you seem like a genius. I’ve watched a lot of your streams at twitch.tv/420jenkins.» He didn’t say this, but… you know…
I think on some podcast I mentioned that I eventually wanted to pivot from Dota esports into making my own game. And I probably went pretty ham about how much I was willing to give up in life to do that.
Sunsfan: We’d known each other for 5–6 years before this, but I actually didn’t know he existed until we started discussing game design.
Jenkins: He was like a father figure to me. I really looked up to him. I thought he was hilarious. I watched you on Dota Cinema, and if you had talked to me, I would have told my girlfriend, «I spoke to my idol, and he remembers me!» And it turns out… he didn’t remember I existed for years.
Sunsfan: Sorry about that. It wasn’t until those game design talks that I felt like our goals aligned a lot. It’s actually not that common to find people in our industry who are really into game design, which I find strange.
Jenkins: I think a lot of people find themselves in Dota casting by chance. They just happen to be good at games or good at talking. I’m not sure how much of a choice it really is for most people — it feels like a lot of luck. I was shocked by the timing when you asked me to make a game with you, because I was already coding one myself as a side project. Eventually I wanted to make it more than that, and you had already made a couple of custom games with an actual team of developers. So when you said, «Hey, do you want to start a business?» I was like, «Holy shit, I was literally dreaming of this.»
Sunsfan: So yeah, it was fun, and I’d say it was successful for a while. Do you want us to continue on with the timeline here?
Jenkins: Don’t interrupt me, okay? I know you’re going to try… I’m summarizing here for a new audience.
So, we had Ability Arena, and people were really competitive in this custom game. When you ranked up, you’d get special badges — just like in Dota. If you joined our Discord, you could fill out a Google Form and get special privileges — access to exclusive channels. It was all superficial bonuses, but gamers love that stuff. So this guy comes into Discord and goes, «Where are my bonuses?» Turns out he submitted the Google Form wrong. Our Discord community manager — because we couldn’t afford real employees — was Sunsfan’s wife. Still is, for Relic Arena. This guy ended up saying some very sexist stuff. I don’t even remember the exact words, but it was pretty egregious. So Sunsfan, naturally, as a spiteful man (which I get — it’s your wife we’re talking about here), takes action. Instead of banning the guy, he sets his account to level zero, deletes all his in-game items, and says, «Have fun!» And the guy gets really angry.
Sunsfan: I’d like to interject.
Jenkins: Oh, here we go, of course!
Sunsfan: No, just real quick: when I did that, it felt REALLY good. Go ahead.
Jenkins: Okay, that’s an acceptable interjection. So this guy reports us to the GDPR — which is a European privacy group. Basically, if you want to run a business, game, or website in Europe, you have to follow their privacy rules. Even something as simple as people needing a way to email you and ask for their data to be deleted.
This guy reports us, and of course, we weren’t following those rules — because no Dota custom game does. But then Valve’s lawyers emailed us and said, «Hey, you need to follow these.» We said, «Okay, understood. We’ll fix it.»
The next day, they emailed again and said, «Hey, you’re selling stuff in your game. That’s not allowed. Only we can sell things in a Valve game.»
We replied, «You know every custom game does this, right? Are you sure you want us to stop? This will basically kill the arcade.» And they said, «Yeah, we know.»
So we were like, «Holy shit.» If things kept going the way they looked, it would completely destroy the arcade. In the end, there are still games that monetize — pretty much all of them. Our theory is that some of these devs are in China or Russia, where it’s harder to pursue legal action, and Valve tends to forget or lose interest.
At that point, we felt like we were ***ed. «We can’t afford to pay developers anymore. What do we do?» So we took it as the push to make our own game.
Ability Arena was the number one played Western custom game. We weren’t the biggest in Eastern Europe or China, but in the West, we were the best. In our eyes, that was success. So we thought, «Let’s just do our own standalone version», and improve everything we knew we could do better — plus add the stuff we couldn’t do inside Dota. We were very emo about it for a month or two, but eventually we saw it as an opportunity.
Sunsfan: I’ll just make one small note, something that should’ve been mentioned before this whole story. Before we even made the custom game, we actually met with Valve and said, «We’re going to do this» They understood the monetization system for custom games was scuffed, and were kind of turning a blind eye to it. We wanted to do it legit — with an actual system built into the game. They’d done it before, like with Dota Auto Chess, where you could pay through Steam. That would have fixed everything. It would take one dev half a day, and Valve would get a cut.
To be fair, the people we talked to at Valve wanted to help. But higher-ups shut it down. That basically forced us to go the ghetto route that everyone else was using. And it sucks that we were the only ones who got punished in the end. But like you said, even though making our own game has been financially straining, I think it was a good push. Who knows? Maybe we would’ve just stuck with Dota even longer otherwise.
— Are you guys involved in the development process yourselves?
Sunsfan: Yes. Jenkins actually codes a bit, which is very helpful. I don’t. I manage the project — everything. It really tests your sanity over a long period of time. I’ve been burnt out like three or four separate times in the last year and a half. It’s been rough, but it’s also been very rewarding to see something you envisioned come to life. Between the two of us, we handle all the game design — concepts, mechanics, all of it.
Jenkins: At the beginning, I wanted to code just to keep my skills sharp. But as I think a lot of small indie companies will tell you, pretty much everybody ends up doing everything. Our lead developer does some project management too. One of our programmers is actually rank 1 in the game right now, and there are like 50 to 100 people consistently playing the beta. He’s playing the game and effectively designing it by giving us a lot of feedback. Everyone does everything, which I think is standard for any small startup.
Sunsfan: It helped that people already knew us. Some of our devs had worked with us on earlier custom games. But others, like our VFX guy, came from different projects. He worked on The Bazaar, and people say the VFX in that game are really good. We’re just lucky to have a team. If we were paying them what they should be paid, we’d already be horribly broke. We’re lucky they believe in our vision.
Jenkins: I think they also know that if it ends up being financially successful, we wouldn’t leave anyone in the dust. Everyone would get a fair share.
Also, I’d like to think they feel free — and that we’ve created an environment where… I personally trust every single one of our developers in the areas they’re skilled at. I’d like to think we enable them to be the best version of themselves.
Obviously, we’re two boneheads from Dota. I’ve never run a dev team before. But I’m trying — and I’m reading books on leadership and how to enable people.
— Can you share what’s the hardest part of creating the game for each of you?
Sunsfan: Outside of the financial stuff… I’d say filtering feedback is hard. Somebody might hate the game — but they don’t necessarily hate everything about it — so you need to figure out why. Sometimes, you realize the game just isn’t for them. But if someone says, «Oh, I hate this ability, it’s overpowered,» you still have to look at it and see if it’s true, even if the way they’re saying it isn’t particularly helpful.
Jenkins: The player is always right that there’s a problem if they think they see one — but they’re very rarely right about what the solution is. That’s generally our approach, and it can be exhausting.
If someone really loves the game — like Dota, for example — they’re constantly pointing out problems, even though it’s arguably the best game ever made. That kind of stuff can keep you up at night. The most recent thing I obsessed over was this ability that summons a ring of chickens around you. When you hit someone, one of the chickens flies out, explodes, and deals damage. It also prevents you from taking damage if chickens are surrounding you.
We didn’t realize it worked this way, but if you use the ability twice — where the max should be 10 chickens — it doesn’t reset to 10. It stacks. So you get 20, then 30, then 40. People were figuring out how to load up a unit with tons of chickens, and when it was the last surviving unit, all the chickens would basically turn into machine-gun fire and just insta-kill everything on the board.
It was ridiculous. Super oppressive. And people were complaining. Everyone had suggestions: «Make it so it doesn’t stack. Cap it at 10,» etc. But I couldn’t stop thinking, «If a player discovers this on their own, they’re going to feel like a ***ing genius. They’ll never stop playing our game.»
And I want as many moments like that as possible. To me, that adds depth — those crazy combos you can pull off. We just needed to make it so it wasn’t completely broken.
Eventually, I realized it was a bug. People were abusing cooldown reduction, and it was working incorrectly, letting them get twice as many chickens as they should. So I’m really glad I obsessed over it, because it solved an actual core problem in the game.
I like to think that when problems like this come up again and again, there’s some meaning there. It’s our job to figure out what it is. But sometimes, it takes weeks — weeks of sleeping and thinking. This is what gets me: when there’s a problem I just can’t stop hyperfixating on.
One of the biggest blunders in game design, in my opinion, is when Valve nerfed the speed of Pudge’s hook. I hated it. That’s the most fun thing about him — it’s the most iconic ability of the most iconic character in the most iconic game ever made. Every game steals Pudge. Every game has a hooking character. And when you nerf the one thing that makes him «him»? That sucks. I’d rather all of his other abilities be garbage if it means you leave that one alone. I don’t want to do that to our game.
I want to make sure that if something is inherently cool, you nerf everything else around it — but not the cool thing itself. And sometimes, it’s really, really ***ing hard to figure out what that is. How to balance something without ruining the heart of it.
— How are these difficulties different from the difficulties of creating the custom game?
Sunsfan: I think everything is amplified because you have to create everything from scratch. In Dota, you can use any model, cosmetic, ability, sound — even server networking is already there. Creating brand new abilities from a coding perspective isn’t that difficult, but it still requires brainstorming. Like, we need a spell that’s kind of like Hook, but we don’t want to just copy Hook from Dota.
It depends on what kind of design strategy you use. There’s the top-down approach and the bottom-up. Either you start with a mechanic and add the theme later, or start with the idea and then figure out how it plays. For example, we started with a spell called King Tut’s Mask, which is this huge sarcophagus that slams down, encases someone, then opens to stun them — and afterwards, King Tut’s curse affects everyone nearby. Thematically it’s really cool, but we didn’t know what the base skill actually did. We went through a bunch of iterations, and it just ended up being a hex — basically the most basic ability ever.
That’s something we’ve learned: in Ability Arena, we didn’t have to think much about base abilities, only the upgrades. So now, this part has actually been a lot of fun to brainstorm.
Jenkins: We listen to a lot of game design theory. Designing a game is kind of like shopping for cake ingredients — you play other games to gather ideas, but it’s how you combine them that matters. Maybe you add a little cardamom for spice. It’s about recognizing that others have spent thousands of hours solving these problems, and sometimes the best thing you can do is set aside your ego and use what already works. But there is something inherently satisfying when you make something you haven’t seen in another game, and people say, «This ability is awesome!» Then someone else says, «Oh, that’s just like this thing from that other game…» and it goes back and forth.
The game that has everything is Magic: The Gathering. Like, if you think you’ve come up with a unique mechanic — it already exists there.
— So, do you have a hooking character already in your game?
Jenkins: Oh, we do. We came up with a good ability — also a weird one. You put down a claw machine, like a plush toy claw machine, and the claw comes out, grabs the enemy, and pulls them closer to the machine. It’s pretty good.
Our developers didn’t want to touch it for a long time because it seemed really complicated. The way we work is, we don’t assign stuff to anyone specifically. We just have a pile of concepts, and they can choose whatever seems most fun to work on. So for the longest time, nobody picked it. But finally, it’s in the game. That’s our hook. It’s really, really broken right now.
— Was it the fact that you were the number one Western custom that gave you the confidence to make an actual game?
Sunsfan: Yeah. For me, it was a slow evolution. We first made a custom game called Community Heroes and Item Project — CHIP. Very well known. I used to own Dota Cinema, and we had a YouTube channel where we released spotlights for custom heroes. We had a lot of fun making them, and people really enjoyed it, so I knew it was something I was at least okay at.
The next one was Pog: Path of Guardians, which was like an ARAM mode. It was actually really popular for about six weeks — until the Dota Battle Pass dropped and it died instantly. It was fast-paced Dota, but then Turbo came out, which basically filled that niche.
Then came Ability Arena. And every single project has been more successful than the last. So it must mean we’re doing something right, right? This one’s scarier though, because it’s in Unity — a brand new engine for us. It’s going to take a hell of a lot longer to make, and it’s way more expensive. But yeah, Ability Arena definitely gave us the confidence.
Jenkins: My personal take is: it’s always been a dream for me. I say this to him whenever he’s feeling down — «If we don’t make a good game next year, we’ll do it the year after. And if that one doesn’t work, then the next one.» I’ll do this for 50 years if I have to, just to make a game people want to play. I don’t care.
If you told me I could chop off my pinky right now and be guaranteed a million people consistently playing Relic Arena, I’d give you my pinky. Right now. I know that sounds insane, but that’s how much I want this.
Sunsfan: I wouldn’t do that — not because I’d lose the pinky, but because I’d feel like I didn’t earn it. If I got it just for chopping off a finger, it wouldn’t feel right. But yeah, it’s a philosophical thing.
Jenkins: I don’t mind the idea of becoming a successful game designer at 40, or 50, or even 60. There’s a great quote BSJ mentioned once — he got it from Dr. K:
«The scary thing about potential is that when you realize your potential, you lose the rest of it.»
People are afraid to achieve what they want because it means they can’t do all the other things they could have done. If you’re 40 or 50 and finally become what you want to be — why is that scary? I don’t get this obsession with «I have to be a millionaire by 25.» Where does that even come from?
Sunsfan: From a pragmatic standpoint, most of the hard work is done. We’ve created a foundation. If this game flops, we could make another one in, like, two weeks.
Luckily, we have our lead developer — an absolute genius. He used to make the best custom games, but we couldn’t get him for Ability Arena. Then something else he was working on flopped, and he had some free time. Everyone wanted him, but he chose to work with us. He liked us. And he’s done some crazy things.
For example, Dota custom games are coded in TypeScript, while Unity uses C# — completely different languages. Normally, it’d take six months for our devs to learn C#. But this guy found some Chinese scripting system and converted our entire Ability Arena codebase into TypeScript that could run in Unity. Then he set up a backwards compiler from TypeScript to C#. Now all of our Dota developers can work in Unity without even knowing how to use Unity. He saved us six months of dev time — in like one bored weekend. We’re very, very lucky to have a lot of the developers we do.
— Is it Dota, and how much people enjoy it, that inspired you to make your own game?
Sunsfan: I’d say no, actually. When I was a kid, I always wanted to make a game. I wouldn’t say I had really good ideas, but I’d look at a game and think, «I wish you could do this.» Then years later, it would actually happen.
Jenkins: I remember I predicted Among Us. I had the concept in a Google Doc — based on Warcraft III. It was like Murder at the Mansion. I used to tell my ex-girlfriend, «I’m going to code this when I finish college.» And then I just didn’t, because I was playing Dota instead. Then Among Us came out, and I was like, «I knew this was a good game!» They executed it perfectly. Execution matters a lot.
I think Dota is the best game ever made, but I’m like him — when I played Warcraft III, I spent most of my time making maps and trying to get them popular. My biggest success was… did you ever play —
— No.
Jenkins: You’re young… There was a game called Life of a Peasant, a very casual mode where you live in a village as a peasant. It had a police role, mafia role — just for fun. I added a god role to it. So every version of Life of a Peasant that came afterward with extra roles like Devil or Animal Patrol — my name was in the credits. I was the first guy to add the god role. I went by AJ1020. I used to go into the credits and show people — «That’s me. People are using my map!» It was one of the top five most popular maps in Warcraft III at the time.
Sunsfan: I actually made Warcraft III maps too. I’d totally forgotten until you mentioned that.
Jenkins: What did you make?
Sunsfan: I made StarCraft maps too — BGH maps…
— How do you guys balance working on the game and casting the tournaments?
Jenkins: I’d say I’m incredibly lucky to have a very supportive girlfriend, because the amount of time and energy I spend talking about Relic Arena and working on it is… constant, outside of Dota events.
Relic Arena is in beta right now, and we have a matchmaking window where you can queue up — but we don’t have enough players for constant matchmaking. So sometimes she and I will go to a shisha bar, bring our laptops, and just queue all night until matchmaking closes. Or right before bed, she’ll go, «Oh, I have this new Alan Turing strategy I’m going to try.» She’s fully into it. She believes in it.
Also, his [Sunsfan’s] wife is our COO. She’s super important for the company. She’s the only one with actual brain cells when it comes to business. We call her the «Shadow CEO.»
Sunsfan: For me, not much different. I don’t manage my time at all. Unless I’m at a Dota event, I’m working on Relic Arena.
Jenkins: He has seven monitors.
Sunsfan: Four monitors.
Jenkins: Whatever. He’s got all these monitors — it looks like some James Bond villain setup. Every spreadsheet we have is open. I could open any important document on my phone right now, and his icon would already be there. So yeah — no life!
— Dota says 18 people worked on Ability Arena. Were they mostly enthusiasts? How many people are working on Relic Arena?
Sunsfan: They’re all paid, but the 18 listed in the credits for Ability Arena includes artists, sound people — basically anyone who touched the project. For Relic Arena, it’s probably around 15 people.
When we talk to investors and say we have 15 people, they go, «Oh my god, your team is huge.» But no — almost nobody’s full-time. Outside of me and Jenkins, who are definitely putting in more than full-time, everyone else is part-time. Some people are putting in two or three hours a week; it really depends on the role. If you combine all the work hours, it’s maybe the equivalent of six full-time people.
— Do you plan to monetize Relic Arena, and how?
Jenkins: Yeah, the game itself is Free to Play. We’re combining a few different monetization methods. There are companies that put millions of dollars into researching this stuff — we don’t have an economist or psychologist on staff, so we’re kind of just copy-pasting proven systems.
We’re going to have a Plus system where you get access to certain stats, kind of like Dota Plus. We’ll also have a battle pass, which you can level up through gameplay or by purchasing points. Like Valorant, the battle pass will have both free and paid levels. You can level it up for free and later pay to unlock all the paid levels you missed, collecting all the rewards. Each season’s pass will include at least one free leader and one paid leader, so not everyone will get early access to both. Once the season ends, those leaders will be added to the regular unlock pool, becoming either free or unlockable through gameplay.
Our general approach is: we don’t like pay-to-win. Ability Arena didn’t have pay-to-win, unlike a lot of other Dota custom games. I don’t think that’s going to change in Relic Arena.
— What’s going to happen to Ability Arena once Relic Arena launches?
We haven’t worked on Ability Arena in two years. One of the people we left the game to is also on the Relic Arena team — he’s actually the number one player on our leaderboards. He’s still managing Ability Arena, and I don’t think he’s going to stop.
— You raised about $55k on Kickstarter…
Jenkins, Sunsfan: Yeah, that was a huge mistake…
— Why?
Sunsfan: That’s not much money for a game — but we learned a lot. Kickstarter is mostly for board games, not video games. That’s why those projects can get away with being in the concept stage or kind of scuffed. With video games, if you show really early footage, you’re not going to get much funding. Most of what we raised came from people who already knew us and wanted to support. If we had waited a year, we probably would’ve tripled that.
Jenkins: All the research we did said to wait until we had a beta — at least something playable we could show and give access to. That would’ve helped a lot. But once Valve told us we couldn’t monetize Ability Arena, it felt like there was a ticking time bomb. We didn’t want to wait another year.
If I could go back in time, I would’ve self-funded for a year, then done the Kickstarter. We underestimated how expensive 3D art, models, VFX — basically all the stuff we didn’t need for Dota would be.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t a mistake, but it was a learning experience. It didn’t financially destroy us (YET). Who knows what happens in six months.
— How much did it cover?
Sunsfan: Two months, maybe two and a half. Not more than that.
Jenkins: Thank God for EWC. All our money instantly goes into Relic Arena and straight to our developers. But that’s our choice, so it’s fine.
— You mentioned how Dota is full of amazing models, effects, etc., which are now unavailable to you. When creating your own game, what’s been the most humbling experience?
Jenkins: That’s a great question… I feel like I’m constantly humbled.
Sunsfan: That’s true. It’s constant. In every part of the game, you do something, you feel like it’s really good — and it ends up being complete dogshit. Like, we made an ability where you throw a rat. So now we had to create a rat model. And if you upgrade the ability, you get a big fat rat sitting on a throne. We did all that — and it was really bad for a long time. Only after a ton of iteration did it become good.
Jenkins: I literally told my girlfriend three days ago — after the chicken fiasco — that it feels like every month there’s some new mountain to climb. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got clarity on how to make a great game, and then a problem hits, and suddenly I feel like I know nothing. But what I always go back to is… no matter how much you try to rationalize and logic your way through things, in game design there’s some level of intuition you have to rely on.
It’s not like programming or finance where everything is logical. There’s this intangible element called «fun.» (Like, you were telling me about the shell-diving thing — why is that fun to you?) It’s really hard to explain. But then someone makes a game like that, and suddenly lots of people are playing it — because they also intuitively find it fun.
No matter how smart or skilled you think you are as a dev, you always have to build something, test it, see how people react, and then change it. If it sucks, you change it again, and again, and again — until eventually, people just stop complaining. They just laugh because they see this big fat rat on a throne with nipple piercings and jiggling boobs…
I remember a few weeks ago when my girlfriend started playing. She picked that rat ability, and I asked, «Why? Do you think it’s good?» And she goes, «No, but the rats are funny. They squeak.» And I thought, «Damn — that’s a totally valid reason!»
It’d be nice if everything could be solved with logic, but in reality, it’s just… it’s an interesting mix of art and science.
— You mentioned planning to release a mobile version as well — what’s the bigger priority?
Jenkins: Once the Steam version is released, the mobile version won’t come out right away. It’s a lot of work to redesign the UI, but once that’s done, it can also be transferred to Steam Deck — those controls are super easy to set up.
Purge was actually sitting there playing Relic Arena on a Steam Deck during rehearsals, moving all the little things around. He’s our biggest fan. He plays Leonardo da Vinci — he’s addicted. So I guess even now, it’s playable… even with this very small UI.
— In Relic Arena, you have famous figures from different regions. Who will be representing Eastern Europe?
Jenkins: Princess Olga. We still need a concept for her, but I really want her in the game.Vlad the Impaler, from Romania. Also Belka and Strelka — they’re coming in Season 2. The second season (we’re planning three-month seasons) is going to be animal-themed. We already have Wojtek, the Polish war bear who was known for smoking cigarettes and drinking beer.
Sunsfan: It’s hard to get proper representation across the whole world. Some regions are trickier — we still need to figure something out for the Middle East. We have Shaka Zulu coming soon for Africa. I mean, we also have Cleopatra, but that’s technically both Africa and the Middle East.
We’ve got Simón Bolívar. We wanted to add Che Guevara too, but apparently his family sues people for using his name. There are a lot of cool characters we can’t use because they died within the last 70 years. A few are just barely outside the limit, so maybe with an expansion in a year or two, we can add them.
— What’s the saddest example — something you really wanted to use but just can’t?
Sunsfan: It’s not copyright-related — it’s Jesus Christ. We really wanted to, but we understand people would be quite upset.
Any dictator… can’t be added. There are certain dictators everyone thinks of when you hear the word «dictator»…
Another example is Elvis Presley. There’s an estate on his name, so we can’t use him either.
— Who will be representing Canada?
Jenkins: Justin Trudeau or a polar bear [sarcasm].
Sunsfan: Canada’s pretty useless — I don’t think it needs specific representation. Just put in a maple syrup model and call it a day.
Jenkins: Actually, ODPixel had a really funny idea. He was like, «Why don’t you put the Titanic in the game?» That’s a ***ing boat — that’s actually a good one.
— And who will you be playing yourselves?
Jenkins: I play a lot of Alan Turing. When you select a unit, there’s a chance he’ll cast the spell a second time. Once you fully level it up, it can happen infinitely — so you can insta-kill the whole board. And since he’s a computer science guy and I majored in computer science, it fits.
Sunsfan: I’m going to name two, then. I really liked Marie Curie for a while. You select an ability, and it becomes radioactive — basically stronger.
Lately, I’ve been really into Gandhi, which — honestly — was originally Jesus Christ’s concept. You select a unit, and when it dies, it revives after a certain amount of time and refreshes some of its abilities. We’ve got some cool mechanics where, when a unit dies, it casts another ability — like suicide spells. For example, with Warlock: when you die, you drop a Golem. Just like Gandhi, right? Very full of suicide.
When you fully max him out, the unit dies and you hear «nuclear launch detected». Then it drops a tactical nuke on the board — as a reference to Civilization V’s Nuclear Gandhi.
— Do you plan to localize the game?
We don’t have anything in place right now, but once we get closer to Early Access, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish are the big ones we’re targeting. Honestly, I don’t see any reason not to eventually do everything.
Luckily, my girlfriend is a Chinese–English–Russian translator — so that’s free labor.
— You have a Russian Telegram channel — who’s handling it?
My girlfriend. Free labor once again. Please subscribe! [Taverna.gg: Join their Discord too]
— What’s the main appeal of Relic Arena?
Sunsfan: You’ve got so many different countries involved, so everyone can feel like there’s someone representing them globally. The leaders are the coolest part of the game because they completely change the way you play.
Like with the Gandhi (originally Jesus Christ) example — your unit is dying and doing something when it dies, so you need to build your whole strategy around enabling that unit. That dictates how you play. It’s all those small details — it’s just pure dopamine.
Jenkins: The design inspiration comes from Dota. My favorite thing about Dota is the idea of power spikes. Like, you have the components to an item — they just give you basic stats. But once you combine them, suddenly you’re spell-immune for nine seconds.
Dota’s full of power spikes — items, hitting level 6, and so on. And when you play, you’re constantly making choices: «Are our power spikes stronger? Do we fight now?» If you get it right, you’re a good player. That’s where the satisfaction comes from — making the right call on these nonlinear, game-changing moments.
That’s exactly how we’ve designed Relic Arena. You’re leveling up relics — they get a little better, a little better, a little better… then boom — at level 3, you get a super upgrade. It completely changes the game. So you’re always choosing between investing early points or saving them to level up your leader. If you make the right choice, you get that big dopamine rush — and you climb the leaderboard.
— How would you define success for Relic Arena?
Jenkins: From a business standpoint, if we have enough money to pay our team and keep developing the game, I’d consider that a success. I’d love to be able to pay everyone full-time.
From a personal standpoint, I just want people to play and enjoy the game. I really believe monetization doesn’t matter nearly as much as people genuinely liking it. If the game is good, the super gamers will find ways to support you. What matters is whether people want to come back and keep playing.
Sunsfan: Agreed.
— If the game becomes successful, do you plan to work on more games in the future?
Sunsfan: For sure — we’ve got ideas. But we’ll keep working on this one. A game like this can’t survive without regular updates.
We’re cooking. We’ve developed a lot of systems in Relic Arena in a way that we can reuse them for future games.
— Is there any chance for Relic Arena to become a competitive game?
Sunsfan: I think that’s the plan — we’re hoping. It feels like it’s built for it in a lot of ways. TFT is probably as competitive as it gets for auto battlers, and I don’t see why we couldn’t achieve a similar kind of niche following.
I also think there are ways to improve how auto battlers are viewed that would make them feel more competitive. Like in Dota, you’ve got Dota Plus where it shows a 70% win chance. That number’s often bullshit, but it gives the viewer this sense of knowing something the players don’t — like secret information.
You could do the same in an auto battler. Say Player A has a power level of 9,000 and Player B is at 4,000 — but then Player B wins. Now the viewer knows that was a major upset and can get hyped about it, even if the matchup seemed unfavorable.
— If you could bring one thing from Dota into Relic Arena, what would it be?
Sunsfan: Queen of Pain Arcana model.
Jenkins: Why, dude? That’s such a random answer.
Sunsfan: Because it’s the best Arcana in the game — and it would sell well.
Jenkins: This is such a bad answer.
— You have a better one?
Jenkins: Yeah, I’d say skill shots. I enjoy all the skill shot characters in Dota. Landing those makes you feel really badass — but obviously, you can’t bring that into an auto battler.
— What would you bring from Relic Arena into Dota?
Jenkins: Gandhi.
Sunsfan: Rat King — the big fat rat on the throne with nipple piercings. Any of the real-world leaders, obviously. I really like the idea of playing someone who actually existed.
Jenkins: Harambe is an easy answer too. Do you know the story of Harambe? A child fell into the gorilla enclosure, and they shot the gorilla because he was petting the kid or something. Then it became a huge internet meme — people saying «Harambe died too soon.» A bunch of people even voted for Harambe in the U.S. election as a protest vote.
So one of our skins for Harambe is going to be just regular Harambe… but with a red dot on his forehead or something. We’ll see.
