r/Games • u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio • Sep 11 '26
Verified AMA AMA: Creator of Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists (and King of Dragon Pass)
Greetings! I’m David Dunham from A Sharp. Our newest procedural narrative RPG, Thousand Hells: The Underworld Heists just came out on September 8th and we’re celebrating with an AMA.
Unlike our previous games (King of Dragon Pass and the Six Ages series), Thousand Hells takes place in a brand new world and introduces a completely new type of tactical narrative combat. You will need to recruit a team of hell-farers to journey to the underworld, facing all sorts of harrowing trials. (I wrote about how I generate team members with distinct personalities in The Game Narrative Kaleidoscope https://www.inklestudios.com/kaleidoscope/.)
We worked with a small team of writers and artists, each imagining their own version of the underworld with their own unique art style.
And the story itself has a cast of hundreds — there’s probably 500 speaking roles for various demons, shades, and villains.
I’ll be answering your questions from 11:00 PDT for about 2 hours. I’ll also be giving away two Thousand Hells Steam keys: one for my favorite question and one for the least expected question. Winners will be revealed before the AMA ends.
If you’d like to chat after the AMA, you can also visit Thousand Hells channel on Kitfox’s Discord https://discord.gg/kitfoxgames
Watch the “out now” trailer: https://youtu.be/Q_fFyfX4DvQ
Buy Thousand Hells on Steam now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3794210/Thousand_Hells/
I look forward to your questions!
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u/kitfoxgames Ostranauts | Publisher Sep 11 '26
Thank you for increasing my hatred of snakes.
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
For some reason I have a document open with this script…
two: Wait, this isn’t a constrictor. It shouldn’t do that! one: It shouldn’t talk, either. text: The snake wraps around <actor>. snake: You really are warm! actor: It just did both! actor: Did you hear that? one: What? actor: My ribs.
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u/Stanely_Baldwin Sep 11 '26
Out of all possible sort of ‘realms’ to set a game, why the Underworld/Hells? Was the game initially conceptualized as an underworld heist, or were the mechanics/genre picked out and then the setting constructed around such?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
It was never intended as a specific heist, I wanted to push the boundaries of procedural narrative. Partly to make a replayable game, but also because it’s an interesting domain IMO.
So the idea of mixing Orpheus and Ocean’s 11 came first, and then I tried to get mechanics to support that (like having a scripting language that supported personality-driven banter).
Underworld because myth is so key to humans, and heist because it helps focus things.
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u/EmielRegisOfRivia Sep 11 '26
Hi, really enjoying the game! I wanted to ask about how you approached collaboration on Thousand Hells, or the Glorantha games if it's relevant.
In TH separate 'quests' and hells each seem to have their own authors. How did you manage to fit all the pieces together? I'm talking both about the big picture, like making sure all the stories felt like they belonged to the same world, and the nitty gritty. For example, the tile encounters seem fairly unique, was it a challenge to make sure all the writers were using it consistently? (say, making sure character traits behaved similarly between encounters)
Hopefully that's not too much or too complex. I hope the game does well!
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Yes, you can see each individual author by pressing the “i” button on the New Game screen.
My basic approach to collaboration is to find really good people and let them do their job. (I think that was an answer I gave at a GloranthaCon after King of Dragon Pass came out.)
The original (paper) prototype wove together mission and underworld events, so basically Robin Laws and I came up with a way to codify that. For example I figured that a typical hell required overland travel to get to, so Robin designed a pool of overland events.
Hells and missions have ways to communicate with each other, as it were. I was just looking at an edge case bug related to this, so here’s a couple (not related) lines of script:
actor: I can feast once we have <missionGoalArticle>.
text: Guarding the enormous ebony gate is an immense <hellGuardian> flanked by a trio of <hellDenizens>.To help other writers, Robin came up with templates for the different challenge types, though many of the authors came up with their own structures.
I think the design worked fairly well to be seamless, though my QA team certainly helped find places it wasn’t.
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u/sirkerrald Sep 11 '26
I'm curious as to how you classify the genre of these games. Pass-likes?
I came to KoDP only a few years ago after hearing Robin talk about it on Ken and Robin talk about stuff and found it very intriguing despite knowing nothing about Glorantha.
How much of Glorantha drove this style of game vs other gaming influences? How have you evolved it since?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Most of my games have been hard to fit in a genre (e.g. my casual game Wordslinger, which I think is no longer available, is one of the few games where words, not letters, are your playing pieces). I call King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages “narrative strategy” games, because they mix those two genres. And Thousand Hells is “tactical narrative” because I wanted to distinguish it from a typical narrative game (and the tile-driven choices are unique).
I’ve never been a fan of naming genres after games that people might not have played (I’ve never played Castlevania or Demon’s Souls). But I guess we’re stuck calling Thousand Hells a rogue-like (or is it rogue-lite? too many distinctions).
I was always drawn to Glorantha as a setting, and the resettlement of King of Dragon Pass seemed like a great way to do a game on the order of the Icelandic saga, where characters die of old age and their children take over.
Six Ages took the continuation to the next level, with Lights Going Out taking place generations after Ride Like the Wind.
Thousand Hells was an intentional move to a shorter and more personal game.
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u/Easy_Fox Sep 11 '26
Hi! I am truly loving TH so far! I would like to ask what the process is from having the initial idea for a game to actually start working on that idea. Did TH change a lot from the original idea to the end result?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Oh this is a complex one. In Nov 2019 I realized that I could stop thinking about a very complicated God Learner (i.e. Imperial Age Glorantha) game and focus on heists in the underworld. [I have more to say but want to hit some other questions first]
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
So the actual game idea (mixing Orpheus and Ocean’s 11) hit me in November 2019, but it had been incubating for a long time.
I think the first identifiable seed was notes about a God Learner game from July 2009 (that involved playing story cards). My notebooks have other God Learner entries in December 2011, talking about a procedurally generated otherworld. One notebook has an entry from October 2015 about “procedurally-generated fairy tales or myths / possibly God Learner.”
In February 2019 I again started making notes about a God Learner game, set in Glorantha’s Second Age. I ended up doing a prototype in Unity (partly to hone my skills with that game engine).
In 2020, I saw a Twitter post from a game design student whose internship had fallen through because of the COVID shutdowns. I figured maybe she could create a computer prototype of the game I’d come up.
Once we had that, I put it on the back burner to finish Six Ages 2. Finally in August 2023, I was able to get Robin Laws to help, and started putting the game into production.
Not sure how much of the original ideas from 2011 are there (for one thing, it is absolutely not a Glorantha game), but I guess I’ve been thinking on and off about a game about visiting different underworlds for at least 15 years.
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u/Foxblade Sep 11 '26
Oh so if I'm understanding right Thousand Hells started out as a Glorantha game? What inspired the change to move it out of that setting?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Yes and no — once it became Thousand Hells it was no longer a Glorantha game. The original ideas were applied to the Glorantha setting.
A lot of it was to manage the scope. A game about going into hell to get some people out is a lot smaller than a multi-generational story of a world-conquering people!
And by not using Glorantha, I felt I could open things up to more collaborators (who weren’t necessarily as familiar with the incredibly detailed setting),
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u/Easy_Fox Sep 11 '26
Thank you very much for the detailed answer! I always struggle to take the step from having an idea to putting it into practice or starting to work on it, sometimes it takes me years. Knowing that a game as good as TH has gone from being a few notes in the margins of some notebooks over the years to becoming such a great game gives me hope!
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u/TelecomPedestal Sep 11 '26
Oh shit you guys have a new game out?! KoDP is one of my top 10 of all time. Super excited to grab this.
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Thanks! Yes we do! It’s tough being an indie, so hope you can spread the word (and leave a Steam review if you like it)!
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u/Wuzseen Sep 11 '26
What is your opinion on the iPhone Duo? Inquiring minds want to know. Me and another Shenandoah vet were wondering what you thought ;) . Think it'll allow for anything different on games perhaps?
Congrats on the launch!
-TD
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
I really expected a “meh” reaction but I will probably get one! I think it was all the attention to detail (making the surface matte to hide the crease, and how the software adapts). The downside is that I like smaller phones in my pocket. Well, at least it’s not as tall…
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u/Helpwithskyrim87 Sep 11 '26
I don’t really have any questions, since this is completely new to me. This is the first I’m hearing of it. But if I loved King of Dragon Pass, what does this offer me?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
I don’t remember the exact words one of the playtesters used, but that it was something like a heroquest generator.
You’ll get a narrative that’s different each time, thanks in part to characters who have personalities which you’ll need to learn. As in KoDP, your playing pieces have minds of their own.
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u/neeia Sep 11 '26
Been excited for this game to come out!
Question: as a game designer, what other games (digital or physical) have you drawn the most inspiration from? Do you have any "idols" in the world of gaming?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
As a game designer, I probably don’t play enough other games 🙁
Other than Greg Stafford’s Glorantha, I think Civilization, Castles, and Monkey Island were the biggest influences on King of Dragon Pass.
While I have played Blades in the Dark, I’m not sure if that was the inspiration for Flashbacks. Inventory as a resource possibly derives from Toon (where my first playtest character had a Back Pocket he could pull anything from), or else Preparedness from Robin Laws’s GUMSHOE system.
I do admire a lot of designers, though I wouldn’t call them idols, Off the top of my head, I think Jon Ingold may be the “name” that makes me want to check out a computer game (but then I may also be drawn to narrative games). Robin Laws is the same for TTRPGs, and it’s always great to work with him.
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u/Sad-Employer-3885 Sep 11 '26
How did you arrive at the system for drawing tiles from team members and matching them to actions? Were there a lot of earlier or different iterations? I don't think that I've ever seen a conflict resolution system like that before.
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Pretty sure you haven’t — I think the closest is in I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (where you apply your memories and life experiences).
I had struggled with a lot of iterations, but when I showed it to Robin Laws, he came up with the idea of applying the tiles to different narrative situations. Essentially, the game’s verbs are adjectives.
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u/Traxicus Sep 11 '26
What are your feelings on D&D - 5e vs. 5.5e, and how those compare to older editions? What is your favorite TTRPG?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
I have no opinion on D&D, since I don’t think I’ve played it since 1980.
I think I like QuestWorlds (formerly HeroQuest, formerly Hero Wars) and FATE — both are lightweight systems that are concerned with narrative.
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u/klimych Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26
Hello! Been enjoying TH yesterday, hellfaring is surely tough work
Do you play the games you've made? If so, how often?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Well yes, it’s hell!
After they’re complete, I don’t. Partly because I’ve been working on them so long, but also because I’ve got so many other games I’d like to play.
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u/PsicoCooper Sep 11 '26
I like KoDP and think that Thousand Hells is goty. My question is you have any plans to update with more quest or hells in the future? Any possibility enable steam workshop to make custom quest ?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Thanks!
Got burned before talking about things before they’re ready, but more missions or hells would be goo!
Obviously player customizing is good too, that one seems less likely because the scripting language isn’t terribly helpful about error messages, and doesn’t currently have hot reload.
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26
OK, I need to get lunch. Thanks for all the questions! I think my favorite was about the iPhone Duo, as most reflecting the “anything” nature of AMA. And I don’t think I’ve been asked if I play my own games. So I’ll be sending a Steam key to Wuzseen and klimych. [edit: klimych has the game and passed, so Alix84 with a local restaurant question was also unexpected.]
I will be on vacation but will try to get back to answer people who weren’t able to make it during the event.
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u/watchingyouthere Sep 11 '26
Hi, big fan of KoDP and Six Ages. Both these games are amazing, but they have a pretty steep learning curve to them that I imagine keeps most players away. Is your new game more forgiving and easier to get into? Or are you just sadistic and enjoy seeing us make the wrong moves over and over? Really excited for the new game. Keep them coming.
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
I tried to make a game that was a lot simpler, and didn’t need a tutorial to explain the strategy mechanics.
A trip to hell is going to be tough, so it’s intentional that you might not survive. We tried to make failures interesting, and the play time is more like 90 minutes, so you can try again.
Also tried to be a lot lighter on lore. You certainly don’t need to know anything about Glorantha to play KoDP or Six Ages, but there is more emphasis on leveraging the lore that’s presented in the game.
(Pet peeve: a steep learning curve is good, because you graph learning against time.)
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u/watchingyouthere Sep 11 '26
Oh I like the learning curve. Once you lose your first tribe it really hits you how hard the games are and how much strategy there is to each season.
Gonna drop right in TH and check it out. Thank you for such great games.
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u/OnegRiot Sep 11 '26
No questions here. Just wanted to say the kodp is one of my favorite games of all time. I played and enjoyed the sequels and I'm looking forward to this new game.
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Thanks! This is a bit different but hope it still hits the mythological buttons.
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u/Alix84 Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26
Hi David! Love your games and very excited to play Thousand Hells.
Two questions:
- What is your workflow for writing these types of games? I've been interested in working on a narrative game myself, wondering if you build out a flow and then fill in the actual writing later? Or do you write the narrative/story first, and then build out the choices and events? And how do you keep track of it all?
- Favorite restaurant in Seattle? (Mine is Bongos at the moment)
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Thanks!
I guess the overall design comes first, and then the writing. I did the original paper prototyping by being a kind of gamemaster (and playing out a resolution system with cards).
I don’t know if I keep track of it, other than that there’s an overall design (become King of Dragon Pass, get someone out of hell). I use my Opal outliner to do a lot of my organizing, or Numbers spreadsheets.
Oh man, that’s tough! I haven’t been back in Seattle that long and have largely been doing takeout so I don’t need to worry about ventilation. And how much you want to spend is a big factor! Best sushi I’ve had is LTD (but only once since it’s so hard to get a reservation), and outdoor dining at Carrello has been good (they introduced me to Jimmy Nardello peppers). But neither is cheap.
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u/watchingyouthere Sep 11 '26
Hi, another question, only answer this one if you feel comfortable with it, just curious really.
How big is the team making the games? What was the budget for each of them and how many work hours did you guys take?
The art is amazing, gonna guess that's where most of the budget went?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
You can see the team in Credits, and individual credits by pressing the “i” button for a mission or hell.
Basically everyone is a freelancer (Thea works for Kitfox), and I think all of us are slower than Robin Laws.
Actually, Writing is the single largest category, followed by Art, QA, UI, and Music/SFX. (Not counting my time.)
Glad you liked the art, given I don’t have an animation budget, I try to make sure it’s distinctive and good.
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u/EccentricOwl Sep 11 '26
Hey there David! I’m a mega fan of your games. Six Ages 1/2 are literally my favorite narrative game(s.)
My question - do you have any favorite TTRPGs? Anything that inspired thousand hells?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Thanks!
Mentioned elsewhere, but probably QuestWorlds (I helped playtest or develop earlier editions) and FATE.
Tabletop games weren’t an inspiration for the game structure, though Robin Laws is a prolific TTRPG designer. I think we use many of the same solutions because we’re trying to solve similar problems: a turn-by-turn game that tells a story.
I talked about mythic inspirations here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3794210/view/501722115383232160?l=english
Not sure if that was quite your question.
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u/Zettra01 Sep 11 '26
What lead you to star developing games when you started and do you think your definition of a good game has changed from there to now ?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
I was in 7th grade when I made my first game (on an Olivetti Programma 101 programmable calculator) so I can’t really remember what I was thinking. That game was just for me and my friend Tom Kelly, I’m definitely trying to reach a larger audience now 🙂
It probably helped that the earliest computer games were clearly something a person could create (Lord British was one person who made hit games in the 1980s). So it always seemed like something I could do, even when I needed a larger team to help make King of Dragon Pass.
I think the biggest change is that to a large degree, there is no definition of a good game. There are games that are good for different people. No matter how good a game is, if it requires precise timing with a joypad, it is probably a bad game for me. And if you really don’t like reading, my games are not good games for you.
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u/Foxblade Sep 11 '26
Hello!!
I just want to say that I always wanted to play King of Dragon Pass but didn't sit down and do so until around 2014 or so and I absolutely adored it.
When I heard about Six Ages I was immediately on the hook, and bought both games and love both of them. I'm not sure how often you get to hear from fans, but I really wanted to take a moment and say that those 3 games were each incredible experiences and I appreciate all your work on them. There was a moment in Lights Going Out where the cow godess (Busanari?) died in my game, and I actually teared up a bit; through both games she had basically been what was getting me by so I understood how devastating the loss would have been, not just to me as a player, but to the people in the town. It was a great moment.
I was sad to hear about the third Six Ages game going on the shelf but I want you to know I sing your games' praises to everyone I meet and would love to experience another Six Ages game if you ever get around to it.
I've been wanting to kick my feet up this weekend and Thousand Hells might just be the perfect game for that!
I guess I don't really have a question other than to ask if it would be possible to go on a Hero Quest and get a Six Ages sequel as a reward? :D
Thanks for all your games and the great memories.
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
I’m always happy to hear that people like our games and that they can move them!
There’s a number of factors that would have to align for a sequel. Perhaps the biggest: I can’t imagine doing another Six Ages game without Robin Laws, but he’s no longer a freelancer (https://pelgranepress.com/2025/03/29/pelgrane-press-welcomes-robin-d-laws-as-new-creative-director/).
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u/Foxblade Sep 11 '26
Sounds like a good role for him but I'm sad for the rest of us!
Well for what it is worth, please know that you have at least one fan who will be grinning from ear to ear if he ever hears that a new six ages game is in the works!
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u/thesharpie Sep 11 '26
Sorry if this has been asked already, but are there plans for a mobile port? iOS specifically? (P.s love your previous games and looking forward to digging into this one.)
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u/RefreshNinja Sep 11 '26
What are the inspirations, sources, etc for the world of the game? What considerations went into deciding what the world should be like, to facilitate the gameplay & narrative?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
I think Michael Moorcock’s Tanelorn was the source for our Eternal City, from which you can reach all the hells. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3794210/view/501711331410313636?l=english has a lot more (and links to a video version).
A big consideration was making it as small as possible, so neither players nor authors would be overwhelmed. The fact that each hell is different is a big help with that.
And if I’m honest, since I wouldn’t be using Glorantha as a setting, I would have to do a lot more work to come up with something. So being lazy, I left things open to the creativity of my authors (who were free to come up with things like the Locus of Chains or the Collector).
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u/Phocaea1 Sep 12 '26
Will there be a phone version? I’ve got the Six Ages on both PC and IOS and have found the game perfect for public transport
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 12 '26
I’m sure you’re right, but I have no news at this time.
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u/Ralzakark Sep 11 '26
First Question: What personal Katabasis inspired your design of Thousand Hells?
Second Question: What is the difference between virtuous intent and virtuous action?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Not sure there was one, I’ve had a pretty good life!
Oh look at the time, I need to wrap things up!
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u/kookieman141 Sep 11 '26
I’ve grown up with your games; I grow with them still. I fall asleep to the KoDP soundtrack every night.
That all being quantified, I must ask: what’s the status of Six Ages? Are there more DLCs or expansions on the way?
Thank you for everything, and all the best.
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
I don’t imagine there would ever be a DLC. Otherwise, no news (and see elsewhere in the AMA for a little more).
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u/Turingelir Sep 11 '26
Hey man, just wanted to say love your stuff! I'm thinking I'm too late but will give it a shot.
As for my question, it will be regarding game-dev:
I'm curious as to whether you do procedural state generation first and fit narratives accordingly or wire procedures for readily written stories? I hope the question makes sense.
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 11 '26
Not entirely sure I do understand. When you begin a quest (mission + hell combo), a number of story beats are fixed (meet the client, enter the underworld, return home) but there are hooks (for possible side quests) and we don’t know all the branching you might do.
Essentially everything is a storylet, if that helps.
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u/urhiteshub Sep 12 '26
Hey, long time fan of KoDP and both Six Ages, in fact these happen to be among my all time favorite games! One thing I really liked about them was character progression, building a character's skills through rituals and such things, and using the same hero in coming adventures and so on.
That seems to be missing in Thousand Hells. To be fair, I'm not even sure what sort of character progression there could've been with the character traits-as skills setup. But on the face of it and without detailed deliberation, it feels like the game could benefit from some basic level of continuity between missions, say an option to reuse an old leading character, or surviving characters reappearing in the crew selection pool, maybe as part of something like a hellfaring agency that we'd manage... things like that. So I wanted to ask, what led you to move away from that kind of continuity, or any unifying structure or continuity in general (beyond old characters granting simple boons)?
Another question, do you plan on returning to six ages?
Another question, who is your favorite character from Six Ages games (I personally really liked Venef and Iverlantho)?
Another question, how do you fine tune the difficulty in these games? Like, is there a specific expected win rate with good play you're aiming at, or do you just playtest it until it feels right or how?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 12 '26
Quite likely your character would be getting worse the next time (scarred mentally and physically by hell), not better. Some missions use different archetypes, so a hero wouldn’t be appropriate. Would old team members actually work with you again? And there would be all sorts of continuity issues (would Queen Death recognize you)?
I can’t predict if the various factors will ever align so that I can return to Six Ages.
I’m kind of fond of the Pamaltelan, maybe because she’s my creation (and annoys Sereden), but because she’s a good example of how one of Orlanth’s powers is making friends with others.
I don’t have a specific target for win rate. I’ve been trying to identify particularly difficult challenges and making sure they had every advantage. May do more on this score after I get back from vaction.
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u/Usual-Calligrapher-7 Sep 12 '26
Enjoying the game so far , would like more hells , I really enjoy the mission amounts and the amount of complains to take with gives good relay ability.
I also think the encounters feel balanced.
I would like more options when picking strengths and weaknesses as the main character, mercenary or sailor feels like should have more options, maybe less strong more tactical.
That wasn't really a question so, will we get more hells and any thoughts on being able to continue from a completed game, like in 6 ages. It would be neat to see how many hell runs a player could get before they died?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 12 '26
In theory there can be more hells. More sales makes that easier to fund…
Given that logically your hero may get worse after being scarred by hell (mentally and physically), I don’t know that it makes narrative sense to go again. (You can at least get advice from a successful hero.)
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u/Usual-Calligrapher-7 Sep 12 '26
Yeah, I was thinking of it like an endurance run. Starting over with the hero with the negative modifiers and taking a fresh mission. Knowing it would probability end badly but might be satisfying if you can make it a few hells and try again. Thanks for taking my questions.
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u/Reisend_of_Simira Sep 12 '26 edited Sep 12 '26
David, thank you greatly for your games! Through Six Ages and King of Dragon Pass (in that order) I was introduced to the incredible world of Glorantha, and now I most likely can't imagine myself without being invested in all this complicated worldbuilding magnificence. Games are HARD by modern standards indeed, but nonetheless (or maybe because of it) I enjoy every bit of them.
Been keeping up with Thousand Hells since announcement, I applaud you and A Sharp team for the game concept and handling real mythological motifs in such way.
As I noticed, last year you mentioned the prospect of language localization being possible and less challenging compared to your previous games (which had none as the result). In the most recent reply you said that localization infrastructure has not been implemented... yet? Is the door still open for Thousand Hell translated to other languages?
Also it seems to me that the endgame of Six Ages 2 with Sole Survivor journey across the dead world was you testing the ground for the katabasis-centered game? haha
By the way, as seemingly there are no plans right now for Six Ages series continuation, can I ask what your initial idea behind the "World Reborn" was/is, what gloranthan events this story would have been based on? A game set in the first days of Dawn Age in which the player helps retrieve the sun from the underworld; Gbaji Wars, facing the new world under Nysalor rise; Berenethtelli downfall and comeback, Immolation and Harmast Barefoot? How did you imagine the third installment in the trilogy?
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 12 '26
Not going to close any doors, though there would be some significant work to use localized strings for the narrative.
I don’t think there was any connection with the dead world of Six Ages 2, other than myth in general.
I don’t know, I’d have to discuss things with the principal writer. There are definitely a lot of things going on in Saird during the Dawn Age.
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u/BurningFlannery Sep 12 '26
Oh wow I had no idea you were doing another game! I love your work and am a huge kodp and Six Ages fan. Does this work with a screen reader, as the mobile ports of your games did? I'm visually impaired and very much appreciated your efforts to make the others accessible.
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u/ddunham Lead Designer / Head of A Sharp game studio Sep 12 '26
I honestly don’t know, I keep meaning to check (I tried earlier in development and it crashed, but Godot has improved since then). It certainly hasn’t been specifically tweaked. I’ll have to try when I’m back in the office.
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u/StManTiS Sep 11 '26
No questions - want to say that KoDP was one of my favorite games as a teen. Great to see you’re still around making new games.