We're happy and honored to have the opportunity to talk with Youzu Singapore's Producer Daniel about their hit new game, Infinity Kingdom.

1. What was the inspiration behind Infinity Kingdom, and what drove your team to create the
Game?

Producer Daniel: We want to create a product where global players can come together to cooperate and compete with each other, generating more interaction and emotional links. The materials were selected with reference to the elements of magic and alchemy, and by building a parallel world that can travel through time and space, it brings together world-famous Immortals.

In IK’s world, both players from the West and from the East will be able to find their favorite and familiar historical figures to be summoned to the present world as Immortals to defend against the invasion of evil forces.

2. The real-time strategy genre is densely crowded. What do you think makes Infinity Kingdom stand out from the rest of its peers?

Producer Daniel: In terms of gameplay design, the biggest difference between IK and other similar products comes from the three-kingdoms setting at the beginning of the game, where players from all over the world need to join one of the three kingdoms and fight for its honor and territory.

So, even if they come from different countries, players from the same faction have to cooperate and work together to defend against invasion and confrontation from players from other factions. IK aspires to create a high-quality 3D product, with more emphasis on the vividness of graphic expressions. We put great effort and attention into the display of each character’s movements, down to the facial expressions and eyes of each character, which will take several iterations and polish.

3. What were the most challenging issues you faced during development?

Producer Daniel: Without a doubt, the biggest challenge was the tremendous amount of work. Because IK is a fully 3D crafted game, many next-gen 3D technologies were used in the production, which inevitably required more time investment. During this process, our team also experienced growth. Especially in the early days, the lack of staff limited our development speed to a great extent.

But in the end, we were able to withstand the pressure from all sides and present the work in front of everyone with results that exceeded expectations. Of course, this is not all, our team will continue to improve and update this product, and strive for more outstanding performance and better game experience.

4. Infinity Kingdom has outstanding visuals and voice acting. How vital was good localization to the team?

Producer Daniel: It's very important. I think the most important thing in localization is to get involved in the product development process as early as possible, rather than waiting for the product to take shape. In that case, it would only be a superficial translation rather than the localization we expect. Because I believe localization must respect different players' cultural backgrounds and language habits.

So, this led us to consult a lot of historical resources and conduct various user interviews during the early stage of development when we were doing basic work such as world-view setting and character setting, in order to determine the understanding of design by users in different cultural regions. In the process of game content localization, it needs to pay more attention to the expression of the game language in a specific language to ensure that the game content can be delivered to players in a friendly way using authentic language.

5.What was the inspiration behind Infinity Kingdom’s art style?

Producer Daniel: Based on our original intention of serving global players, we chose the "American cartoon" art style in the early stage of development, hoping that this art style would be more acceptable to more players.

After aiming at the direction of "American cartoon", our art team studied Disney, Supercell and other excellent film, television works and game products, and got a lot of inspiration from them. Then we combined with IK's worldview setting, shaping a vivid image, witty and humorous "historical characters". At the same time, in order to make the whole game world more full, we put in all our strength and spared no effort for it.

6.What drove you to pick the heroes/immortals that are in the game?

Producer Daniel: I think these historical or legendary characters are spiritual symbols of each region and civilization. They are symbols of cultural heritage and have wide popularity and identity. We hope that players from all regions will get to know more historical or legendary characters and learn about the culture and history of different civilizations by collecting the Immortals during the game.

7.What are some of your plans for the game? Do you plan to add more heroes and content?

Producer Daniel: In the future, we will add new gameplay mechanics, such as cross-services battles between kingdoms (GVG) and kingdom battles between servers (KVK), which I believe will be very exciting.

Of course, more Immortals are in the making, and they will all meet with you in the near future. Immortal-related gameplay will also be expanded, and Immortals matching strategies will also be more abundant. I hope all Lords can support us with all your efforts!

8.What do you think is the most crucial element of a well-made real-time strategy game?

Producer Daniel: Since it's called a real-time strategy game, I think the key element is how to create more strategic fun in the gameplay and functional system, so as to generate more interaction and conversation. But at the same time, we need to be careful not to "push too hard", the excessive pursuit of strategy will make the game difficult to understand and not let more players participate in the game.

9.How do you think will mobile real-time strategy games evolve in the future?

Producer Daniel: In the past, strategy games tended to focus on higher levels such as contention mechanics and rule settings, making the game more and more complex and difficult to get started.

I think the future game should be more simple and easy to play, and the gameplay should emphasize more on the cooperation and interaction between players, full participation. The games should not be a difficult thing, just a few people play and most people only watch the screen. The games can give more people a chance for them to participate in the core content. Of course, the richer content, story and fleshed out character settings will also attract more players with different gaming backgrounds and preferences.

If you're interested to know more about this outstanding new RTS, check out our Infinity Kingdom review.