Folkways DLC for the excellent village builder dotAGE released - here's a little interview with the developer

dotAGE is a very unique turn-based village builder that blends in roguelike survival elements. It's one that you should definitely add to your list, and a new DLC expansion is out now so I took the chance to speak to the developer a bit.

It has Native Linux support and is Steam Deck Verified too!

Firstly, check out the original trailer to get a feel for it if you missed it previously:

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The new DLC, Folkways, adds a whole lot more content into the game. Including Pipfolks that live outside your village, and give you a chance to get them to join you. They bring with them unique bonuses special food and promotion requirements, dedicated events, and dedicated buildings for dwelling and for production and much more.

And now for the chat with the developer…

Q: Can you introduce yourself, and tell us how you got into game development?

Hello! I'm Michele, indie dev from Bergamo, Italy. 38 years old, been gaming for 35 years straight. I am an automation engineer and hold a PhD in computer science from the Polytechnic of Milan, where I graduated with a thesis on serious games for physical rehabilitation of elderly patients. I've been working as a freelance game developer for ten years since then for various companies, especially focusing on gameplay and systems design and programming. In the meantime, I kept following my dream of making my own game in the little spare time I had, and after 9 years, dotAGE was released to popular acclaim in 2023 which allowed me to transition to being a full time indie dev!

Q: Tell us a little about dotAGE and the new DLC?

dotAGE is the merciless turn-based worker-placement roguelike survival village builder (wow) where you play as the prophetic elder of a village that fights against the apocalypse! It is a mix of genres with base mechanics heavily inspired by board games like Agricola and Stone Age, but paired with the progression and tension of roguelikes and ironmode XCOM (I like contrast, what can I say). The new DLC Folkways expands the world of dotAGE with plenty of wacky ideas and is fueled by the love of dotAGE's fans and geared towards them! It increases complexity and variation in the game, making it bigger, larger, more varied, and wackier! It adds dryads, prisons, fish-pips, playable cats, 3 new elders, dwarves eating stone, you can eat cats, you can eat manure, and much more.

Q: How did you come up for the idea of dotAGE?

I had been wanting to make a game like The Settlers for a while, making various (bad) prototypes at the beginning of my career. They were really ugly games, and had nothing new, so I realized it made little sense to continue them. One day, in 2014, I played FTL, and it blew my mind. I realized you could apply the same feeling of a roguelike to any genre in that specific moment, and quickly I decided I would try to apply it to one of the genres that usually had not roguelike elements in them (yes, that was not a great idea).

After 9 years of bashing my head against that idea and cursing, dotAGE was ready!

Q: What are you most proud of with dotAGE?

I set out, alone, with the vision to make the tension of a traditional roguelike with its risk of loss paired with the tranquility and relaxing gameplay of board games, and I am very proud to have achieved that very complex mix! As a systems designer, I am fascinated with the emergent dynamics from game elements, and dotAGE is full of carefully designed interactions to reinforce that basic contrast. That is what I am most proud of!

Q: Now dotAGE has been out for over a year, how has the reception been? Were the sales about what you expected?

It has been stellar, and way above what I could dream of. I had no big aims for sales, as I just wanted to make the game, but after so many years of working on it I *had* to try and market it, I owed it to myself and the game itself. So I made sure to make a big launch without a publisher (marketing is an interesting area too!), and much to my surprise it worked! Sales have been above any expectation I had and it has allowed me to focus more on the game, and finally add all the weird ideas I had saved up in labeled files named "keep_this_for_the_dlc_or_you_will_never_finish_the_game.txt" and variations of that.

Q: The game has Native Linux support and is Steam Deck Verified. How difficult was it to support Linux and get it Steam Deck Verified too? Any top tips?

Thanks to the Unity engine, I must say that Native Linux support has been easy to achieve, as by focusing on general optimizations the benefits were felt by all. This was true also for Steam Deck, as I had to optimize a bit for it (the ugly code I had, and still have, after 9 years of iteration!), and especially add controller support, but I think it was a good thing to do as the game plays great on it! Getting verified was not too hard once I asked kindly Valve to take a look at it, and they answered quickly (they do have great developer support). My advice is to keep controller support in mind from the beginning, as that can help in transitioning to it!

Q: Any other general advice for developers releasing their first game?

Please do not take 9 years to make your first game, as I was lucky this time around. My project is a mess, and I would redo almost everything differently with the knowledge I have now! The most important thing that I realized is that if you take so much to make it, *you will feel you will never finish the game*, because while working on it you will become a better game developer and what you did 2 years before will look *bad* to you and you will want to redo it.

Q: Any thoughts on what game you'll make next? What's next for you?

Now that I released the DLC, I will monitor how dotAGE's trajectory changes and decide what to do next! I still have plenty of stuff I'd like to do with dotAGE, but I also am eager to start prototyping something new, as while making dotAGE I saved up dozens of ideas of stuff to do next and can't wait to have a fresh start! Surely, next for me is more game dev!

Big thank you to Michele for taking time to speak to me.