The deadline for votes draws close! So we're picking up the pace. This time we are featuring VICTUS VINCIMUS - Veteran's Revenge, a Virtual Reality game with a different take on the apocalypse where the warriors of past wars come back to life to fight a system of corrupt states and global warfare. We talked to Natural Record Studios to learn more about their ambitious project.

The guys at Natural Records Studio have an ambitious vision: Creating an intriguing VR experience that creates immersion through impressive cinematics and an equally immersive score. Virtual Reality is a new territory, a Wild West where developers can lay their claim and try something new in a very immersive medium. Victus Vincimus tells a tale of a different apocalypse with hyper realistic visuals and emotional audio components provided by Beats of Hell. Let's hear how the guys at Natural Records Studio describe their project in their own words:

VICTUS VINCIMUS Veteran's Revenge is an apocalypse based on the warriors of the past World Wars, coming back from their graves disappointed with how the world they lost so much for has become. They wage a different fight against the present world dominant forces and corrupt manipulators. The XBOX ONE, SONY PS4, VIRTUAL REALITY GAME is named after the screenplay written by The Hawk - the founder of Natural Records Studios - and features all the characters of the original screenplay.  

What are the unique gameplay elements of your game? Your description on the Indie Dev Fund page describes it both as an experience, a game and a movie. So what can we expect when entering this world?

Arguably, the most exciting feature of “Victus Vincimus - Veteran Revenge the Game” is the director's cut camera. The realism of the setting is paramount for our purpose. People have to feel immersed in this world and the only way to achieve this is through realism. The Game also should be multi genre as the original story itself, VV is an inter planetary, time machine and international tale. Based on certain realities and fears of today, it is part of “BEATS OF HELL Tales”, hence the name as it means Pulse of Pain/Life In Pain etc. Predominantly today’s reality is that there are many scientifically aspects making our life easier, but many chose to deny how science has also dominated our life and changed it quite a bit for better or for worse. While enjoying all the perks it brings, behold science incredible evolution for the last 60 years and its secrets! 

For many military service members, returning home and transitioning into civilian life can be challenging. If they lay down their weapons and leave parts of themselves on the battlefield, every American has an obligation to make sure when they (veterans) come home, they don't struggle. The neglect of veterans has a long history, homelessness, PTSD, limited healthcare - only a few of the neglects inflicted to veterans today! The greatest pain of them all is on their loved ones, the eventuality they may never see their families again is a daily lingering pain that could last a lifetime. These are topics Victus Vincimus is dealing with.

We haven’t seen any video material of your character models, yet, but you mentioned that high quality character art is very important in the game. Who are these characters and how exactly do you plan on bringing them to life?

All our 3D Modeling is done in-house. We are using mocap and high quality CGI Graphics, yes it is important as we want to achieve the human intteraction in VR! The Game consists of many characters Antagonist and Protagonist; Ivory Johnson, Bernice Dumas, John McAlister, and even Jack The Ripper among them. The characters in VV are unforgettable, we want the gamer to truly feel the human intteraction in the different VR worlds or levels of VICTUS VINCIMUS, our actors voices are very special, i.e. Jack the Ripper’s voice is done by a voice actor with striking similarity to Allan Rickman.       

You mention VICTUS VINCIMUS – VETERAN’S REVENGE is based on a book. Can you elaborate on this source and why you picked it?

Yes it was written by the Founder of Natural Record Studios “The Hawk”, we have created a project called Books 2 Movies  in order to repeat the same for other authors and story makers. We feel the gaming world needs innovation. The market as it is now is stuck on the old and there is not a serious evolution on the market. We want to combine media of all kind to one big experience to create new sensations.

Your trailer is an intriguing mix of environmental shots and music. You mentioned a close collaboration with BEATS OF HELL and that the score for the game is part of the experience. Can you elaborate on that and tell us a little about this collaboration?

BEATS OF HELL was created by “The Hawk” as well; a composer and musician, every song is composed, written and produced by him. Music is of key importance in our production, we are proud to call our entire production “Nu-Musical”, BEATS OF HELL is where the stories originates from since all his songs comes with a story!  Here's an example fresh from Beats of Hell's Soundcloud portfolio:

  Drones Over New York Theme Song   

Most of the songs are rehearsal mode not produced yet, hence these are not the finish versions. The album consist of 9 TRACKS written, performed and composed by “The Hawk” and his Band.

Let’s talk about VR a bit. According to your page, you are aiming to release for Windows 10 & XboXOne. How does that work out with the VR experience you have planned? How important is VR for the experience of your game.

The game is on PS4, XBOX1 and the A.I is produced in partnership with Nvidia Deep Learning. The Virtual Reality part is also produced in collaboration with NVIDIA. VR is a must, VR needs to be taken seriously, development should be conducted solely for VR and its special requirements, because otherwise you just port a standard game and miss out on some cool features. If we don't start developing for VR now, it will suffer a quick death as it did in the 90’s . Our main focus when developing for a Virtual Reality experience is immersion. As we also have time travelling elements in VV, here's an example of what we're aiming for when designing our cinematic experience & environments.

At Crytek, we have lots of experience with VR titles and CRYENGINE has many great features to use when developing for VR. Still, this technology is new and developers face many issues and as many opportunities diving into it, early. How are you tackling this when developing your game and how do CRYENGINE features help?

We are proud we were accepted in the NVIDIA Deep Learning & VR program. We are working very closely with NVIDIA to bring in the best VR/Interactive Movie/Deep Learning experience. CRYENGINE A.I is the best in all engines, so we feel it will greatly empower our Deep Learning Dev like no other! We wish to work even closer with Crytek, but we do not currently hold a subscription. We still belief that CRYENGINE is the best choice for our project as we appreciate the many benefits of the engine - especially in relation to the game AI - they are helping us to achieve the best outcome for our vision. Right now the frame rate on our development version is at 100+ with maximum performance which is key to a good VR experience.

Mind telling us a little bit about yourself and your Team? Who are the people behind VICTUS VINCIMUS – Veteran's Revenge? Where are you from? How many people are working at the project at the moment?

Sure, we are proud to have many talented people on the team. In CGI Animation for our productions, we have our young and creative VFX/CGI Director Toussaint Louverture H Gouthier a 15 year old relentless prodigy and self‐motivated professional with passion for the new and different. Toussaint is the game's head dev, CGI designer, 3D Character creator, Sound Designer and Music Co-Producer. Toussaint is the overall designer of Victus Vincimus on CRYENGINE. Aforementioned 'The Hawk' is Founder, Art Director, Music Composer and Screenplay writer and we have nine other talented people on board; artists, animators web development and deep learning programmer.

If you win the grant in the Indie Development Fund, what will you do with the additional funding?

We need a larger studio space due to our need for filming, production, music and team growth. Also we would like to invest more into mocap technology. Our voice actors should receive a fair share of the grant, too. They are doing a fantastic job as mentioned earlier. On the long run, we also want to invest into marketing efforts. Too many games do not keep their promises, our message is “What you see is what you get”. Trade shows are a big part of that. We want people to be able to experience our product hands on as much as possible. Our connection to our fans is important to us, so we want to invest into solid customer service experience as well once everything is up and going.

Let’s say I’m totally hooked up now – where can I go to learn more about your project? How can I support it? What’s planned in the near future?

Our website is a good place to start of course! We will launch a crowd funding soon, so the site is going through a re-design phase at the moment. We also want to provide a demo, soon. 

Thanks for the interview guys and best of luck with your projects!

- Nic