Highwater Interview – How Demagog Made The World Its Main Character

Igor Simic: In short, we’re exhausted. We’ve been working on Highwater and The Cub in parallel.

Igor Simic: Highwater was initially planned for PC. Then, while we were in between the demo and vertical slice phase, we were presented with the Netflix mobile deal.

Once the mobile version came out, there were some technical comments that were fixed in the first patch. Other than that, most of the improvements are bug fixes and the availability of DLCs upon launch.

Igor Simic: There was an event known as the Ecological Catastrophe, which created a flood zone around the high-tech, elite city of Alphaville. Nikos and his friends live in Hightower in the middle of the flooded region.

The elites of Alphaville are a week away from evacuating to Mars, and Nikos & Co. will venture on a precarious journey in his yellow boat to cross the walls of Alphaville and sneak into the Mars-bound rocket, which is reserved only for the select few.

Igor Simic: Well, it could be argued that we didn’t find the right balance. In general, the idea is that you traverse the world most via boat, going from one urban or natural island to the other.

Once on dry land, our group usually gets into trouble, which triggers turn-based combat. Around the island, there are items strewn around, some of which are useful for combat, and others are simply flavor items enriching the world-building.

Igor Simic: The radio exists throughout the world of our three games, Golf Club: Nostalgia and The Cub, so Highwater Pirate Radio is effectively the prequel radio. We didn’t have the time and budget to do complete voice acting.

A lot of the dialogue was edited very late in development, depending on tweaks we made in level design or combat. Also, Kentucky Route Zero was an inspiration for staging and minimalism, so we kept it simple.

Igor Simic: Elon Musk wants to live on Mars, so I just took that to an absurd conclusion juxtaposed with our own real-life experiences with floods in Serbia, Germany, and the US.

Also, in a strange way, Highwater is an immigrant story, only this time the group ends up on Mars. Studio Ghibli animated films were also an influence, with non-preachy ecological themes, where catastrophes are simultaneously horrific and beautiful.

In terms of the combination of road trip and turn-based combat, Overland was a helpful encouragement. Personally, I was a fan of Mutant Year Zero, which is obviously a much more complex, big-budget game, but we also had that in the back of our minds.

Alphaville is inspired by Godard’s sci-fi film by the same name. Central European brutalism is also a great inspiration, simply because it’s the environment in which we grew up.

Finally, Homer’s Odyssey and the Argonauts, but in a contemporary setting, were an inspiration for the road-movie by boat story.

Igor Simic: Certainly. The main character is the world. And not just in this game but throughout the trilogy with Golf Club: Nostalgia and The Cub.

Igor Simic: We had a game designer who had experience with turn-based. On a basic level, it’s the consequence of the talent we have in the team.

From a broader game direction perspective, we were searching for a combat system that fits a broken, urban world and the ragtag nature of our group of characters. This kind of gameplay fits the vision of the apocalyptic comedy. We have bigger plans for an AA game in this universe with real-time combat.

Igor Simic: Our turn-based system is basically puzzle-inspired, based on the use of environmental items precisely because the world is the main character.

The combat requires the full utilization of the setting with its ruins, broken-down cars, vending machines, oil barrels, and giant road signs, which all create a slapstick type of battle. Even the weapons you might find, such as a fishing rod, add to this vision.

Igor Simic: There are two endings to the game, depending on whether the time runs out before the rocket’s liftoff. Both endings are ambiguous and bittersweet, which is the general vibe of the game.

The main redeeming quality of both endings is the strength of the group’s friendship.