Click to enlarge

Our CGA partner Stomped has recently spoken with HumanHead's Dale Halsted about his level designs for their Viking adventure game Rune. This is the first of four interviews Stomped will be publishing this week. The title is slated for a release later this Fall, and many are eyeing this 3rd person adventure/slasher with much anticipation. Here's a clip:

Stomped: What kinds of setting can the player expect to see and explore in the game?

Halsted: Major areas include the deep underworld, the land of the goblins, Hel’s domain, snowy mountains, the massive village fortress of Thorstadt, the land of the Dwarves, etc. We’ve been good about staying tight-lipped on the latter chunk of the game, and there are some great surprises there. What really impresses me is the sheer variety of these environments; everybody touts that as a feature these days, but our areas are all as distinct as the hands that made them, down to looks, creatures, and even game flow. You can walk around here from an office where one guy is making a dank, spooky and expansive goblin domain with Goblins hopping about their homes, and in the office next door someone’ll be working on a crazy red-glowing Hel-scape with hordes of zombies swarming Ragnar amidst pounding drums and blaring horns. Everyone’s going to have a definite favorite area of the game, and I bet people’s preferences will vary a good bit as each section really is so individual; we mappers had an incredible amount of freedom in our designs and visuals.

Stomped Q&A with Dave Halsted

Rune Web Site

Gathering of Developers (add to watch list)

Human Head Studios (add to watch list)

Westlake Interactive (add to watch list)

Rune (add to watch list)

Search for other Mac games news stories or browse our Mac Games News Archive.