Joe Jasko

Some might say that strategy games are a dime a dozen on the App Store these days. But when we get right down to the heart of the matter, a full-fledged strategy experience with expressive graphics and fulfilling gameplay to match is a much rarer thing to find: which is where Lords of Discord by Herocraft comes in, an upcoming strategy game that features Humans and Demons both vying for control of a rich fantasy world. I recently had a chance to speak with Andreev Alexander of Herocraft, who also served as the team lead on Lords of Discord, to find out a bit more about what inspired this exciting new addition to the strategy genre, as well as what gamers can expect to find once the title launches next year on a variety of platforms.Alexander and the team at Herocraft are certainly no strangers to the world of making strategy games, as their past roster of titles includes the well-received Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim and Majesty: The Northern Expansion. However, the folks at Herocraft felt that the strategy genre as a whole was not being fully represented in all of the various mobile app stores that are available today, and so they sought to make a game that would help to fill that void, inspired by the likes of old-school turn-based strategy games like Kings Bounty and Heroes of Might & Magic 3. After their prior work on the Majesty series, Alexander and company have learned a lot about the proper ways in which to make a successful strategy game for the mobile market today in 2013, explaining "we must pay attention to the evolution of mobile devices and choose a strategy accordingly that will make the game realistic and graphically up-to-date at the time of release."Lords of Discord features a single storyline that interweaves events from two different complementary campaigns: the Humans and the Demons. However, it is only through playing as both separate factions that players will ultimately be able to realize the broader scope of the game's storyline and background lore. Alexander tells me, "Whichever race you play as first, we hope, that you'll be keen to dive into the other one; you'll be solving problems created by your success [and] goals from the first campaign." The game will initially launch with the campaign for the Human race, while the Demon campaign will be coming a little bit later on in the first free title update. As far as future updates down the road are concerned, Alexander and the team are already in the planning stages for adding new races such as Dwarves, the Undead, and Elves, in addition to entirely new campaigns as well.