What is Songs of Conquest? An Interview with Lavapotion’s Niklas Borglund
There are always a few gems announced at E3 that fall by the wayside. With so many big, bright, beautiful AAA titles to distract us, it is often an ill-advised mistake to overlook what indie companies are putting out in the near future. At the PC Gaming Show we caught a short glimpse of one such game that sparked the hopes and imagination of countless strategy gamers as we were introduced to Lavapotion’s Songs of Conquest; a stunning homage to classic strategy titles like the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic franchise.
Met with a resoundingly invigorating soundtrack, the internet doesn’t quite seem to be giving this game the attention it deserves. We at COGconnected reached out to Swedish Indie developer Lavapotion to talk more about their premiere title and just what Songs of Conquest has in store for us, the nostalgic gamers who long for the golden days of turn-based strategy once again. I spoke with Niklas Borglund, co-founder of Lavapotion and lead programmer as well as Anders Gullmarsvik, the lead artist to get to know both the game and the studio:
COG: During the E3 reveal of Songs of Conquest at the PC Gaming Show the comparison between the game and the Heroes of Might and Magic series came up more than a few times, and this comparison persists on social media. While it was clearly stated the game was inspired by the classic adventure strategy games, would you say Heroes of Might and Magic was a major inspiration for the project? What other games influenced Songs of Conquest?
Lavapotion: Yes, the HoMM series is definitely a big source of inspiration for us, but also other games like Age of Wonders, Civilization, StarCraft and Total War. We play a lot of different games on the team, and we find new sources of inspiration all the time.
COG: This is Lavapotion’s first game and it looks to be quite the ambitious project with great production value. What made the team decide that this was the kind of game you wanted to make for your first title?
Lavapotion: It’s always been a dream project to make something like this for, I think, all of us. It was really no question about doing anything else when we started the studio.
COG: Where does the name Lavapotion come from? How did you come to settle on that?
Lavapotion: It originates from our CEO Magnus who had a god, I think, in the game Dominions 4 with the surname Lavabuckle. He pitched the name to us and Lavabuckle became Lavabucket which then transformed into Lavapotion.