Fanafzar Game Studios Interview

Kratos may have violently owned the crap out of Greek mythology but all said and done he was a fictitious character developed by the twisted minds at Sony’s Santa Monica studio.

Now Garshasp, on the other hand, is someone whose origins stem from Iranian mythology but that does not stop him from kicking a serious amount of demon butt. We catch up with the game’s developer, Fanafzar Studios who give us the lowdown on their most ambitious effort till date.

How was Garshasp born? Is he loosely based on someone out of Iranian mythology?

Garshasp is one of the main super heroes of Persian Mythology and stories of Garshasp can be found both in ancient texts like Avesta and also a book of Poems written by Asadi Tusi about a thousand years ago.

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Fanafzar’s inspiration(s)

Do you think Garshasp will be to Iranian mythology what Kratos is to Greek mythology?

Kratos himself does not belong to the Greek mythology and is a made up character. However Garshasp has roots in mythology and ancient stories and the story of Garshasp in our game is also based on one of the stories of Garshasp in the ancient book, Avesta.

What games have served as inspirations for this project? Would you take offense in being called a God of War clone?

The God of War and Prince of Persia series have been the sources for inspiration for our game. We believe God of War is one of the best games in the world and for the first game of a small studio like ours, we really do not get offended to hear our game is a God of War clone. This is our first step and we hope to be able to achieve originality in the near future.

Some one call the fashion police

Is Gharshasp a linear game or does it have quasi RPG roots? Would it allow players to deviate from the main story to indulge in side quests?

Garshasp is mostly linear and other than simple upgrades for the weapons and new weapons which he finds along the way, there are not any major RPG elements to the game. The story is also linear and there aren’t any side quests.
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How action oriented is the game? Will there be a lot of platforming involved?

The action of the game is mostly geared towards combat, the second element of this action is platforming. We could say 70 percent combat and 30 percent platforming.

How long would it take someone to finish the campaign?

The game can be finished in about 5 hours.

What sort of technology is being used for this game? How long has the game been in development for?

The game engine has been developed for this game in our own studio. However there are some other components that we use in this engine. We use OGRE3D as the graphics engine. OGRE is a great open source project. We use Nvidia PhysX for physical simulations. OpenAL for handling sound.

ParticleUniverse for modeling the particles in the game, this is another open source project. Hikari, open source side project of OGRE, for rendering Flash based Uis in the game. We have worked on this game for about 2 years.

Do you plan on releasing the game on other platforms like consoles or even mobile platforms?

We would love to be able to port this game for the consoles. Our problem is that since we are based in Iran, we do not have access to the Dev Kits required for console development due to the sanctions imposed from the US on Iran. Technically we would like to port the game but officially we are not allowed to.

Never ending journey

Have you found a publisher for the game yet? If so do you plan on distributing the game outside Iran?

We will finalize our negotiations with publishers soon and yes we are hoping to see this game distributed outside of Iran.

What’s next on the cards for Fanazfar studios?

We have already started working on our next title and we need to continue learning, trying, collaborating and loving in order to be able to deliver better games from the east.

_Looks like Garshasp will have his hands full
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Thank you for your time.

Thank you for this interview. We feel that the Iranian culture has many shared roots with the great Indian culture and it is our great pleasure to be in touch more with our Indian brothers, we hope they find Garshasp interesting.