Farming Sim Anti Mainstream, Potion Permit Interview with Dev. Local Massive Media

The Indonesian game industry is now in a position to be proud of. If a decade ago many local game companies focused more on online game publishers, now the scenario has been shifted by the emergence of local developers with a myriad of promising new original works. In addition to several titles that we discussed in previous interview articles such as Escape From Naraka or A Space for the Unbound, another interesting game that we finally managed to learn more about was Potion Permit.

Developed as a new game from Massive Media, Potion Permit is an RPG game that also combines elements of life simulation. With pixel art graphics that look very expressive, it also makes this game look even more charming. Because of its unique concept as a Farming Simulation game combined with RPG and a little spice of the Alchemy system, our curiosity automatically increased too.

In order to answer this curiosity and at the same time gain deeper insight into the game, recently we conducted an interview session with local developer Massive Media. In the interview that we submitted via email, the developer has provided many interesting details, some of which are the gameplay concept and what unique elements they are trying to offer in the Potion Permit.

GamerWK: As a game that is still categorized in Farming Sim, will players be given? a kind of land of their own to take care of or do players’ activities require them to adventure in the wild?

Massive: In Potion Permit, players don’t grow their own crops but go on adventures in the wild to find raw materials from both wild animals and plants to make medicine.

GamerWK: The premise that the game offers is quite interesting for us, because it is explained that residents Moonbury can get sick and then have to be treated by players. Is it sick? this includes all NPCs, from service providers to pets too?

Massive: Almost all the characters in the city of Moonbury can get sick at any time except for pets (there will be a cat character in the game later). Their disease can appear at any time like humans in general even though they have been cured.

GamerWK: How often do residents get sick? and is there a time limit until the condition can they be severe or the consequences leading to loss of life?

Massive: We made the interval of the population who could be affected by the disease not too much considering that we wanted to make the game tend to be relaxing and cozy. But it all depends on the player’s own style of play where if they ignore the health of the residents in the city, there is a possibility that they will be quite bothered by the number of sick people that the player has not healed. Each sick character has a duration of time to heal before the disease gets worse, but will not cause death. When the time limit runs out, their illness will be handled by another party and the player’s reputation as a chemist will be shaken during the game because of this.

GamerWK: What do you feel is the main strength or special element that sets Potion Permit . apart? with similar games on the market?

Massive: The simulation games that we offer do coincide with quite strong competitors, like some simulation games and similar farming sims, but the themes we offer are quite different. Because the premise of our game is a simulation game as a chemist, we can say that we will not go head-to-head directly with several related similar products. And mechanically, the sick person feature that affects the entire population in the city is also one of the mainstays of the Potion Permit.

GamerWK: How the development team designed the gameplay to ensure that players don’t rush bored?

Massive: One of the factors that will make players not get bored quickly is the story inside

game is to heal the major child in the city of Moonbury so that players will automatically

slowly getting a good progression from the story as well as the game on a regular basis. Like a game

sims in general, the features in the game are also equipped to keep players full

with their daily activities.

GamerWK: The art style approach with pixel graphics in this game looks really charming, especially from The animation looks smooth. For this one technical aspect, is the development team really? pay extra attention? and are there any challenges to be faced during the process the refinement?

Massive: Quite a lot of challenges that we feel seeing this our second pixel art based game (after Chill Out! Zombies on IOS first). We did a lot of research in the early pre-production of the game, both in terms of gameplay, marketing strategy, and visuals. The challenge and the most interesting thing that we encounter is to match our different colors and tastes into one common direction so that all the elements in the game are in harmony.

GamerWK: We also see that players will be accompanied by a loyal pet dog. Approximately how important is their role in helping the player’s work? and can they be trained to do so do more tasks for example?

Massive: Players can make friends with their pet dogs and they can be quite helpful for players later. Because the Potion Permit game is practically a semi-open world, where there is no roaming between maps (except when the player enters the house), the map in the game is quite large and our dogs can help us find the character we want to go to by sniff their scent. In addition, our dogs can help us find materials that cannot be obtained by digging them from the ground like hunting dogs in general.

GamerWK: How deep does the RPG gameplay approach offer? especially in the Character Progression is good when exploring and fighting monsters

Massive: We want to focus on the cozyness that the game offers and for that we don’t enrich the RPG elements that are too thick. However, there will be power-ups such as upgrading tools/stamina/health that players can do to make the game easier when fighting with wild animals. But if some players feel they don’t really need it because they can make game progress seeing the playing technique is quite good, maybe they can ignore the power-ups option.

GamerWK: It’s also quite encouraging to know that players can build deeper relationships with residents to get married too? Speaking of marriage, what are the bachelor’s options? and bachelorette divided equally? and is there some kind of “unusual” or special NPC we can marry?

Massive: Unfortunately there is no option to get married in this game, but we can only invite characters who are already familiar with us to go on a date. It is possible for us to increase the number of bachelors/bachelorettes to date in the future but currently we are making the same number of bachelors/bachelorettes. When asking a character out on a date, we can choose an available location in the city of Moonbury.

GamerWK: Is there a message for GamerWK readers as well as players looking forward to the game?

Massive: Please support everyone who has heard of our games before or has played our previous games. We will try our best to make the best products for all of you while making Indonesia proud, of course, in the field that we are currently in.

Potion Permit itself is planned to be released this year for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam.

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Permit Potion

Publisher: PQube

Developer: Massive Media

TB release date

Console, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox One

GT Games