Indie studio Level Up Games releasedDefender’s Questback in 2012—an unassuming game that would go on to achieve cult classic status among tower defense fans. Over a decade later,Defender’s Quest 2: Mists of Ruinis picking up where its predecessor left off, expanding its gameplay and narrative while maintaining a consistent spirit, charm, and prioritization of strong, character-first storytelling.
Defender’s Quest 2’s narrative is penned by Xalavier Nelson Jr., head of the Strange Scaffold development label and the director of critically acclaimed projects likeEl Paso, Elsewhere. Game Rant recently sat down with Nelson to discuss what players can expect fromDefender’s Quest 2, what makes its story tick, and how it leverages passion and creative freedom to stand apart from eventhe best tower defense gameson the market.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Defender’s Quest 2: Collaboration and the Benefits of Non-Traditional Storytelling
Q: You’ve worked on games likeHypnospace OutlawandLife Eater, which both have very unique styles of narrative delivery. What draws you to these sorts of projects?
Nelson:It really comes from my background being a journalist as well as a narrative designer before working in a directorial role. I know how much of an impact the color of your health bar changing or the pace of your character’s walking can have on your overall experience.
Some of the greatest moments that I’ve experienced in games have not been expensive. They have been quiet, they have been holistic, and they’ve been meaningful, so I’ve attempted to focus on these areas as much as possible in my career. What does this mechanic say about the wider world? What does this character’s outfit say about who they are? How can every member of this team have the ability to contribute something that isn’t just an asset but is actually telling a piece of the wider story for the player? That’s what makes me feel like I’m doing good things, and it’s been really validating to see so many people respond to that work.
I think one of the things that Strange Scaffold does and one of the things I was really thankful to do as part of theDefender’s Quest 2crew is look at howeverything in a game is a story. That’s how we are different from films. That’s how we are different from music. We have the privilege and the pain of literally every artistic medium potentially being caught up in what we do.
Q: How is working on something likeDefender’s Quest 2different from working on your own projects through Strange Scaffold? Do you feel like you have more restrictions, or are you more free to explore different narrative avenues?
Nelson:These days, I do as much work outside my studio as I do inside of it, and that’s been the case since Strange Scaffold started. I feel like one of the weaknesses we run into in games is that people tend to make one game for five years. And then that is the only experience they’ve had of how you make games and the lessons you learn, and then they take their next journey onboard. So, it’s no wonder development teams get blindsided so regularly, working in that kind of environment.
Because if you compare it to film, to music, to anyone else working in any other medium, so many other people get the chance to learn lessons in a far less risky and single-minded environment. At this point, I have worked on nearly 100 video games. That’s been indie to AAA. Some of it has been tabletop RPGs, and some of it has been card games. I believe those give me much stronger experiences as a storyteller and as a game developer to find ways toreach players through unique methods per video game. Every game is different and should have a slightly different take on how they bring that to life.
In the case ofDefender’s Quest 2, I was really thankful for the privilege to not just be brought in as a hired gun, but as an active collaborator. I was brought in for a game that had been in development for ten years, and they let me start from the ground up and ask really fundamental questions, like is this the best version of the story that we can tell? So I will forever be grateful to Lars, Patrick, and Anthony, and the entire crew for their openness to that collaboration and how much I got to have a voice and discover an entirely new way of doing things.
Q: You’re taking over for James Cavin, the writer of the firstDefender’s Quest. How much of the original game’s DNA is in this sequel?
Nelson:I think the really important thing is that we’ve really had a team that has, despite over a decade of game development, managed to maintain a philosophy and understanding of what the original game was doing. I think it’s a long collective team memory. Several people who worked on this game, including myself, were fans of the original game. We respected what the original was doing, so we did not see this as an opportunity to change whatDefender’s Questmeant, but to discover what else its core principles could be. Soreally strong, empathetic storytellingin a pulpy genre space, really satisfying tower defense gameplay, and characters that meaningfully evolve and change how you confront levels over time were all important areas of focus.
I think the shared DNA is really strong which, given how widely it departs in so many other areas like aesthetic, I think is really impressive. Again, it speaks to a team that just survived long enough to remember why people came to the game in the first place.
Q: Did you come on to the team after the game’s core ideas had already been conceptualized?
Nelson:I had the ability to shake up some things, especially as we, for instance, established who the core characters would be and the form that they would take; several characters were developed after I came on board.
But it was really important to me that a lot of James' original ideas about the series were retained. SWhen I came in through the door, they told me, “Hey, we want tomix 70s psychedelic sci-fiwith acid punk, tech-girl, Gorillaz art.” And I was like, “Cool, sounds awesome. There’s definitely a lot of precedent there.” [laughs]
Yeah, James had a wild vision of what this game could look like. When I came in, my intention was not to replace anything. Rather, it was to say, “OK, how do we ship this?” And we did a lot of problem-solving, sometimes on the fly, to bring this to life. But I hope at the end of the day, what people see is a gooey science fantasy adventure, unlike anything they’ve quite seen before. I had the chance to shape some of that, but a lot of what I wanted to do was fulfillment more than replacement.
Q: How deep do those fantasy and sci-fi elements go inDefender’s Quest 2’s story?
Nelson:Oh, it’s at the root of everything. ForDefender’s Quest 2, as with a lot of things that I tend to do, I start with: what is the world, who are the characters? What are the principal ideas of the setting, and how do they manifest in gameplay and narrative?
This is evident from the start of the game. The first lines of the game are:
“There is a hole in reality, spilling madness from the mind of a dead king. And with it, the Mirk rises.
“The Mirk defies gravity—alters land and body and soul. And with every shift of its tide, the people of the Shining Lands watch their pinprick of light on the surface of the world slip away.
“Vessels bearing the combined force of humanity launch themselves towards the threshold between the Shining Lands and the Mirk, only knowing that monsters stream from the world below the shoreline.
“The bounty hunters of our tale have a single advantage over the press of would-be heroes: a captain willing to die just to fulfill her word. This power will damn them.”
The fact that the very first lines of the game are telling you, “Hey, the ocean is active, psychic decay from the mind of a dead king,” is taking a really big swing. That swing impacts every part of the story and world.
Q: It’s an interesting narrative blend. Do you feel like it’s just as much a character-driven story as it is a lore-driven one?
Nelson:I mean, the very first thing you read after those opening lines is, “Captain, you didn’t eat your soup!” So I think the emphasis on character is the only way that thiscosmic-scale narrativecan actually land. Because otherwise, there’s no reason to really care about it. Lore without purpose is writers acting in self-gratification, in my humble opinion. In all my stories, I look to establish the big ideas, show how they impact the characters, and also how they impact the player. This is something I was really grateful to be able to do withDefender’s Quest 2.
For example, there’s a concept in this game that all the vessels the characters control are semi-sentient creatures: the bounty hunter Evni Hunt pilots a turtle ship, and this flamboyant pirate, Ketter Star, pilots a crab ship.
That’sa big sci-fi concept; how does it come to bear? Well, at least one of those is likely sentient, and it can choose who to talk to. So, Ketter Star’s crab ship is his friend and refuses to talk to anyone but Ketter, and only talks to him when they are alone. Ketter insists that the ship can talk, but no one else believes him because they haven’t heard the ship talk themselves. The ship isn’t even doing this to stay out of danger: it just doesn’t want to deal with the drama of other people knowing it can talk. These sorts of things are what allow big concepts to land for the player in a personal and memorable way, I think.
How Defender’s Quest 2’s Heart Beats Through Its Story
Q: It seems that there’s heart in a lot of unexpected places inDefender’s Quest 2.
Nelson:It speaks to the heart that it took for the team to do this.Heart is what it takes to maintain game developmentfor over ten years.
The team has endured a ten-year-plus dev cycle and bereavements: one of the lead developers, his child went into a vegetative state; our Ukraine-based art team was suddenly in the middle of an active war zone; and the original writer got a job offer he couldn’t turn down. Any one of the things that has happened in the process of making this game has destroyed other projects and even entire studios. The fact thatDefender’s Quest 2exists, despite everything, is a testament to the team. I see it as a miracle and I hope that players can really feel the love that everyone poured into the game.
Q: There seems to be this theme of perseverance that defines this development cycle. Do you feel that these very real struggles bled into specific parts of the game?
Nelson:Yeah, I mean, even COVID, right? This game’s story is about people confronting an active and growing existential threat that is both known and mysterious, without a unified response to ensure the safety of all parties involved.Making that type of story in the middle of a pandemichits differently.
I think you’re able to feel the scars of what the team has endured across the skin of the game in a way that makes every layer feel a little different from your typical indie game. Because we don’t want to hide those scars or pretend they don’t exist, we want to allow them to show and make them part of our story.
Q: You mentioned how video game stories can be holistic. What kinds of insights can players expect to glean aboutDefender’s Quest 2’s characters by way of gameplay?
Nelson:One of the earlier characters we worked on is someone who fires things from different dimensions, like both “healing” and “hurting” bullets. I thought through the process of that, and I conceived the idea to have this character fire little tardigrades, known as T-Grade bullets, pulled from another dimension because a tardigrade is the sort of creature that could actuallysurvive a cross-dimensional journey. However, the process of firing these tardigrades means that some piece of the character is being continually worn away.
Without spoilers, I can say that this character is being actively altered by the process of using their primary ability. This elevates both the story and the gameplay, because the gameplay mechanics give you something cool to draw upon, while the story dictates that every time this character is used in battle, you know what that represents for them. You know that they are fighting for something that matters to them, in spite of the detrimental effects it is causing for themselves. The fact that this character chooses to face that is an act of defiance.
There’s another character who is addicted to an in-world substance called Glo Tex, which is derived from the same substance that is used to upgrade characters, so this character is continually exposed to theroot of her addiction through gameplay. This is another way that the mechanics define the narrative, and in turn, the narrative gives meaning to those mechanics.
Q:Defender’s Quest 2is a small game compared to the goliaths of AAA gaming. Do you feel like you have a bit more freedom with this sort of project, as it’s not tethered to the expectations of a blockbuster story?
Nelson:I think that thedire thing about where AAA is at nowis that it is so bound up, not with what players want, but with what executives think players want, what executives believe is valuable enough, what they think will get enough play time and money. That is what determines a project of a certain scale.
So yeah, on the indie side, it is very freeing to be able to not just push back against certain desires but find partners who, from the beginning, say “This is replayable, but it is a story that has a finite beginning and a finite end, and it delivers exactly what it’s trying to do and doesn’t try to exceed that or do anything that would make for a worse experience for the player.” That’s something very special and getsmore and more rare these days.
Even though there hasn’t been a psychedelic tower defense game in recent memory that’s made bonkers money, Level Up Labs knew thatDefender’s Questis something that matters and that this development team had the juice to bring something really special to the table. It doesn’t need to be aFortnite. It just needs to be the best version of whatDefender’s Quest 2can be.
Defender’s Quest 2: Mists of Ruinwill be released in 2024 for PC.
