As we mentioned in the previous blog post, NeocoreGames started with a passionate group of friends who were trying to figure out how video games worked. This usually meant sitting in an apartment and coming up with new demos and prototypes. The term “indie” did not quite exist at the time, but NeocoreGames ticked all boxes.

Narrative designer Viktor Juhász was one of the first to join the group (part-time, later full time), and he fondly remembers those early days: “There were no roles, everybody was multitasking. [...] It’s not a surprise then that work felt like hanging out with family, it’s more surprising that this feeling remained even after more people joined.”

Composer Gergely Buttinger originally met the team in the late 90's in a fantasy-themed camp. He joined not long after the studio was established - he was working at another company as a graphic designer at the time, but once the call came, he quit immediately and joined NeocoreGames. He still finds it interesting how he did all sound effects and how little amount the first games actually needed. "I tried to do something unique with the music" he says. "The tracks were good, but the hardware at the time was inadequate. We managed to hire an opera singer for the main theme, though, her name is Anna Herczenik."

While the young adventurers were more interested in role-playing games, ultimately this didn’t seem like a viable route to success. “Everybody was making strategies in Hungary,” explains producer Zoltán Pozsonyi. “Everybody advised us to do the same. You could find expertise in this area, and this was a genre you could sell to publishers.”

With enough research the team decided to tackle a real-time strategy with grandiose battles and some RPG elements. This project was King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame. The game had a long development, and an even longer road to release. Despite all the advice and a promising prototype, publishers did not want to take a risk and did not believe that NeocoreGames could finish the project as their first. Steam was already on the rise, but it wasn’t clear that digital distribution could be the future. This was also a time of recession and uncertainty.

The studio then decided to create a new project from scratch, based on the existing King Arthur formula. Crusaders: Thy Kingdom Come had it all: heroes with unique personalities representing five nations, RPG-like gradual progression and skills, a management phase between missions, and an adherence to historical authenticity. It was developed within a year, and it even found a publisher. King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame was briefly self-published alongside this deal (being among the earliest third-party games that used Steamworks), so in 2009, NeocoreGames has finally made its debut.

After four years of its conception, the studio had not one, but two strategy games, and of course a brand new, self-developed game engine, CoreTech. King Arthur had a fresh take on the Arthurian myth with a morality chart, while Crusaders told an interesting story about the Crusades. Both games found a solid audience, and reviews were overall leaning towards positive, even though there was room for improvement.

Naturally, publishers started to show more interest. Both King Arthur and Crusaders had their sequels greenlit, and all these games, including the rights to the first King Arthur were eventually acquired by Paradox Interactive for a five-year exclusivity period. Paradox turned out to be the right fit for this genre – to this day they’re best known for publishing excellent strategy games.

Against all odds, NeocoreGames managed to survive these brutal four years, and the path towards the future seemed brighter. The studio then finished development of the second Crusaders game in 2010 now retitled The King’s Crusade. During this time the studio also released multiple DLCs for these games, this was something new and interesting to explore. King Arthur II: The Role-Playing Wargame was finished and released in 2012.

By this time Steam started becoming a hot new place to sell games on, and NeocoreGames decided it would be good to return to self-publishing and finally tackle a new genre: Action-RPGs.

And here we pause, because this is a story for another day.