Eric Berger, the co-developer of viral hit Queen’s Domain, doesn’t exactly adore the video game industry, despite having worked in it for more than two decades. He got his start as a teenager creating maps and mods for Unreal Tournament before landing his first professional level design contract with Gearbox at just 19 years old. From there, he helped bring Advent Rising to life at GlyphX, worked on an unreleased project at Mad Doc Software, and spent years at Airtight Games honing his level design and environment art skills on games like Dark Void.
After a stint at Final Strike Games working on Rocket Arena, Berger decided it was time to make a game he really wanted to play. At Final Strike Games, Berger met Bradley Boothe, a technical artist and former software engineer who shared a frustration with what could get done at a traditional studio. Together, they struck out on their own, founding the two-person indie studio Freshly Baked Games and trading the security of industry jobs for the creative freedom — and financial uncertainty — of building something entirely theirs.
Many years later, the result was a prototype for a game… that was way too ambitious (but they fully intend to return to). So they went back to a different concept, a stripped-down first-person fantasy inspired by FromSoftware's cult-classic King's Field. That was supposed to take a year to build.
Three years later, the game, Queen’s Domain, is an ambitious torrent of weaponry, monster encounters, and Berger’s patented 3D level design, all spread across an low-poly open-world map. Speaking for the first time since unleashing Queen’s Domain on the unsuspecting retro RPG sickos, Berger got into it with Polygon on building a vast interconnected fantasy world, making a game that rewards exploration, and why allowing players to grind their way to overpowered levels doesn’t have to be a bad thing. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Polygon: What did you set out to accomplish with Queen's Domain? Was it born out of pure nostalgia for King's Field? Berger: I think our view on game design, why we're making games, is partly to get away from the idea that everything has to have a hook.
What we both really enjoy when we play games, and what we want more of, is games that just go deep on exploring a good foundation. Like you were saying, I want another one of these, I want it to be good. I don't wanna spend a lot of time figuring out how to make it special and different.
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