Do you like to play as the Necrophages in Endless Legend? Find out more about "interspecific kleptoparasitic ovipositing parthenogenesis" (yes), the faction's lore, art direction and game design.
Jeff, on the Lore
The Necrophages were maybe the first faction we created for Endless Legend. We knew that we wanted to have another group like the Cravers in Endless Space who were always at war, and we kicked around a lot of different ideas. Wolf-like, feline, army ants, "Alien"-like hunters,... there are tons of different ways to go on this. We ended up liking a more insectoid style primarily because of how gruesome and grotesque they are; the whole notion of hives and breeders makes for a style that is very different from other morphological types. Choosing this path also echoed the look and feel of the Cravers themselves; questions as to how the two factions may be related in the universe have not been answered officially...
The background was very easy to work up once we had chosen the basic style. After all, on a world that has been bombarded back into the Stone Age what kind of life form is going to survive, and even thrive? The mighty cockroach, of course! Here is a quote from our faction design document:
"During the Dust Wars, when the bombs fell and the first waves of life were destroyed on Auriga, the greatest resource to be found was the dead. Dust-impregnated, full of virii and bacteria, dead matter of all shapes and sizes covered the planet. The luckiest ones were those who were hardy enough to survive the bombings and who fed on precisely this gruesome diet. From those first scavengers, irradiated and infected, grew the Necrophages. "
Once we were discussing their mutations, and how they reproduced, I starting doing a bit of biology research to work out the most repulsive reproductive system I could come up with (so naturally it would be suited to these gruesome beings). That's when I cobbled together the phrase 'interspecific kleptoparasitic ovipositing parthenogenesis'. I don't know; there may be a life form on Earth that reproduces that way. If so, I hope I never meet them...
Corinne, on the Art Direction
Main inspiration: Vermin, an infestation of vermin!
The Necrophages were very effective in their physiological adaptation to the new post-apocalyptic environment; their physical structure quickly adapted to resist everything. They were able to survive and multiply in places and climates where nothing else would venture. At the very beginning of the game design, we thought to link each faction with a specific biome. We finally decided not to do this, as it would have been too restrictive in terms of gameplay, but we kept these ideas in mind to give everyone a 'preferred climate', which provided a basic visual suggestion of what the factions might look like. We could therefore make the Necrophages live, without too much difficulty, in lots of exceedingly unpleasant locations: Volcanic areas, extreme heat, lava lakes, acid, fumaroles, areas filled with fumes of toxic gases, mangroves, foul and unhealthy bayous and wetlands... these all seemed to be sites that would be particularly appreciated by the Necrophages ^ ^
It was logical to give them an insectoid feel (conveniently, for the next cataclysm, they can be immune to whatever happens once again ^^). Their rapidly evolving/changing bodies gave us opportunities to create multiple variations in terms of body shapes; the common point was that it must inspire repugnance…
- Exoskeletons, multiple skinny legs, mandibles, not knowing if certain items are made of natural shell or are manufactured piece of armor.
- Played in association with more flexible and soft textures, or soft/viscous ones (large inflated abdomens)
- No clothing (with the exception of the diplomat who has to look “not quite so” scary ^^); they had to look feral, and not civilized at all
- They come out of their habitat in droves, spread out while razing everything in their path... it crawls, it wiggles (... and the rest of the world runs away before this scourge!)
Habitat/cities:
Still in the ‘vermin’s nest’ spirit, their constructions must remind one of termite mounds, anthills, beehives, etc. So structures using repetitive patterns that immediately suggest insectoid 'nest'-like mounds, volumes and textures of secretions, vaults, convolutions, shapes of stalactites/stalagmites.
At first glance, you believe you're seeing something coarse in structure and ultra-raw in terms of materials, but then there's a second reading which reveals a definite pattern (maybe even something fractal?)
- Like wasp hives and nests in nature. A big shapeless mass in appearance, but inside revealing a very organized structure around a specific pattern.
- Or in a more obvious way: closed buildings on one side, which reveal their interior via one of their faces or some other opening (top, profile...)
- Something, a bit like the Vaulters’ cities, that hints at a much larger underground volume than what emerges on the surface...
Max, on the Game Design
When we started designing Necrophages, we of course had the Cravers from Endless Space in mind. We loved the way the Cravers worked and how lonely you felt when playing them, how threatening they appeared to other players and how badass their looks were!
We wanted a faction players could choose if they wanted to focus on war, battle, being a predator and slaying entire civilizations. We worked first on the units; they needed to be strong but also fast, they needed to be able to jump on the opponent out of the blue, so we made one of the units “flying”. We also wanted the Necrophages to have similarities with Zombies, tying into their "feed on the dead/rise from the dead" lore. We kept the “always at war” from the Cravers but added more substance to the idea by developing a multiplication aspect to the faction. We designed a nasty huge creature able to change killed enemies into Necrophages, a sort of “Alien Queen”.
We also worked on pushing the player to be a menace. We reduced the natural growth by Food, enabled players to sacrifice units for Approval increasing Food production, and added the cadaver counter that could be used for Food Stockpiles… No Food? Just kill more enemies to get some… well you see where we wanted to go with this
And to top it all off, for each declared war, the Necros get an attack bonus… I told you, real killing machines!
For more information on the Necrophages, check out the [FACTION PAGE] and [FACTION CARD].
Download on [DEVIANT ART] our wallpapers: LINK, and submit your own fan art!
Have a nice weekend,
