Adventure Gamers: The name Cateia is probably unfamiliar to most adventure fans, so can you tell us a little about who you are and what you’ve worked on in the past?

Ivan Bralic (Project Leader, Art Director): Cateia Games is a young development team from Zagreb, Croatia (Europe). We worked on several strategy games in the past, and on some casual titles (like Tibor: Tale of a Kind Vampire). Working in Cateia is a great feeling because everybody is participating in game design, we all communicate and share ideas and talk about how we can improve a certain part of a project.

LOCV is our third game, but also our biggest project so far. Working on an adventure game is a real challenge, I have to say. But you know, when you are working on something that is completely different than other games you worked on, and then you try hard to create something that is going to be competitive with any other similar games out there, basically you just want to do your best. I think that LOCV is an original adventure game with unique atmosphere, even though it’s a traditional point n’ click adventure in the meaning of gameplay.

AG: How long have you been working on Legend of the Crystal Valley, and how did production on that game come about?

Ivan: We have been working on LOCV since October 2007. Then, in September 2008 we moved to another project while LOCV was nearly finished. And two months ago we started to work on LOCV again. The game is finally done, and as we speak, we are preparing it for world-wide online release.

It’s a funny story of how LOCV became our main project back in early 2008. We created a demo, and we tried to sell it to some publishers. We said, if they all turn us down, we’ll cancel LOCV and do something else. But some of them actually paid us money to help get us started, so we said – all right, LOCV it is. I’m really glad now that LOCV become our main project and that it’s going to be released soon, because I think we did a great job with this game.

AG: I’ve just shared my own early impressions of the game, but the section I played barely scratched the surface of what the full game will include. Tell us more about LOCV.

Ante Jelusic (Writer): Well, think of the beginning as something seen in Alice in Wonderland books. We set up the first chapter in “reality” so that we can help you, the player, to get to know Eve a bit better. By exploring the farm and searching for her Father you get to know Eve, and you get to learn a bit about her motivations and her, for the lack of a better word, dreams. When she comes to Crystal Valley, everything she knows starts to change, and Eve starts to think outside of the box, and starts to connect the clues left by her father on the farm. Everything you see on the farm is placed there for reason. The picture on the wall, the sign in front of the farm, the weird object in her Father’s study, everything gets another perspective when Eve stumbles into the Valley. As for the Crystal Valley, it is a fantasy world inhabited by a wide array of different creatures. There are no aliens per se in the game, but you will find a lot of typical races found in European fantasy literature. Since we come from Croatia, there is a firm influx of Eastern European mythology in the game.

AG: What sort of person is Eve?

Ante: One of the main, lets call them “selling” points of the game is the character of Eve. We didn’t want her to be a blank slate, and so we created the first level to give you some insight into how Eve thinks, and what her motivations are. By doing that, we hope to achieve a deeper connection with the player, and give a greater motivation to explore the Crystal Valley. Over the course of the game, you are presented with many choices that help to expand the character of Eve.

AG: I won't ask where the idea "came from”, but well… on second thought, for lack of a better way to put it after all, where did the idea for LOCV come from?

Ante: That’s a difficult question to answer; mainly because it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact inspiration for creating the characters and the world of Crystal Valley. During the writing process, I spent many hours exploring the old Slavic myths and legends. That’s where I found different sets of creatures and many different, let's call them, “moral” definitions of how a person should behave when living with gods, giants and many other different life forms. Then there are the classics: Alice in Wonderland, Tolkien, even some Clarke-inspired heavy science fiction elements. So you see, it is difficult to define where the exact inspiration came from. We like to see the mythology behind LOCV as something completely new, something that will motivate the player to explore all its intricacies, and to look for all the small details that are hidden inside the game.

AG: It’s clear that LOCV is a very traditional point-and-click adventure, at least in terms of its interface and gameplay. What is it about the game that will stand out among other games and really make it memorable?

Nenad Kajgana (Lead Artist): From a visual standpoint, LOCV is a very diverse game. On this journey the player will venture through many interesting environments. One of our design goals was to keep visual freshness by contrasting game environments. I.e. upon exiting a dark cave the player will find himself in a sunny meadow. So no two environments in the game are alike and should keep the player interested throughout the game.

Ivan: In LOCV, players can mostly travel without restrictions - even several chapters backwards! You know how in most adventure games, a player is restricted to several rooms and scenes and you cannot travel around if you didn't solve some puzzle or something? It’s kind of important to say that in Legend, the player is not restricted and can explore freely most of the time.