League of Legends is really a huge entity. As a longtime player, this is obvious to me. However, every time I walk into any kind of riot, I am keenly reminded of this fact. This time, I descended on the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in London, the place where Riot and Double Stallion were holding a promotional event for their upcoming Convergence: A League of Legends Story event.
As expected, I was immediately met with bright neon lights and a “Get Jinxed” noise over the speakers. Cheerleaders dressed as celebrity Jinx and man of the moment, Echo, roam around the room. As I sat down to try out Convergence, I had an idea that an indie outfit like Double Stallion would likely be unfamiliar with the fanfare that accompanies a mega-IP like League.
I took this idea into consideration when I sat down with Daniel Maynard of Double Stallion and Thomas Meyer, CEO and Senior Producer, respectively. The UK-based studio is known for its 2D action games and recently launched Speed Brawl – a combat racing game. How did Riot Forge and Double Stallion have a relationship?
“When we launched Speed Brawl, we brought it to a few festivals, and along the way, someone at Riot Forge played the game,” Menard began. “They loved the style and the way we were expressing an action game and then they called us asking if we wanted to do something in the League of Legends universe. I was like, ‘We’re going to work on something in League of Legends, are you kidding me?’”
Maynard said Riot’s offer was a surprise and admitted that not many in the studio are League of Legends fans, though they all know the IP. Riot’s offer came with no restrictions on what part of League of Legends Double Stallion can explore.
“That was one of the really great things about Riot Forge,” Maynard explained. “They said, ‘Hey, we really love what you do, we love the way you develop your games. It was up to us to decide what story we wanted to tell.’ Bigger with us is Echo.He’s a fan favorite.His rewinding ability hasn’t been fully explored in MOBA because it’s a PvP game.We’ve had the chance to explore rewinding time in an action game.Most of the time mechanical rewinding in games is in puzzle games or stories.”
League of Legends has a huge amount of lore, which spans multiple distinct regions within the world of Runeterra. However, for Double Stallion, Ekko was always the main favorite for their game. The moment we saw a flashback, we did an early proof-of-concept inside Speed Brawl. We kind of retooled the grid rollback we already had and used it to bring the game back whenever you hit a button. So cool.” That’s kind of ignited, Menard said, and everyone said “Yeah, we do Echo.”
Lee Meyer said Riot Forge is not in the business of dictating how Double Stallion will do its game. They were chosen for a reason. “Riot Forge isn’t looking to do things that have already been done, they’re looking to do something different. They called us because of what we bring to the table, action-packed gameplay and vibrant visuals. They didn’t come to us because we know the world, they came to kind of The game we’re making. It was then up to us to make sure we hired the right people. We had the support of Riot while we were building the game. We had the knowledge to respect the fans and the lore, and then we made a match that was real to Ikko.”
Riot Forge has shown its commitment to scouting promising developmental talent, having already published three titles under the heading: Ruined King, Hextech Mayhem, and Mageseeker. Convergence will be the latest title to be added to its collection when it is released on May 23rd.
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