Interview: Abhuva

So let’s start off with the basics Abhuva… who were you before you became involved in PoP 4.0?

I've made my living as a juggler, physical artist and wannabe musician since I was 15. Somewhere around 12-14 I started to program, first in Basic and Turbo Pascal but i switched later to modding and scripting in a couple of different engines. Ranging from doing my own Adventure Games in "Adventure Game Studio", making mods in Neverwinter Nights, trying my hands at Unreal Dev Kit and CryEngine, making my own mod for Mount & Blade and finally did my own games with Unity3D.

What persuaded you to say “Hey, I’m Abhuva I should join the Pop team" in the first place?

My own mod for M&B called "Scaedumar" got me the attention of the PoP4.0 dev team, specifically MP, who asked me if I would be willing to join the team as level-designer and maybe scripter. I made a viking style town scene for PoP3 to show off what I would be able to do and got approved by the team - the scene also got included in one of the latest updates for PoP3. The main reason for me was of course the possibilty to work in a big and well known team of modders.

Sooo ignore what you’ve been told… which is cooler, Prophesy or Prophecy?

Prophesy for sure, simple cause it lets people wonder what this is about, its creating some kind of mystery.

Do you secretly root for the bad guys?

Well, the only answer that i give to this is that my greatest experience in Pen and Paper roleplaying was playing as an evil character in a custom made MiddleEarth campaign =)

A knight of Eventide, 3 peasants, a Noldor, and Siggy wander into a bar… what happens?

The bar becomes famous in lots of stories told at campfires during the next couple of years...

So I heard you and Mordred made a game called Vinland… what’s that all about?

Its our attempt at the next step after modding, going for completely selfmade games. Its not the first try, neither for me nor Mordred but so far the most serious one I ever made.

As you know, Mordred is writing a book about Vikings and we decided to use this as the background lore. While our plans for future projects are way more complex we settled for a way simpler game for our first try. The main task was to proove that we are able to work together in a team and get a finalized product ready for release (wich is now done by the way, we released at 23.April and are now trying to get our game to the bigger publishers like Desura and Steam).


You follow the journeys of Leiff Erikson from his home in Oslo to the far away lands called "Vinland" facing the most feared enemy of norse sailors - the ice.
At its core its a simple shooter that shares some basic principles with old Arcade games like "Asteroids" but with its very own style, expanding the gameplay with a couple of other gameplay elements and customization.

Were there any lessons learned in the development of PoP4 that either helped or hindered the development of Vinland?

Lessons learned: structure the work as much as you can, KISS (keep it simple, stupid), focus as much as you can, dont reach for a large goal but instead take small steps one after the other to build up and really nothing i can think about that would have hindered the development

Does Germany suck or what… Yes/ Yeah?

Well, its my homeland, and while I have a strong background in my younger days to be against everything especially my homeland, I now only can say - no, it doesn't suck.

When you aren’t making video games… what do you do for fun?

Reading books, going out from time to time to juggle, playing music, and of course keep dreaming about things I want to do

Thank you very much for your candor Abhuva, but one last question… what is next?

Well, nothing's decided in particular, beside that there will be of course a next project - and we will dive into it as soon as it's possible.