SKALD: Against the Black Priory, from High North Studios, is, like some Steam reviews literally say, a game “not for everyone”. It is a hardcore RPG with a dark fantasy setting and a tribute to RPGs from the 80s and 90s, both in terms of graphics and gameplay. For modern gamers, or people wanting a more relaxing experience, it may not be the best title. But with 93% good reviews on Steam, it is clear that everybody who gave it a shot, knowing what to expect, loved it.
That is no coincidence: it is the key for finding success as an indie developer, as explained by Anders Lauridsen, High North Studios CEO, who talked with Gamereactor at Devcom 2025, during Gamescom. “What I tell everyone, especially younger developers when they are starting out and kind of imagining their first project, is that if you make something that everyone likes but no one loves, it will fail.“
In Lauridsen’s view, you “have to be willing to make something that a lot of people will hate as long as some people will absolutely love.” And how do you know when you have something that people are going love?
For Lauridsen, who gave a panel on Devcom titled “Design pillars in indie games”, a game should ellicit you feelings even when you are not playing it. The mere existance of the game as a cultural artifact should have people “sitting in their cars and fantasizing about it. “Like when you are in love with someone, you dream about them when you sit in traffic and you forget to drive when the traffic light goes green.”
He gave an example: “I made a very retro style game, and there aren’t a lot of games like this anymore. So for a lot of people, a large part of the sort of consumer experience of Skald was fantasizing about this game and taking them back to their childhood.”
“Even more so than actually playing it, just the fact that this game was being created and someone was kind of reclaiming a part of the past was incredibly important to a lot of people in the community and that was sort of what made me think about this concept of how we fantasize about certain games and how that makes them sort of artifacts that are much bigger than simply the game we are playing.”
That’s Lauridsen’s big advice to indie and young developers, to make a game that will ellicit that reaction on some people. It doesn’t have to be everyone, maybe just a few people, and others may not like it, but if it is a game “that is very polished, everyone is impossible to find something wrong with it, but no one is going to fantasize about it, it cannot succeed.”
You can watch our full interview with Anders Lauridsen, going more in depth on what made Skald special and his philosophical views of videogames below.