Torpor Games has announced three new projects set in the world of its political role-playing game Suzerain: two downloadable expansions and a standalone turn-based strategy spin-off. All three are due to arrive before the Berlin studio's next flagship title, The Conformist. Co-founder Ata Sergey Nowak set out the plans in an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun.
The announcement marks a sharp change of pace for a studio that took four years to ship its first expansion. Nowak told Rock Paper Shotgun that the delay came down to capacity and money, saying the studio's games "take a long time," its staff was "very limited" and its financing was "very project-to-project."
The three projects
The first is Suzerain Stories: The Neutral Lens, a smaller narrative expansion due on Steam later this year. It revisits events from Suzerain and the Kingdom of Rizia expansion from the perspective of Ilias Morris, host of an international news programme. Players choose which questions to ask guests, which facts to include in coverage, and how to allocate a limited reporting team. Nowak said it sits alongside the studio's existing canon rather than inside it.
The second is Wars of Suzerain, a standalone turn-based strategy game that puts the player in command during one of the continent's major conflicts. It expands on war mechanics introduced in Kingdom of Rizia and is the furthest the studio has moved from Suzerain's visual-novel presentation. Nowak said it remains recognisably Torpor's work, telling Rock Paper Shotgun the game will "highlight human costs" and include personal dramas, "but they will be light."
The third is Suzerain: Socialist Republic of Galmland, a nation-focused expansion comparable in scope to Kingdom of Rizia. Players take the role of Premier Vigdis Gjalmir, leader of Galmland's Communist government, navigating the country's position as a junior partner in the Contanan Security Pact. Like Rizia, it is canon, and choices made in earlier campaigns carry across.
A hedge against a volatile industry
Nowak told Rock Paper Shotgun that the expansion strategy is partly defensive. Kingdom of Rizia more than tripled Suzerain's concurrent player count, from a launch peak of about 1,000 to roughly 3,400, and that performance drew investment from Sisu Game Ventures, 1Up Ventures and Krafton late last year. That funding is what allows the studio to work on the expansions and The Conformist at the same time.
We're very flexible because the games industry has become very volatile. We've become very scrappy. We always were. It was hard to survive year after year, even making Suzerain. Even with extra resources we're very conscious, we're very careful. We've seen how close you can get. We've seen other studios around us in Berlin shut down.
To limit the risk of spreading itself thin, Torpor has divided the work. The Neutral Lens is being handled largely by freelancers who worked on Suzerain, under a full-time game director, while Wars of Suzerain is being built by a newly formed separate studio. Once Galmland ships, those teams are due to join The Conformist. Nowak said the aim is to build the intellectual property across different perspectives and mechanics rather than putting, in his words, all the studio's eggs in one basket.
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