Tell us about Bright Shadow and what it brings to the MMO space.

Bright Shadow brings highly customizable characters, high-quality graphics, smooth gameplay, and a fairly deep combat system that combines group attacks, summons, transformations, Soul Power abilities, and Monster Card buffs as well as class-based skills to create fun, free experience for all players.

Ok, so that’s our standard answer. Getting more into it, Bright Shadow is a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and places an emphasis on the player customizing their gameplay with their friends. We have thousands of items, hundreds of monsters, a plethora of quests, party buffs, guild skills and a vast world for players to adventure in.

On top of that, we’re also adding new content from our side, so players can look forward to some exciting content we have planned.

What are your character classes like? What options are there for players?

There’s four main classes in Bright Shadow, Mages, our spell kingpins, Machinists, who double as archers and weaponsmiths, Shaman, who combine healing spells with monster summons, and Warriors, our masters of close-range combat.

Those expand later into 20 diverse classes, however, each stat build can be different—each player can adapt their stats to their play style, as well as pursue different combinations for “Soul Unlocks”, which grant your character additional skills. The “Soul Unlocks” varies depending on your stat build, and adds different buffs to your character.

So, beyond just the regular classes, players have a good amount of options to really mod their character in skills as well as looks. It’s a big part of what we call “Controlling Your Destiny.”

Open Beta is exciting for any game. Tell us how the test is going?

Exceedingly well! Players have really responded to the game, and enjoy our features as well as the events our Operations team is running.

We’re gaining a lot of new players on a daily basis, and the community is really coming together. We have A LOT planned for them over the next few months.

What type of feedback have you gotten from players? More importantly, what do you plan to do with that feedback?

Well, players have brought up that they’d like WASD-based movement in addition to point-and-click, so we’re working on implementing that. Other feedback, such as quest content or systems based, we always listen to, and while we can’t promise that every single issue will change the way they ask, we can say that we’ll always listen, and won’t hide an issue. That’s not how we work.

We’ll opening up a more direct line in the near future for our players to communicate with us. Constructive criticism is always welcome, don’t just tell us how you feel, offer a way to address your issue. Part of our motto is “Respect the Players”, and we take that seriously.

Are you on schedule for launch? How long will Open Beta last?

We are on schedule. Open Beta at this rate should last a few weeks until we go full-on commercial. We are already off and running with our events, and we have lots of events planned. We’re pumped!

Talk about the unique world design of Bright Shadow.

The world of Luciena is currently three massive areas, with vastly different areas. There’s valleys, mountains, hills, ice tundras, a pyramid, a haunted house, as well as different hunting grounds known as “Shadow Realms”, where our bosses, the “PenUmbra” roam.

These anime inspired, diverse environments blend with a weather system, a day and night cycle, and architecture that varies from traditional fantasy to ancient Egypt to Persia to modern-style houses. It truly is a world ripe for exploration.

There’s also many, many ways to get around, from a cloud mount to Tigers to Dragons that player can ride on. There’s nothing like traveling through Luciena with your friends—the wilderness is an adventure in itself.

What types of quests and encounters will players experience?

Past the quirky and cute nature of some of our monsters, there’s a storyline that’s slowly emerging, which will lead players into some stirring encounters—everything from Dracula to Undead Samurai to something out of H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmares.

We currently have party quests as well as solo quests, some of the content we’re planning will involve guild quests, co-op quests and a host more.

Tell us about a specific game feature you are most excited about in Bright Shadow.

I’d have to say the Combat System in general. We have a Card collection system with over unique 500 cards that drop from various monsters (known as Umbra). We also have the character skill mods and “Soul Unlocks” which I described earlier, and there’s also combo attacks—special attacks that only happen when you combine your skills with another class. So for instance, if I’m a Mage, I can team up with a Warrior and initiate a different attack than what I’d have normally, and those are all pretty devastating. Each Class has combinable attacks, all within a party.

That’s great for us as well as players, as it allows us to make more challenging bosses and scenarios.

In Open Beta will players be able to experience the whole game? Or are only parts of the game being tested?

Most of the game is actually open, but there are a quite a few higher-level maps that players will experience later. That however, is just the tip of the iceberg. We are dedicated to building the content that players want, and I can promise that it’s going to be unlike anything they’ve seen thus far.

We’ve played a lot games and continue to play them. If we don’t love something we’re working on internally, it’s not good enough and we go back to the drawing board.

Tell us something about Bright Shadow that we may not know about.

Well, I’ll pose this in a riddle. Many people ask about the title, yes, it sounds interesting, but there’s a double meaning there. Will you succumb to the darkness or surrender to the light? To truly have control of something, you have to wrest it from something else. The idea of being balanced is something that we’ll be exploring further, i.e. what it means to be a “Bright Shadow”.