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Hibernaculum Key Art

Hibernaculum: Mordred Brings Sci-fi Horror to a Genre Dominated by Might and Magic

With so many games, the genre in which they take place will determine the setting and aesthetics for the title. For example, consider how many survival horror games are centered around similar plots involving monsters and the evils of men, or how many action RPGs will feature lone heroes besting overwhelming evil forces. This is a problem that Victor Pflug, typically known online as Mordred, aimed to avoid when making Hibernaculum. Mordred had no interest in making another dungeon crawler about loinclothed barbarians and robe-wearing wizards, and instead aims to bring his love of horror and classic sci-fi to the world of CRPGs.

After seeing regular updates for the project on his personal Twitter page, I was intrigued by the dark sci-fi style that dripped from the game. And after learning about his previous titles with Wormwood Studios, Primordia, and Strangeland, I wanted to know more about the work that had gone into the title this far. Thankfully, Mordred has not yet found himself stranded on an intergalactic generation ship, so when I reached out to him to set up this interview he was more than happy to make time to speak with me. We were able to get together and have a conversation about his life as a game developer, as well as the road that led to Hibernaculum. After exchanging introductions and chewing the fat for a moment, I began the interview.


I was excited to begin the interview. I had been paying attention to Mordred’s posts online as he had been working on the title, and as we began I told him I was just as excited to learn about his history as a game developer as well as a musical engineer. 

Mordred: Well, yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s a fair bit to dig into here. I mean, you kind of have to shut me up when it comes to music hardware and stuff. I mean, I guess I’ll jump in there. I don’t call myself a musician, more like composing. I saw it sort of as wallpaper like John Carpenter sees his movie soundtracks, basically. But I’ve just been messing around with hardware for years and years and years. And finally, actually putting some out onto the internet and having other people like it is kind of mind blowing in a way. I don’t know, I just thought this was like, limited to the synth geek community kind of thing.

Speaking to his point, I talked about how the culture for underground artists had changed, and how 20 years ago the basements full of synth geeks and the basements full of game devs never really crossed paths, but here in the 2020s, it seemed as though everyone was sharing their work with everyone.

Mordred: Yeah, totally. And the lines didn’t often cross that much, I guess. I mean, there are a few examples of where it does. I think one of my biggest inspirations is Horrorsoft, the Horrorsoft games like Elvira RPG 1 and 2 and the Waxworks RPG. A lot of people have noticed the style influence right away in Hibernaculum from that. But I think it was Jezz Woodroffe, he did the graphics and a lot of the sound design for at least Waxworks or is it Elvira 2, I don’t know, I’m a little bit hazy with all my facts. But yes, sometimes you see those special individuals where it does cross over a little bit, not saying that I’m special, but I kind of know that what I’m doing is different. And like, I guess, if I can be different, if not good, at least I can be different. But apparently people are enjoying it, so yeah. Kind of just blown away myself a little bit there.

Speaking more to his history as a game developer, I noticed that there was a 9 year gap between the release of Primordia and Strangeland, curious as to what he had been up to during that time, I asked if that 9 years was spent on Strangeland, or if something else had come up between those titles?

Mordred: Okay, there’s there’s definitely something else between those time periods and the name of that thing is called Cloudscape. It was a spiritual successor to Primordia which me, Mark, and James sort of launched into straight after Primordia was finished. Maybe a little bit too hard because I kind of fell off game development a little bit then, I don’t know, like, Primordia was supposed to be my step into the door of the industry and I started the game just as like, I’m going to make a game in three months, I want to work with this one voice actor and I think I can think of a project that I can bring him on board for that, that that person was Chris True and the character was Chris would later turn out to be Crispin in Primordia, I’m getting off track here a little bit but, long story short, get the guys together, start making Primordia as my in into the industry. 

It got probably a little bit more popular than would have been good for me and sort of made a bit of money for the first time in my life and [I thought] like, “well, I can just I can just float along and work on this Cloudscape thing in whatever way I like”… I really blame myself for a bit of a hiatus of Wormwood studios. Basically we did an absolute ton of work on the spiritual successor to Primordia, which is Cloudscape, and I kind of ruined that in a way. Although I’ve never given up on the project itself, it’s basically sitting on the back burner, as I think it’s way cooler than Primordia. Like, Primordia was to get to the door, Cloudscape was going to kind of be my magnum opus in a lot of ways and I think Mark’s too from a writing perspective, and James putting all our hard work together with his own protocols. But yeah, I guess to put it down to one thing, you could say what happened in between is Cloudscape, and Mords fell off a little bit. But basically, yeah, a bit of a hiatus, Cloudscape stopped, Mark went on to work on Fallen Gods

The upshot of that is, I kind of fell off a bit, Cloudscape languished, Mark just made a decision to start work on his own RPG game, which is the incredible looking Fallen Gods, I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of artistic input on that. Since he really had the project well underway, I sort of came in as a contract artist for Fallen Gods more than like a partner for Primordia and Strangeland. And I guess Strangeland was a bit of a weird one too, because that was a few years ago now, I guess, coming up on four years now, but it was just a case of, well, we all really wanted to work together again, make another small game. So we started out making Strangeland, that was based on an idea by Mark. and yeah, basically just smashed that one out. For me, that was kind of like, getting a little bit getting back into game development, though I’d never really left, and also a little bit of, I’ve got to do something, I’ve got to put something out, and then I can move on to a passion project, I guess you could say. 

And that’s where we end up with Hibernaculum, which started out just as a passion project for me that was on the back burner with like six or seven other pots simmering, cooking slightly. It had some graphics, had a bit of work on it. And like, I think this is a dumb idea, no one cares about dungeon crawlers anymore. But I really, really do, so I’m just gonna work on this thing. And yeah, that’s where we are now basically, well, fast forward a year.

As a follow up I asked him what his relationship with game development was like before founding Wormwood studios with Mark and James and beginning work on Primordia?

Mordred: I started out as a concept artist for computer games, I’ve been an illustrator most of my life and did a bit of street art as a kid and stuff, and then really got strong into illustration and always loved video games. Did a bit of, I guess you’d call it dev back when I was a kid, like, wrote some stuff in basic and messed around a little bit with some pixel art, but never anything serious. I never saw myself being a game developer in any way, shape, or form, just like one of the many things I did as an artist. But I ended up on a whole lot of indie projects in the early 2000s as a concept artist, just doing environmental and character concepts, and kind of a little bit of art director stuff. 

I had a lot of my own ideas at that point. I have ideas for things that I don’t see in games, and I want to bring those ideas on, but I kind of ended up on the ass end of several failed projects. Where I just saw the management being absolutely not able to develop a game. They would have massive, huge ideas. “I want to make the biggest Best Game Ever that I’ve been thinking about for 20 years. And now I’m going to make it into a big game. And I’ll get a whole bunch of people on board” And, and I just saw my work and my illustrations being kind of wasted, like, I would be told to do a concept, and I come up with what I thought was a great idea. And they’d be like, “Nah, that doesn’t fit my vision that I’ve had in my head for 10 years. So redo it and redo it, redo it.”

I’m like, “why were we all wasting our time on your vision projects that ended up failing.” And I basically got it into my head that, you know, the tools are available these days to make small games like AGS Adventure Game Studio, which I started out in and got into point and click adventures from it. But I basically just saw a whole lot of failure or I’m like, you know, I could try with 10% of my effort and still do better than these failed projects. I won’t name any names, because I don’t want to be negative or anything. But yeah, I’m like, “I can do better, this is terrible, I can do better than this.” And kind of started making my own little Adventure Game Studio games after that, and kind of haven’t really looked back since then… What I tell younger creators a lot now is, you know, work for yourself, if you’ve got ideas, you bring them to life, don’t spend your time working on other people’s ideas, unless it’s to get practice. You’ve got to do the hard yards for a while, but I think it’s a brave new world with creator owned content.

After hearing him talk about his journey in game development up to this point, and how Hibernaculum was something that was put onto the back burner for some time, I was curious to learn how long he had been working on Hibernaculum before showing it to the masses, so I asked if he felt like he could give us an idea of how many years he had been shaping the ideas for the game?

MordredThat would have to be at least six years ago because I remember I had a couple of ideas for dungeon crawlers, one was like a Cthulhu based one and the other was Hibernaculum. And yeah, I knew it was a good seed of an idea and had a lot of potential. But it was kind of just one of many ideas. I mean, it didn’t seem like this really awesome project that a lot of other people, way more people than I ever thought would have thought it would be cool, think that’s cool. If That makes sense…

I went into it like, I’m not seeing anyone recreate these old dungeon crawlers. Like Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, Elvira, or the Waxworks game. There’s some stuff like Pillars of Eternity that’s similar, but like no one really tried to do that. There was also never that many science fiction dungeon crawlers back in the day, like Whales Voyage, Perihelion, there’s a few but they were kind of few and far between. And I remember, like my friend Lawrence, back in, oh god, I’m gonna let everyone know how old I am now, but like, back in the 90s hanging out at my friend Lawrence’s house, and he had a his dad had a whole bunch of Commodore 64s in the basement and the most incredible old school computer setup. And he had Whales Voyage. And I was just enamored by these sci-fi graphics in a dungeon crawler, it was really unique. And that kind of stuff always stuck with me and has been a creative driving force behind making Hibernaculum or starting work on it at least. And the driving force for actually making it now is many fold, I guess. 

I absolutely agreed about the lack of variety in classic CRPG games, while modern gamers have a variety of settings to choose from, those who were gaming in the 80’s to mid 00’s were pretty much just choosing from a selection of loinclothed barbarians or high fantasy wizardry.

Mordred: Yeah, it’s kind of a shame to see. I mean, I love the fantasy genre. I grew up reading Lord of the Rings when my classmates were reading, I don’t know, dumb stuff. And I love fantasy, but there’s just so much for you, like, you’re spoiled for choice in the fantasy genre, and not so much with the kind of post apocalyptic genre which I kind of fell in love with playing Fallout back in the day. I mean, getting off topic here. But when I came up with Primordia, I was just like, “I want to do something post apocalyptic because I love Fallout, and I’m going to kind of push my art style there” and, you know, I’m kind of just the broken machine guy now I feel like, but yeah, that’s neither here nor there.

After hearing about the kinds of things he was hoping to avoid in Hibernaculum, I was curious as to what things had helped shape his vision for the game, so I asked if there were any pieces of media that he would say directly influenced the world of Hibernaculum?

Mordred: Digging into the back of my brain a little bit for that one. I mean, there’s a few games and a few movies I’ve spat out on Twitter when people asked me this question on games like the Horrorsoft Elvira games, they’re foremost in my mind when I was coming up with the ideas for Hibernaculum. Movies like HardwareVirus with Donald Sutherland as a cyborg, there’s a few things that peak in as influences, but I also do feel like Hibernaculum I mean, maybe the popularity is due to the fact that it really did evolve out of my work on Primordia and my work on Strangeland a bit. I mean, I always wanted to do something like real horror, and Strangeland was that opportunity. Like, after Strangeland I was like, “well, I’m gonna be making more horror material.” I enjoyed a lot of that and actually got some of my work censored by the team for Strangeland. But yeah, I’d say it’s a combination of things that set the style of Hibernaculum. Yeah, it’s really a culmination of things and sort of, I guess, an evolution from my work on Primordia... And it got built up slowly, like I said, the first tests for Hibernaculum were really bare bones, they had of the style, but it was essentially just a dungeon crawler that kind of looked like it could be in Primordia, it was pretty dark, broken down with a highlight color. And yeah, it’s sort of just evolved from there piece by piece. Different movies, different games, playing all the old school classics again, and really just I don’t know. A lot of it, I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I mean, a lot of it did just come out of my own head, pretty much I sort of decided on a style and started working on it and just built it up to where it is. 

And I guess that’s why I’ve been thinking to myself, I’m not worried if anyone tries to bite my style for Hibernaculum, like, “Oh, we’ve got a we’ve got a team with actual funding, we can come in and make it make a game just like this before he can even get close to releasing.” And then I think “well, you know, you can’t replace me at this point. You could even steal my artwork with AI or whatever, and it still wouldn’t be like all this new stuff I’m going to come up with. There’s no way you’re going to be able to develop that in your computer brain or with your real brain.” So I mean, like I said before, if I’m not a brilliant artist, at least I’m a unique artist. That’s how I like to see it, I guess. 

I liked that outlook, and commented “the one code computers can’t crack is whatever’s cooking behind those eyes.”

Mordred: Yeah, exactly. And shoutout to H.R. Giger, because come on, he’s the man… if you’re not influenced directly by Giger, you’re probably influenced by something that was influenced by him. Like Contra, or literally any game ever made about an alien since the movie Alien came out.

Before speaking any further about Hibernaculum, there was something I needed to know, because although I could have googled it, I had never searched “Hibernaculum” without something like “game” or “game interview” afterwards, so I never actually got the definition of Hibernaculum. To me, it was still just a string of syllables connected to a cool game. But, as is typically the case, I was sure there was more to it than that, so I asked, what exactly did Hibernaculum mean?

MordredA Hibernaculum is a shelter that an animal builds for itself to weather through the winter. I heard it while I was watching stealth camping videos by Steve Wallis on YouTube. And he came across an animal Hibernaculum. And the moment he said that word, I don’t know if I’d heard it before. But I was like, “That’s it, that’s the name of my game.” And it kind of rolls off the tongue, too . The more I say it, the more I like it. It’s the key to any good game name. I think it’s like, if it sounds kind of good, and you feel like you live with it in 10 years, then it’s probably perfect.  

Moving from the flesh level aesthetics and vibe in Hibernaculum and down to the meat and bones of the title, I was curious to learn more about how the game ran under the hood. I had seen snippets on twitter and in some teasers that showed some pixelated art being manipulated and animated with what appeared to be some sort of wireframe. With this in mind, I told him that it appeared as though there was a little more going on internally than the aesthetics led on, and asked what kind of work was going on behind the scenes to bring all of these assets together to create this cohesive style?

Mordred: Well, it’s interesting to hear that actually, because I feel like we’ve been sticking a lot closer to old school methods of production implementation and just the technology at the time. There’s been some stuff I’ve been doing some tests with, like vector 3d rigging sprite models and stuff. But really, I don’t think they’re gonna end up in the final game. We’ve switched from Unity to Monogame as our engine to build Hibernaculum. The reason is I wanted pixel perfect representation of my pixel work for Hibernaculum. Unity wasn’t doing that. And I don’t know, I don’t actually want to go too crazy with stuff like animations. 

I mean, I’ve had some people ask whether I’m using shaders for my work, and I’m like, “no, I’m just pushing pixels around on the page and stuff.” Like, environmental animations are something I love doing, because you can just move rain around or move light around. It’s like, “oh, that’s enjoyable and relaxing for me.” So yeah, I feel like I use a lot of just really old school techniques. And I’m kind of glad that no one’s called me out on that that much. But that’s why I don’t feel too bad just wearing my heart on my sleeve. And today, I just posted on Twitter, what I thought was a pretty bad animation and was like, “This is bad, right?” And people were like “yeah”, that’s kind of cool. I gotta stay humble. Yeah, but it’s essentially pretty old school. I push everything around in Photoshop frame by frame. And it’s kind of gonna be that for the end game. That’s one thing I will kind of spoil. We’re trying to push the limits of what the old school framework was capable of, but really, really stick to that, essentially.

I commented that as soon as I saw the layout with the four keys to move, in addition to the two keys to rotate the character, I had a good idea of what to expect. 

Mordred: There are some old school conventions that I just can’t erase from the design, basically. I mean, there’s a lot of new modern conveniences that we’re going to try and cram into Hibernaculum as much as possible, like having a real time mini map visible at all times. Those older games would just, I mean, they’d be kind of different games with an on screen mini map, we had to draw it all by hand with pencil and paper. And that’s fun in its own way, but I know I don’t want to do that nowadays. And I don’t think a lot of people necessarily do. We’re going to try and make it fun in other ways, shall we say? It’s a different world now. Like, I like to look back at the past, but also look forward to the future. I mean, I have the utmost respect for developers creating original game cartridge programs for period specific machines, like making a new Commodore 64 cartridge, actually producing it, it actually works on the machine and only that machine. I think that’s the most amazing, coolest thing in the world. But it’s not something I’d try and do with my work necessarily. Well, maybe as a reward down the line or another special little project but generally speaking, I like to keep it a bit modern as well as old school.

Everything I had heard so far about the game sounded fantastic, but on the topic of fantastic sounds and how to make them, I had to talk about the work that Mords had been up to in bringing the soundtrack to life for Hibernaculum. On his twitter he had spoken about how the tracks he made were made using Yamaha FM synth chips, the same used in Sega hardware. I am oblivious to the world of synth electronics, but Sega is a name I know and love, so I asked how he came to own and work with this hardware?

MordredOkay, well, when it comes to hardware, I love the machines that no one else loves. Like the synth geeks have been buying up or like all the old school stuff like MT32s, all sound machines from old school computer games, and just any sound machine made before 1990 the prices have skyrocketed on eBay. So like, I buy the little kids keyboards and like home organs that nobody else really wants. And I know I’ve been messing around with that gear for years and years ever since I got into circuit bending, which is essentially crossing wires on the chips inside hardware to produce sounds that the synth module or keyboard was never designed to make in the first place, and a lot of that can be pretty glitchy and crazy but it is it’s whole own thing. But yeah, essentially I have a bunch of hardware laying around to make music with. I’ve been watching heaps of videos on computer teardowns, old school computer builds, vintage computer builds, and realized a lot of these Yamaha FM or frequency modulation sound chips are in keyboards and modules I have here and I mean. I’m gonna get really synth geek on you, so FM or frequency modulation is a type of sound synthesis that Yamaha came up with in the 80s from the DX seven keyboard, now that’s the Sega Genesis sound, that peculiar kind of electric twang synthesizer sound that’s was prevalent everywhere. And these chips were just used in everything and yeah, basically I realized I had a bunch of gear with those chips in it. FM was something I was already going to bring into Hibernaculum because it calls to mind Westwood‘s Eye of the Beholder soundtrack which is entirely FM depending on what Soundblaster card you had or whatever, but like I always associate FM frequency modulation sounds with these dungeon crawlers. And I guess I am realizing the full potential of my studio already having that gear lying around, realizing that a Roland MT32 with this chip is now 500 bucks on eBay, but my little Yamaha porta sound 470 which costs $10 also has the chip and I paid $10 for it. So that’s going to feature largely on the soundtrack, plus it gets circuit bent, which adds some unique flavor to it. So you’re not just hearing the chip from back in the day you’re also hearing it glitched out and screaming in pain from what I’m doing to it with a soldering iron. And then I realized that kind of ties into the sort of sounds I want to hear and I’m gonna make the player hear in Hibernaculum. I mean, you’re wandering through a destitute generation ship filled with creaking machinery and rusted corroded bulkheads with screeching hinges and clacking analog machinery on computers so I feel like it’s gonna fit in pretty nice. That was one of my biggest worries, you know, get halfway through this and be like I don’t know if people like the music. Fear as an artist is something that’s always ever present.

Further discussing the lengths he was going to for this soundtrack, I asked about the drum machine he was building himself. Specifically, I asked if he was making this drum machine because he felt like he needed a specific sound for the world of Hibernaculum, or if he was doing it simply because he could, and it was fun?

Mordred: I’d say it’s three fold, it’s unique sounds that I got from circuit bending this really cheap keyboard that had a little drum pattern maker in it, so the sounds fit straightaway. Also, I forget what the second point was. But the third point is, I can’t really afford to go out and buy a $2,000 drum module off eBay right now. So it’s like, that’s okay, because I can just kind of build my own. And in a way, I don’t want to have enough money to buy the drum machines now. Because, as I’ve been planning out this build and kind of posting the sounds that it’s making as a bare circuit board on my carpet in the other room, it’s like, if we’re achieving this with that, maybe we shouldn’t have the really nice things, maybe we should stay on in the junk pile. But I really look forward to posting a full build on that machine because some of the hardware is starting to arrive now, crystal oscillators , teal fake leather for the facia, and iridescent fluorescent arcade joysticks for the vector controls, it’s gonna be its own whole thing. I’m thinking of making a YouTube video just for that, but we’ll see… You know, built not bought is my motto.

Up to this point we had talked a lot about the vision and inspirations for Hibernaculum, and while a lot of people may come to their own assumptions about what the gameplay loop would be like in the finished game, I wanted to know how Mordred felt about the game, and what players should expect. I asked if he felt as though it was so reminiscent of games like Eye of the Beholder that players familiar with those would be familiar with the gameplay of Hibernaculum, or did he feel as though the survival horror elements he was trying to bring to the table elevated it above others in the genre?

Mordred: Well, I think this is a question best answered with my partner, the co-designer and writer for the game, Michael Faragher. But as I said before, essentially, if you enjoyed Eye of the Beholder, or Elvira, I think you should have a look into this. As for the gameplay loop, I don’t want to spill too many details early on, suffice to say, we want it to feel like the old school dungeon crawlers, we have a lot of new ideas, and I think a lot of new things to bring to the genre. it’s difficult to say, I don’t want to come out and say, “Well, we’re going to perfect the genre.” Because, like, that’s silly, but at the same time, I want to right a lot of the past wrongs, I want to make a dungeon crawler that feels as fun as they did back in the day, but then doesn’t have a lot of the pitfalls and the things that annoyed the crap out of me. But generally speaking, when I call it a survival horror game and an RPG, that’s what I mean. It’s gonna have a lot of role playing elements, certainly, we’re shooting for a lot more role playing elements then Eye of the Beholder and Elvira did, or at least you could say, elements that are different, but more substantial. It’s a difficult question, honestly, we’re still building the foundations of the game engine, and tentatively getting some gameplay in. So I’m not going to go and say, “Oh, well, you know, our game plays incredible. And it’s going to blow your mind” or anything, because that’s just not something that we’ve had a whole lot of time to get our hands dirty with, basically…

I’ll put it this way. Mike basically set up the first AI mob to move around in the game. And I was starting to feel some kind of elements of emergent gameplay and it kind of gave me shivers, just from the first initial tests. So to me, that was a really good sign, because I have a ton of ideas and a lot of things that I want to do. I have a very tight vision for what this game should feel like and play like. And yeah, initial tests are anything to go by, I’m feeling very optimistic.

My excitement for the title continued to grow with each question answered, but I still wanted to know more. Understanding that Mordred had been trying not to give too much away this far before release, I still wanted to learn more about the story of the game. Hoping to get some idea about what to expect, I asked Mordred if he could tell us a bit about the world and story of the Hibernaculum?

Mordred: Well, that’s something I can talk a lot more about. Basically, I guess you could say the setting for Hibernaculum, the generation ship, comes from Silver Age and Golden Age sci fi novels that I grew up reading as a kid, when we couldn’t afford a computer but we had a shelf full of books. So, you know, Robert Heinlein, Brian Aldiss, Philip K Dick, Ursula LeGuin, Theodore Sturgeon. All these sci fi authors are really what informs how I look at the world of Hibernaculum and the world I’m trying to build there. And I think that will bleed into the gameplay a lot. But a big one, I would say, is sitting in front of me right now, which is Robert Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky. That was basically a short, smaller novel about a generation ship that’s sent well out into space. And you can say things don’t go all that well. Yeah, I don’t wanna go into too many details, because I’m gonna start maybe spoiling stuff. But Heinlein had a really interesting vision for a generation ship, and I’m cribbing quite a few ideas from that, you could say.

Wrapping up the conversation about the game, it seemed as though the team had hit their stride as far as executing their vision in both aesthetics and mechanics. While I would never expect someone to give me a tentative date this far out, I was still curious about how the team felt it was coming along. So I asked if the two man team felt like they were making good time for the project?

MordredI’ll put it this way: progress is happening faster on Hibernaculum than any other project I’ve ever worked on. I’m feeling more enthusiastic, productive and just excited about every aspect of this game I’m making right now. It’s gonna be a while, but there’s no way we could bring it to you any faster because firing on all cylinders doesn’t even come close to describing my life with Hibernaculum right now.

That was awesome to hear, and I was excited to see the final product. I commented that it sounded like it was going to be well worth the wait to see the love and effort that will go into it.

Mordred: I hope so, it’s just me and my partner, Michael at the moment. We are courting a few individuals to jump on board and help out a little bit. But this will be my first game just with one partner instead of two, instead of Mark and James from the first two. Mark is working on Fallen Gods, James is working on Carbonflesh. So yeah, I had to pick up a new partner for this one. But as it turns out, he’s very mechanically minded, which I feel like is the perfect partner to have on a game like Hibernaculum, I’m a bit more of the Bohemian crazy creative side, whereas he brings in the, mechanical knowledge, the resource knowledge, the organization and the technical side of things, I guess you could say.

That was all that I had to ask about the history of Mordred career as a game developer as well as his work on Hibernaculum. But before I ended the interview I took a moment to ask if there was anything I didn’t touch on during the interview, or anything that he wanted readers to check out?

Mordred: I’d love to, I mean, I’d just like to give a shout out to anyone that’s had a look in on Hibernaculum and said something about it. Really appreciate, you know, everyone’s support and interest in the project. Huge shout out to my patrons, which is helping keep me going through the dark, long, lonely nights that I’m in. If I could pimp anything, it would be my partner Mark’s Fallen Gods, Wormwood studios’ game and James’s Carbonflesh, basically, yeah.

And with that I thanked Mordred again for taking the time to speak with me, and let him get back to creating the spooky, slimy, sci-fi world of Hibernaculum. It may be quite a while until we get our hands on this dread-inducing dungeon crawler, but it seems as though it will be well worth the wait. 


To keep up with the happenings in his life and to see updates on the development of Hibernaculum, be sure to visit his personal Twitter page or the Patreon page for Wormwood studios.

If you don’t want to wait to see some of what’s cooking in the brain of Victor Pflugl, then check out the two previous titles from Wormwood Studios, Primordia, and Strangeland

And as always, if you are absolutely fiending for more dreadful details on the latest and greatest in gory and gruesome gaming, then be sure to head back to DreadXP for more of our frightful features!