"We've seen how close you can get": How studio closures pushed Suzerain's maker to create two new DLCs and a turn-based strategy spinoff

"For the longest time, we went one by one," Ata Sergey Nowak, co-founder of Torpor Games, the studio behind strategy game Suzerain, tells me, explaining the four year gap between the game's release and its first DLC. "Our games take a long time, our staff was very limited, and our financing was very project-to-project." So it was a little surprising he was also telling me Torpor are today announcing not one but three new projects - two DLCs and a spin-off. All of which are due to be released before their next flagship title, The Conformist.

Each of the three newly announced projects will take you deeper into the world of Suzerain, and let you see its states and people from new perspectives. But, Torpor aren't only making these games to expand Suzerain, they're also using it as a defence against a punishing industry.

In the original Suzerain, you play Anton Rayne, the newly-elected president of Sordland, a fictional country in a fictional land going through very real political upheaval. Although it's presented as a visual novel it is also very much a strategy game and an RPG and, as Sin said in her early coverage of the game, that presentation "lets Suzerain be personal in a way that few political games are".

Following its release, Suzerain found a devoted audience and acclaim (not least among you lot), but Kingdom of Rizia amplified that success. The DLC moves to a different country on the fictional continent and puts you into the decadent shoes of the newly enthroned King Romus Toras, just as the nation faces a rise in activity from its anti-monarchist movement. The number of people playing Suzerain concurrently more than tripled – "our launch peak was a thousand for Suzerain, and with Rizia we went up 3,400," Nowak says. It not only showed Torpor they could tell new stories in Suzerain's world but that spike of players caught the eye of several investors who could make that happen. Late last year, the studio took investment from Sisu Game Ventures, 1Up Ventures, and Krafton.

As a result of that funding, later this year, Torpor Games will be releasing Suzerain Stories: The Neutral Lens on Steam. It is a smaller narrative DLC set across some of the same historical events of Suzerain and Kingdom of Rizia, but seen from the perspective of journalist Ilias Morris, host of The Neutral Lens, an international news program.

As a journalist, you aren't seeing what's happening in the world as the leader of a single nation, you're seeing every event as it impacts a continent. You'll choose what questions to ask your guests, what facts to include in your coverage of stories, and how to allocate your team's limited resources to ensure you're getting stories for your viewers that aren't overtly influenced by the Suzerain's different factions.

The original Suzerain and the Rizia DLC start at different points on the world's timeline, but they both end on the same date. Your save files from one campaign can be imported into the other, so the choices you make for Sordland, playing as President Anton Rayne, are reflected in the world you see as King Romus Toras in Rizia. The Neutral Lens won't be part of the canon in the same way and it is a smaller expansion, but it is still part of that same history. "[As] a TV show host, you're covering these things that are happening in our lore," Nowak explains. "It's maybe a bit more compact, it's cheaper, it's smaller, but that's a way to keep [our] audience engaged and talk about all these other countries, and also explore a more personal touch with our storytelling."

Following that, Torpor plan to release Wars of Suzerain, a turn-based strategy game putting you in the general's chair for one of the continent's major conflicts. Expanding on the war game mechanics introduced in Kingdom of Rizia, Wars of Suzerain will be a standalone game and the most significant departure from the visual novel style of Suzerain. However, Nowak says it's still very much Torpor's take on a strategy game: "We will highlight human costs [and] there will be personal dramas, but they will be light."

Nowak hopes Wars of Suzaerain will open their fictional world up to new types of players while holding onto what earned them their original fans. "Our games have a lot of story and narrative and we try to talk about political subjects, sociological subjects, about the greyness and human morality question, all these things, but," he says, "there is a part of the game's audience that actually wants a bit more systems engagement. That was when the Wars of Suzerain idea came."

Finally, Torpor will release Suzerain: Socialist Republic of Galmland. Similar in scope to Kingdom of Rizia, this is a major nation-focused expansion, where you play as Premier Vigdis Gjalmir, leader of Galmland's Communist government. It will be a canon expansion, in which your choices as Sordland and Rizia's leaders can be reflected in your Galmland campaign.

One of the main challenges you'll face as Premier Vigdis Gjalmir is navigating your status as a lesser partner in the Contanan Security Pact. Similar to the Soviet Union, this is a collection of communist nations overseen by a powerful central power, you'll face many challenges to your national autonomy within this powerful alliance.

"Every project is helping each other," Nowak says of Torpor's rapidly filling plate. Though, he also admits there are cons to the pros. "Having multiple projects helps you learn different things and transfer, but it also dilutes attention." Wherever possible, Torpor are trying to reduce that risk. Neutral Lens is largely being worked on by freelancers who contributed to Suzerain, and they're working under a full-time game director. While Wars of Suezerain is being developed by a newly-built studio. And, following the release of the Galmland DLC, the teams will join The Conformist team.

If the Stories DLC is particularly successful, Torpor can make another – "There's all these little opportunities to tell interesting stories of interesting places and perspectives and cultures and open up more of our universe. Maybe a football manager in one story, maybe a judge" – but if that's the case, it won't be pulling developers away from The Conformist. Likewise, if Wars of Suzerain is so successful it demands more attention, the separate studio can scale up. "We're very flexible because the games industry has become very volatile," Nowak says, explaining why Torpor are announcing so many new titles. "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."

Following Rizia's success, Torpor went in search of funding not only to ensure they had the money to make The Conformist, but also so they could continue expanding Suzerain at the same time. They'll be working on The Conformist for several years yet, and leaving Suzerain for that long wasn't an option. "We cannot really act like the old games, where we just vanish and then come [back] with something interesting," he says. "We don't have that luxury and it would be mistreating our community. Our community actively wants more content. Every month, they're talking about our games, about our characters, about what we're doing."

"This is the strategy, this is the idea," Nowak explains, "to build the IP in different perspectives. Different mechanics all within the Suzerain universe framework, keep the audience engaged, keep the business revenues and financial states in a healthy way, and diverge from an all your eggs in one basket strategy. The goal is to be at the level of Warhammer, at the level of Star Wars, at the level of Paradox Interactive scale."

Also, just in case you were worried that I spend 40 minutes talking only about business strategy, have no fear, this is not Gamesindustry.biz, I'll have a lot more going up on The Neutral Lens, Wars of Suzerain, and the Galmland expansion in the coming days.