Interview with Anvil Game Studios | Holdfast Nation's at War on Console!
- Fletcher Wilkinson
- Jul 9
- 4 min read
I was lucky enough over the past 3 weeks to convene with Anvil Game Studios on their upcoming launch of Holdfast: Nations at War on Consoles. I have now been playing the game for over 100 hours and I was lucky enough to sit down with Andrew Farrugia (CEO & Game Director) of Anvil Game Studios to ask some questions about this upcoming release!
Could you tell us a little about Anvil Game Studios and what made you take the leap from PC development to Bring Holdfast to Consoles?
The game has been available on PC for quite some time now, constantly being updated through the years. We began to notice a trend particularly with the addition of WW1 Frontlines and the hype around it, we saw more and more people comment things along the lines of “is this on console?” which sparked our own question of “what if?” which ultimately led to the beginning of the monumental leap to consoles. We know that Holdfast will be a unique experience on consoles as there is no game like it really. It is a First and Third-Person Roleplay Shooter that supports 150 players on a single server where people are constantly interacting with each other instead of playing alone in one big beautiful battlefield.
We see tons of shooters on the market, but Holdfast really blew me away with the direction of the Napoleonic Wars. What was the inspiration & decision to go down this route?
A love for the time period and history really! The game's development was inspired by the Napoleonic wars with its bright uniforms, iconic line-battles and big warships from the age of sail.
Holdfast has an incredibly dedicated community with tons of different RolePlaying Servers, Regiments & More.
What has it been like to foster a community like this?
The game has been built with community interaction as a core focus, the large-scale multiplayer battles, and in-depth regimental gameplay and of course voice chat naturally encouraged players to form tight-knit groups and long-lasting communities through the in-game regiment structure.
The community is what makes Holdfast. Therefore, we keep an open line of communication pooling all the feedback and suggestions together to deliver updates, from small bug fixes and balance changes to new factions and quality of life updates driven by our beloved community. Giving a voice to our community is hugely important in fostering it around trust and a feeling of ownership.
I am curious, how long has it taken to develop for Console & were there any stumbling blocks?
Just over 2 years ago we started ! As much as we would have liked it to be all smooth sailing the reality is the game was built for PC and not console requirements, so we ran into quite a few bumps, a lot of optimizations on all fronts took place.
We planned for a much shorter development time to have the console version out but being an independently funded studio we still made the choice to keep going and will still make Holdfast available on consoles for the low price of $20. There is no “putting the cost on the gamers” from us!
We hear all the time on the Dev Side about the Series S & I know many will be curious, how was it to develop for this weaker console?
Ultimately, we focused on the weaker console first as generally speaking if we could hit our performance targets we could be fairly confident the others could. It was a struggle at times but many crashes later and targeted optimisations later we had a stable build that met the requirements. The largest issue with the Series S is the limited RAM which is why we are seeing developers choosing to not release on XBOX.
Let's throw a fun one in here. What is your favourite Clip or Moment from the Holdfast Community?
GIVE EM STEEEEL LAAADS !!!
It’s a moment that stuck with us so much that we even decided to feature it on our launch trailers which has been received quite well!
What are your future plans after the initial console release? Will there be expansions or a large roadmap?
We are excited for post release to get back to expanding the games content firstly with a big naval update lined up featuring many new maps and gameplay additions to the naval warfare front based on suggestions from the naval community, beyond that we have a few things in mind but don’t want to spoil the surprise just yet.
If you could give one tip to a new holdfast player, what would it be?
We recommend you join one of the many regiments early on. Even if you're just starting out and feel overwhelmed, a regiment will welcome you in, guide you, as well as bringing you along to one of the many privately hosted community events.
Is there anything else you would like to add to our Console Community?
We look forward to seeing you on the battlefields! There may or may not be a reward for taking down members of the dev team in game.
Thank you so much to the Andrew and the Team over at Anvil Game Studios for providing me with more insight and answering the questions. I cannot wait to see what the future holds for Holdfast especially with Consoles now arriving into the fray!
If you are interested in purchasing Holdfast: Nations at War, please click the link here:
You can check out my review of Holdfast: Nations at War down below to see if it is worth your time!
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