THE WAGADU CHRONICLES

Pre-colonial influences and roleplaying thrive in this African fantasy

From Tolkien to D&D, the fantasy genre is primarily rooted in European influences, which makes The Wagadu Chronicles, an MMORPG set in a world inspired by precolonial African culture, an enticing prospect. But as studio founder and CEO Allan Cudicio explains, it's a world that has had to be built entirely from scratch. As a small team, Twin Drums is relying on procedural generation to create Wagadu, a purgatory formed from several archipelagos that its players fall into at the outset, and that shrinks and grows in accordance with its population. Cudicio takes us on a tour, pointing out each biome's influences from different regions of Africa, stressing how everything here is new: an indie developer working on, say, a medieval European fantasy game could find assets on the Unity store to start from, but Black creations are rarely afforded this privilege.