Meet François Alliot, creative director at Nerial

Left or right, penalty or pardon – Nerial has forged a compelling niche in the indie landscape with Reigns. Combining Tinder-style swiping with interactive storytelling, this unique blend has captivated a huge audience of aspiring rulers. Its success has also scored collaborations with loved franchises like the Game of Thrones, Three Kingdoms, and most recently, The Witcher.

We had the chance to speak with François Alliot, creative director and co-founder of Nerial, to learn about the beginnings of the studio, the inspiration behind their Reigning flagship series, and the process of developing Reigns: The Witcher.

I started in 2013, when I moved to London with my wife, Tamara, after having been a consultant in Paris for some time. My first game was a small project called Singular that helped me understand how to scope an indie game and get acquainted with the London indie scene – This is where I met Arnaud De Bock with whom we created Magic Shot in 2015 then Reigns in 2016.

Nerial was actually my nickname on the internet, so it seemed logical to keep the name as we built the studio around it. After Reigns, we had a close relationship with Devolver and decided to join them when they were looking to acquire studios.

Oh yes, definitely. It’s still our biggest success. It was a bit of a surprise for us; we saw the game was working very well, but we didn’t expect to reach millions of people.

I believe the environment of 2016, when we released Reigns, is very different from today, especially on mobile. Back then, there was still a strong premium market, no subscription services, and a very different way to acquire players and market games.

I love them all. They all have something special, even the ones that didn’t find as big an audience as Reigns. I particularly enjoyed working on Card Shark, our picaresque card cheating simulator set in 18th century France. History and literature were my first love and main subject of study, so the development process for Card Shark was a great way to reconnect to my initial passions.

I think the original discussion about Reigns happened between Arnaud De Bock and myself in the Anchor pub in London back in 2015. Arnaud was on Tinder at the time and thought the swiping could be a great game mechanic. We came up with the idea of a king swiping regally left and right to answer his advisors, and from that emerged the whole concept of a mix of Tinder and Game of Thrones.

Accidents, meetings and admiration for other people’s work. For Her Majesty, we wanted a version with the Queen and started discussing with a friend, Leigh Alexander. For Game of Thrones, we were big fans and tentatively reached out, only to discover the showrunners were Reigns players and were completely on board!

It came down to Geralt’s interesting position in the sociopolitics of the Witcher universe. He’s an outcast, but still needed by anyone and everyone for his skills. He’s a magical being, but not a mage. He’s human – or at least was at some point – but isn't fully welcomed among humans anymore. On the flip side, he has affinities with the non-humans but still doesn’t quite belong there either.

With all that duality in mind, it made sense to keep the game centered around Geralt and use him as a conduit to bring the politics and complex relationships of the series. In Geralt’s shoes, the balancing act of the traditional Reigns gameplay loop becomes a struggle to maintain your precarious position in the world.