Across projects like Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Eternal Darkness, and Too Human, Denis Dyack has consistently explored ideas that push beyond conventional game design structures. Whether through psychological systems, cinematic storytelling, or experimental mechanics, his work has often centered around the idea that games should evolve as a medium rather than simply iterate on familiar formulas.

That philosophy continues with Deadhaus Sonata, an upcoming cooperative action RPG developed by Apocalypse Studios. Positioned as a spiritual successor to Blood Omen in spirit rather than structure, the game blends persistent world systems, deterministic progression mechanics, simulation-driven design, and large-scale narrative ambitions into a long-term community-focused experience centered around the undead.

In our interview, Dyack discusses the project’s core design philosophy, the challenges of building systemic RPG mechanics around concepts like history and player memory, and how technologies such as celestial simulation, deterministic world states, and persistent storytelling are influencing the game’s structure.

Deadhaus Sonata has been described as a spiritual successor to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. What ideas or philosophies from that era of game development did you most want to revisit and evolve?

Denis Dyack, CEO of Apocalypse: We are bringing back the spirit of the games that were lost, like Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. Our goal is to create richly developed worlds, sprawling casts of characters, a large array of voice actors, a power fantasy where you are a monster among men, in a large, unexplored world full of deep history and ripe for exploration. 

True to the nature of Blood Omen, Deadhaus Sonata is very distinct from anything that came before it. When Blood Omen launched, there was really nothing truly like it before, and now the same can be said for Deadhaus Sonata:

1. A narrative on a huge scale. In fact, there may be more narrative in Deadhaus than in any of my previous titles combined. We already have 13 hours of audio dramas (setting the scene for world-building), and the demo includes hours of additional voice-over for story and lore. We are just starting. 
2. A persistent world where player choice changes the world permanently
3. Community content and stories have already been created
4. There are 7 classes to play, not just a vampire. Additionally, there will be Revenants, Liches, Ghouls, Banshees, Wraiths, and Wights.
5. We have a Tarot Card Skill System - designed for constant discovery and diversification of the classes
6. A deterministic loot system that is based on quantum theory
7. The ultimate vision is to have players craft the story and lore for the game and ultimately pass it on to them after we are done.
8. Finally, with the Eternity technology, the game is designed to outlast us and given to gamers, who will ultimately control its future.

So, like Blood Omen, we are trying to create something unlike anything else when it launches. Ironically, creating a spiritual successor for Blood Omen and making it exactly like Blood Omen would be antithetical to its origin. Therefore, to be a spiritual successor to Blood Omen, it would have to be very, very different by definition.

Across projects like Blood Omen, Eternal Darkness, and now Deadhaus Sonata, your games often emphasize atmosphere, narrative systems, and psychological immersion over straightforward action. How has your design philosophy evolved over the years?

Denis Dyack: Since Blood Omen, I have had the rare opportunity to work with some of the great masters of video gaming, such as Mr. Miyamoto, who created The Legend of Zelda and Mario, and Mr. Kojima, who created Metal Gear Solid. Working with them was amazing and inspiring.

Since that time, I have been working away on novel ideas, trying to craft a synthesis of where the game becomes a living, breathing narrative. Where visuals, gameplay, technology, audio, and storytelling merge into something greater than the sum of its parts and something gamers have not seen before. So the goal is to provide that great straightforward action, but with much more behind it, seamlessly integrated. We ended up with a combination of quantum theory and a combination of the latest technologies.

Deadhaus Sonata blends cooperative action RPG gameplay with persistent world systems, procedural generation, and narrative-driven design. What were the core pillars guiding the project from the beginning?

Denis Dyack: The core pillars for Deadhaus are:

• Understand that we work for gamers and create something worthy of their time.
• Create something new and innovative.  Get away from marketing-driven checklist paint-by-numbers game design that has destroyed AAA games, now infecting the independent development scene.
• Create something memorable for gamers and something worth returning to.

The game features highly systemic mechanics like weather simulation, celestial cycles, and deterministic world states. How are these simulation systems structured under the hood, and how deeply do they affect gameplay?

Denis Dyack: They are the foundation of the gameplay and the system's simulation. This system allows us to do things that have not been tried before. In Deadhaus Sonata, playing is crafting, and history is currency. Everything affects gameplay, from enemy behaviour to loot stats to the story itself. Everything matters, and as the game develops, we expect to show gamers things that are previously unimaginably compelling and that they will want to return to for years to come.

One of the more unique ideas discussed is loot and progression influenced by deterministic factors and player behavior. How does that system differ from more traditional randomized loot design?

Denis Dyack: This is a very deep question, and I feel it needs some explanation at many levels. One of the first things to understand in the gaming industry is that very little time is ever spent on research or experimentation, as making games is so difficult that once a successful design is found, it is generally mass-adopted by designers to save time. Thus, when Diablo first introduced RNG loot drop mechanics for various items 30 years ago, nothing new has really been tried since then.

This is a great, tried-and-true system, to be sure, and one that gamers really enjoy, but it comes with its own problems.  The first is that it is a casino mechanic modelled on a one-armed bandit, where the gameplay eventually devolves into mass clicking and players hoping for the adrenaline rush of the jackpot or an epic loot drop. This system can become addictive and certainly can lead to burnout, just like it can happen in a casino.

Another problem with this system is that its economy inevitably drives toward inflation, as developers constantly create better loot for gamers to find, to keep them coming back. This is effectively quantitatively easing into the gaming economies, constantly reducing the value of what players have gained (commodification). Gamers will not look at this issue from a macroeconomic perspective and simply describe it as “The Grind”. Everyone hates it, but nothing has ever been done about it for over 30 years.

What we are introducing is a completely different way of looking at loot that is more reflective of the real world, rather than just random chance. The first is that what you get is influenced by the state of the world: for example, the moon phase, what other players are doing, and your performance. The second concept to think about is your history and its influence.

This gives loot the potential to have value beyond stats, where you can take its history and assign it value to things. As an example, if you want a famous relic, say a sword, its craftsmanship (its stats) is certainly important, but if it was used by someone famous, its history has more relevance than its actual design.

Our system allows us to model the value of things based on history; thus, you can get things that become more valuable over time, things that are unique to players (as everyone has their own history), and the ideas and potential that explode from here. In a sense, we are quantizing the memories and actions of players to create something new. The undiscovered country, and we are still early in development, but this system has unimaginable potential.

From a technical standpoint, the game has gone through multiple engine transitions over the years, including Open 3D Engine, Unity, and now Unreal Engine 5. What lessons did you learn during those shifts, and why did UE5 ultimately become the right fit?

Denis Dyack: Yes, haha, don’t forget CryEngine, and Lumberyard too! We've experimented with almost every gaming technology to create the ultimate gaming experience. All the engines have their strengths and weaknesses, and in the end, we went with the most technically advanced and well-rounded option: Unreal 5. We found some of the new directions the engine was taking were really groundbreaking and outside the box, which matched our ambitions for Deadhaus and thus our final choice. Frankly, the team also really loved using it the most.

Can you walk us through the studio’s current production pipeline, particularly how art, design, and engineering collaborate on a systems-heavy RPG like this?

Denis Dyack: Deadhaus Sonata defies convention and requires everyone on the team to understand how things work. The narrative influences gameplay, and gameplay influences art. Art reflects the possibilities of complex deterministic systems affecting code. The technology and audio flow together to create a holistic experience. Therefore, everyone really needs to understand what we are doing to push things forward. With hard work and research, this can lead to some very interesting designs. Let's take the celestial clock as an example (inside scoop):

Denis Dyack: The gears are accurately modelled and accurately reflect proper mechanical rotations; our audio engineer, Felipe Braz, who loves clocks, helped to design this.

The design is inspired by the Antikythera Device, speculated to be an analogue computer used by the Ancient Greeks, and built around 100BC (an historical aberration).

If you look closely at the planet simulation, you will notice that the design is Ptolemaic, with the sun orbiting Malorum, like the Antikythera Device. Although not exactly right, it is still very accurate.

Deadhaus Sonata places players in the role of the undead rather than traditional heroes. How did that reversal influence the game’s narrative direction, faction design, and world-building?

Denis Dyack: I have always had a fascination with the undead, and want to do something out of the gate that was immediately different from the norm. It is a great advantage to write from the perspective of the undead, because so much of it has been explored in horror and gothic literature; however, very rarely, if at all, from their perspective. In a sense, it is a rare opportunity to describe the House of the Dead in such a way. Exploring Deadhaus as a religious superstructure of semi-immortal beings is fascinating. We have gone to great lengths in world-building, creating history over 25,000 years before the start of the game (gamers can explore this in-game or here on our lore page (Lore - Deadhaus Sonata). We have ambitious plans for world-building. 

Deadhaus is only the beginning, however, as there are 8 other houses, each with its own agenda, that will be introduced, creating fertile ground for endless storytelling. Different houses will introduce different stories, different classes and perspectives. Play as Empyrean, the house of angels, or Malorum, a house of primal forces. The potential is unimaginably exciting for us, and we hope gamers will love it as much as we do.

Your games have historically experimented with unconventional systems, such as the sanity effects in Eternal Darkness. Do you still see systemic experimentation as essential to pushing the medium forward?

Denis Dyack: Yes, that is a very precise and thoughtful question. To push the medium forward, we must understand that “The Medium is the Message” and be systematic, learning from both successes and failures. Have a deep understanding of technology, how it affects the medium, and how best to utilize it. Apply new and previously unrelated disciplines in order to introduce something new.

As an example, I met some of the top quantum physicists before I started Apocalypse. I was inspired by what I had learned from them and felt compelled to apply this to video games.

Here is a video clip that inspired the deterministic system in Deadhaus Sonata:

Denis Dyack: Imagine an RPG system based on your history, not just arbitrary stats that are increased. You are your history, you are your past, and thus, everything you do affects the world around you. Is it not time that we apply the best understanding of the universe and of time and space to a video game system? We think so.

The game is planned as a long-term, community-driven experience with persistent systems and ongoing evolution. How has modern live development changed the way you think about designing RPGs compared to the late ’90s and early 2000s?

Denis Dyack: When I first started thinking about story and world building in 90s, and early 2000s, it was the traditional type of storytelling you saw in books and film, where you would sit back and take it all in passively. In those days, storytelling in games was very weak, and even presenting something unorthodox was shocking. I was told that doing something like Legacy of Kain was impossible. 

Today, the medium and technology have advanced so much that we now have the opportunity to move beyond the traditional narrative structure where gamers sit back and just take the story in. Now, we can allow players to take part in and own the story themselves. Imagine thousands of gamers authoring the world-building simply by playing, and the fan base surpassing the original creators' dreams.

This RPG design is worth pursuing, and I think it's a worthy gift to gamers who deserve an elevated experience in the massive industry they now support.

Looking back at your career—from Blood Omen and Eternal Darkness to Deadhaus Sonata—what do you think has remained most consistent about the kinds of experiences you want to create?

Denis Dyack: I think the consistency has been trying to evolve the medium of video games into something new. My past games have all been different, but each time we tried to incorporate new elements into the experience to increase engagement. For Legacy of Kain, it was voice acting and narrative; for Eternal Darkness, it was an intuitive camera and a sanity system that empowered the notion of psychological horror. For Too Human, loading was seamless.

For Deadhaus, the goal is to create a world where gamers' memories and experiences are not only a key part of the experience but also the foundation for gameplay, providing a compelling reason to return to the universe they have created and will eventually own.

Denis Dyack, CEO of Apocalypse

Interview conducted by David Jagneaux