There aren't any screenshots available yet for Kivi's Underworld, the next action RPG from the creators of Depths of Peril. So instead, I've posted a screenshot of the game I'm reminded of when Kivi's Underworld developer Steven Peeler talks about the character development system.

Read the interview after the jump.

Tom Chick: The feature list for Kivi's Underworld says it's a 3D game. Wasn't your last game, Depths of Peril, a 2D game? Does this mean Kivi's Underworld uses a new engine?

Steven Peeler: Depths of Peril was 3D. It just uses a viewpoint that makes it less obvious. Kivi's Underworld uses a more advanced version of the Depths of Peril engine.

TC: You mention 20 characters in the feature list. Are the 20 characters the same as classes? If so, isn't 20 an awful lot? How are you distinguishing them all?

SP: Well, personally I call them mini-classes. They are each a different class, but they are much more simple than the classes in Depths of Peril. Twenty is a lot, but that is kind of the point. We want the player to have a wide variety of play options. Each of them has completely different skills to distinguish them from each other.

TC: You mention power-ups. What are these? It sounds like something you walk over for a temporary bonus, like the shrines in Diablo.

SP: In our case, power-ups are items that you pick up and can use whenever you want to, but you can only carry a few at a time. The power-ups do a variety of very different things. There are some like Brute Strength that do just give you a simple temporary bonus to damage. There are also ones like Flame Wall that creates an expanding wall of fire that does massive amounts of damage to any enemies in its path. There is even an invisibility power-up.

TC: You mention it's designed to be played in 15-30 minutes chunks. Do you get to an "ending" over the course of a play session?

SP: Yes. We have broken the game up into separate adventures that last around 15 to 30 minutes each. So you can play one quick adventure or you can keep playing as many adventures in a row that you want to.

TC: Can you describe a typical play session?

SP: Essentially you decide which adventure you want to play and then choose which character to play. You only have one character available at the very beginning though: Kivi. The other characters become available after you either recruit them in one of your adventures or unlock them in some other manner.

Each adventure usually has one to four quests, where quests can be required, optional, or even unknown. An unknown quest is usually a character that is hidden in a secret area. Now you actually adventure, explore, kill monsters, find secret areas, try to stay alive, and solve the quests. When you have finished all of the required quests for that adventure, assuming you live, you have "beaten" that adventure. When you have beaten an adventure, your final score determines how many skill points you get to spend on your characters. The game also unlocks different things after each adventure like the next adventure (obviously), different awards, bestiary entries, and any characters you recruited during the adventure.

After the adventure you can spend your skill points, look at your awards, look at the bestiary, replay any of the adventures that you have unlocked (for example to get a better score to unlock more skill points), or play the next adventure.

TC: Can I ask you for an example of what you mean when you mention "secrets to discover"?

SP: There are lots of secret areas in the game hidden behind crumbling walls, hidden doors, and illusions. Most of the time there are goodies that boost your score or boost your abilites, but sometimes there are even hidden characters in these.

TC: Finally, as someone who gave you a lot of grief about the name of Depths of Peril, allow me to say you've done much better work on the name. It makes me wonder 'Who's Kivi?' and 'What's going on down in that underworld of hers?' I mean, his. So Kivi's a dude? Isn't that a chick's name?

SP: Thanks. I still hate naming things. Yes, Kivi is a guy. I'm actually not sure where the name came from anymore, but Kivi is the lumen in the original Depths of Peril story.