Unleashing Strategy: How Chimera Entertainment Forged “Songs of Silence” with Photon’s Power

Developing Songs of Silence multiplayer with Photon Quantum was a key step in bringing Chimera Entertainment’s ambitious vision to life. Creating a strategy game with innovative real-time battles and a robust multiplayer component presents unique challenges, especially when aiming for both deep single-player lore and dynamic competitive play.

Chimera Entertainment, an independent studio with a mission to create imaginative, high-quality games, found themselves at the forefront of this complexity with Songs of Silence. Their core problem was building a networking foundation capable of supporting fast-paced, real-time battles with many simulated entities, while simultaneously allowing the team to focus on the intricate gameplay and balancing act required for both single-player and multiplayer modes.

Enter Photon’s Quantum framework. By designing their architecture around multiplayer from the start and leveraging Photon’s robust and scalable networking, Chimera Entertainment was able to overcome these hurdles, ensuring smooth gameplay, global reach, and a consistent development experience. This allowed them to concentrate their energy where it truly counts: on crafting an engaging gameplay experience and fostering a vibrant community.

“Photon’s technology let us focus on building the experience we wanted for our players, instead of getting lost in networking challenges. Their support and infrastructure helped us deliver smooth multiplayer, so we could put our energy where it counts: on gameplay and community.” – Chimera Entertainment

Key Takeaways:

• Smooth Multiplayer Delivery: Photon’s technology helped deliver a smooth multiplayer experience, crucial for the game’s fast-paced battles.
• Stability and Global Reach: Provided the stability and global reach needed, especially for large audiences during livestreams, including in regions like China.
• Scalability and Load Balancing: At launch, Chimera trusted Photon to handle scaling and load balancing, which freed the development team to focus on players and gameplay.
• Consistent Architecture: Chimera built a consistent architecture across different game modes by designing the game around multiplayer from the start.
• Developer Focus: Photon enabled Chimera to focus on gameplay and balancing instead of getting lost in networking challenges.
• High-Performance Real-Time Battles: Quantum’s high-performance nature was perfect for real-time battles with lots of simulated entities.

How Photon Quantum Powers Songs of Silence Multiplayer

Could you provide a brief overview of Chimera Entertainment, its history, and its overarching vision in the game development industry?

Chimera Entertainment is an independent game development studio and was founded in 2006 in Munich, Germany, with a simple mission: create imaginative, high-quality games. Our journey began with PC projects, quickly growing through collaborations with international partners and breakthrough titles on mobile like Angry Birds Epic. Today, with over 18 years of experience and a diverse portfolio, we remain driven by creativity and a commitment to crafting games that leave a lasting impression.

What makes Songs of Silence a fresh take on the strategy genre, particularly with its integration of dynamic real-time battles and the use of Battle Cards?

With Songs of Silence, we set out to make the strategy game we always wanted to play ourselves. One that fits within daily life, not with marathon gaming sessions. The battles are fast-paced and resolve in minutes, not hours, so you can play a full game even on a busy evening. Instead of constant micromanagement, you influence the outcome with unique Battle Cards tied to your heroes and factions. You still get the big strategic decisions and depth you’d expect from classic strategy, but in a distilled form: every choice matters, every battle feels dramatic, and there’s always time for “just one more round”, even if you only have an hour to play.

Songs of Silence offers both an immersive story campaign and multiplayer skirmish maps for up to 6 players. Can you elaborate on the importance of both single-player and multiplayer experiences to your game’s vision?

Sometimes you want to explore a new world, soak up the lore & story, and move at your own pace. That’s the heart of our single-player campaign. Other times, you want to play with or against real people and outsmart them using every system the game has to offer, and that’s where our multiplayer shines. For us, both experiences are essential.

Single-player modes, whether campaign or skirmish, give you time and space to experiment with cards, armies, and tactics without any pressure.
Multiplayer lets you compete or collaborate with real players, providing challenges and interactions that no AI can truly match.

The two modes feed into each other. The campaign teaches you the systems and unlocks new heroes, while multiplayer skirmishes keep the meta evolving and push us to refine balance. Together, they keep the game fresh and engaging, no matter what you’re in the mood for.

Given the ambitious scope of Songs of Silence, particularly its innovative real-time battles with quick-reaction commands and its robust multiplayer component, what were the main development challenges you anticipated or encountered?

Getting the pacing and feel right was a big challenge. Battles needed to be short and exciting but still strategic and engaging. We used small tricks to make this happen, like allowing players to speed up time or slowing things down slightly when you pick a Battle Card to help with timing and placement. And as with all strategy games of this type, developing a suitable enemy AI was always a challenge. Making it act convincingly required several iterations of development and playtesting before we circled in on a good solution.

Developing and advertising a multiplayer campaign simultaneously to a single player experience presents unique hurdles. What were the specific difficulties or concerns related to this aspect of Songs of Silence? For example, was balancing the game for both modes a significant workload?

Balancing both single-player and multiplayer was also a major hurdle. Not all enemies in the campaign are exactly the same as those in skirmish or multiplayer, but overall the game uses the same balancing and AI across modes. Achieving this meant lots of playtesting, listening to player feedback, and digging into game data. It is still something we continue to work on and improve, especially as we add new factions and units.

How did Photon’s technology integrate into your development pipeline for Songs of Silence? Can you give a brief description of the game and netcore architecture. How is Quantum embedded into the game?

Songs of Silence multiplayer runs on Photon’s Quantum framework. Each client runs a local, deterministic Quantum simulation, exchanging only player input over the network. Quantum manages input distribution, frame prediction, and rollbacks to make sure everyone stays in sync. Its high-performance nature is perfect for our real-time battles with lots of simulated entities.

All core gameplay logic is written in a Unity-agnostic way based on Quantum’s structure. We pay special attention to data syncing to maintain a reliable deterministic simulation. We also use Quantum’s Bot SDK, with behavior trees playing a big part in our AI, and Photon lobbies and rooms power our matchmaking.

Because the game blends real-time and turn-based modes, we use Quantum commands for all communication through a Photon relay server. The real-time module is fast-paced, with many agents simulated at once. The turn-based component required extra work to record and play events in a controlled sequence. Using a single network implementation for everything was challenging, but ultimately worth it.

How did Photon’s technology facilitate the simultaneous development and advertising of the multiplayer campaign, helping you overcome potential balancing issues or technical hurdles between modes?

By designing everything around multiplayer from the start, Photon made it easier for us to maintain one consistent architecture. Having robust and scalable networking in place meant we could focus on gameplay and balancing, knowing the tech would handle load and connectivity issues.

Did Photon’s technical support, documentation, or community resources play a role in your team’s successful implementation?

We mostly relied on the Photon community on Discord, particularly the “Circle” server, for support and tips. The documentation was important, but also the community discussions often helped us figure out how to implement specific features or solve technical challenges.

You hosted many livestreams specifically for multiplayer gameplay, challenging developers against the community. How impactful was this experience? (And how did Photon’s technology ensure a smooth and engaging interaction during these livestreams?)

Hosting multiplayer livestreams is a big deal for us. It gave us a chance to connect with our community, get immediate feedback, and stress-test the tech in real time. Photon provided the stability and global reach we needed, especially with a large audience in regions like China.

What was your experience when launching the game with Photon and what challenges did you overcome in such a big release?

On launch, we could trust Photon to handle scaling and load balancing, which allowed us to focus on our players and the gameplay itself. Not having to worry about backend issues was a huge relief for the team.

Looking ahead, what are your future plans for Songs of Silence or other upcoming projects at Chimera Entertainment? How do you envision Photon continuing to support your innovative endeavors?

We have used Photon for previous projects and see many more opportunities to use it in our future real-time multiplayer games, whether for mobile or PC. Its flexibility and reliability make it a great choice for this job.

The Bottom Line

Building Songs of Silence multiplayer with Photon Quantum gave Chimera Entertainment exactly what they needed to bring their vision to life. By starting with a multiplayer-first approach and relying on Photon’s scalable, deterministic tech, the team could focus on what mattered most: creating fast, exciting battles and a rich strategy experience for players around the world.

The result was smooth multiplayer, a stable launch, and a game architecture that supports both single-player and competitive modes without compromise.

We’re proud to have been part of Chimera’s journey and look forward to supporting them as they continue to grow Songs of Silence and explore new multiplayer projects in the future.

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