Here I speak with Seven Volts CEO, Pourya Arami, about how the Seven Volts crew came together, their love of Command and Conquer and details of Commanding Nations itself. Hit the break for the full Q&A.

The Reticule – First up, can you give me some background to the team and how you all came together? Is this your first game?

Pourya Arami – Seven Volts games has been in the making for almost two years now and Commanding Nations has been something I’ve been trying to realize for the last 8 years, but I just could not find the right person to get it off the ground with until I met Charlie [lead programmer and co-founder], who had the same passion and love for RTS as I did, with his skills in programming and mine in the business and design side of games, it was a logical step to team up. We worked on the game for a while and slowly we expanded the team with talented individuals who all excel at what they do. The current team is made up of Charlie, Georgii, Tristan, Dino, James, Jimi, Ligeiro and Anton. Our Community managers are currently Natan and Tiemen who are assisted by Discord moderators. We also have Jérémie who is responsible for the background story of the game and the lore. I am working more on the business side of things and assisting the team wherever I can.

For me, this is not my first game, I have worked on different titles in the past and have been a part of the gaming industry for over 15 year. For some in our team, this will be their first release while others have experience and have worked on other titles just like myself. I think the most important thing is how each individual in the team is a crucial part of the process and how we have been able to transform into this indie studio within this short amount of time.

The Reticule – Has it been a challenge getting a new team formed during the pandemic, are you all working remotely?

Pourya Arami – I think the most challenging thing for me was to find people who are qualified for their position. There are a ton of people who offered help and wanted to be part of the project, but our promise has always been to redefine RTS both visually and mechanically while honouring the games we grew up with. So yes it was extremely challenging finding the right people but we are all like one big family and I am honestly honoured to be working with such driven individuals.

We are all working remotely from all over the world. We have members from Brazil, UK, South Africa, Ukraine, The Netherlands and Uruguay to name a few.

The Reticule – What game engine are you using to build Commanding Nations, and what made you chose it?

Pourya Arami – Commanding Nations is using Unity, we have our own custom tools built on top and are using tools such as Houdini to speed up certain processes.

Unity was the engine of choice because most of us had years of experience with it. We did not want to experiment with other engines and decided to choose one which we are extremely comfortable with

The Reticule – So you’ve got quite a diverse group working on Commanding Nations, are you all lifelong Command and Conquer fans?

Pourya Arami – I got into the universe with Red Alert 2, one of my best friends showed the game to me when I was visiting, and I immediately fell in love. I bought the game the same day and started playing it, but what really got me hooked was Generals, and the fact that we had acceptable internet when the game came out, so I could play with other people. I’ve spent so many hours in that game and have some of the most beautiful moments of my childhood thanks to that game, it really was the go to game me and my best friends played and play to this day every week. I think its fair to assume how disappointed I was when Generals 2 got cancelled and I was even more disappointed that I never had the chance to try it. That was the catalyst that pushed me to want to create my own RTS game.

The rest of team is quite split in that regard. While Charlie is also a lifelong Command and Conquer fan, Georgi for example loves RTS in general and so do the other members of the team, who are actually much younger and didn’t grow up with Command and Conquer.

The Reticule – I fell in love with Command and Conquer with Red Alert 2 as well, and found Generals a fun next step on the RTS journey. However I wasn’t as fond of the resurrected Red Alert and Tiberium games which followed. The Command and Conquer community will probably want to know your take on the post-Generals direction that series took, and how that has influenced your design decisions with Commanding Nations?

Pourya Arami – That’s a fair question. To be honest I believe that the games post-Generals did not really do anything to try to revive the RTS genre or did anything memorable for me. Were they fun games? Yes, but I always try to think about what inspired the creators at Westwood studios to create Command and Conquer instead of trying to draw inspiration out of titles that came before Commanding Nations. Will Commanding Nations be heavily influenced by the games that were fun in the Command and Conquer universe? Yes.

Are we copying those games and trying to do what has already been done? Absolutely not. Every other genre managed to move on and reinvent itself to survive and I think that’s our main responsibility at Seven Volts, to create a game where players of the older games feel at home but at the same time introduce all these new and exciting elements that attracts a new generation of players.

The Reticule – So what are you bringing to the RTS genre which is new and going to give the genre a rebirth in a world where MOBAs now dominate?

Pourya Arami – Before I start, I do have to say that we are keeping some elements as a surprise for our Kickstarter, but we are really putting the focus on the community aspect. This means that you can create your own team, play together and compete in tournaments and have access to the community at all times thanks to the integration which we will have with the website later down the road. So we are bringing it all together.

We are also creating a game that allows us to introduce new factions who each offer different ways of play, this is something which we took from the MOBA world. Our map designs are unlike any other RTS game out there, we are not only allowing extreme close ups and highly detailed worlds, but we are also trying to create maps that feel alive and will punish you if you don’t respect them.

For example, a direct path to a opponents base could lead you trough territories where civilians have occupied buildings and will attack your units who are passing by, this will force you to rethink your rush strategies and really adjust how you play the game. On top of that, we have recently promoted one of the level designers of Iron Harvest who is going to fully focus on taking our maps and concepts to an even higher level when it comes to strategic gameplay mechanics.

Now this is just a few of the things we are doing, but lets be clear about one thing, our goal is not to compete with other RTS games out there, our goal is to create a game where all RTS players eventually feel welcome and can find a faction that fits their play style. Commanding Nations will be an ongoing commitment for us and a game which will evolve even after release.

The Reticule – You’ve talked about the online side of things, but is there a campaign mode, or are we talking AI skirmish fights and online play only?

Pourya Arami – So the game is a multiplayer game only and yes you can go play skirmish if you like. we are not doing any campaign mode and it’s not in our near future plans seeing the cost which involves in creating a single player game. Commanding Nations offers ranked matches where you go against people with your own skill level, or custom games where you can customize most of the games elements to your liking and go against anyone you like, even AI, yes.

The Reticule – I’ve seen on Discord a recent decision was taken to move away from nation based factions to play on and to move towards character driven factions. What drove that decision?

Pourya Arami – The decision to move towards characters was because of two things. First, we wanted to create factions which had different layers to them. For example, while the Faction of Wolfgang and Yo Hong are both PMC’S, Zane’s faction is basically people of a nation coming together to fight to take back their land. At the same time we will have countries involved at a certain point and we are even thinking of things such as the cartel in Mexico who has access to a lot of firepower and basically has its own army.

The second reason was, we felt like we were insulting certain countries with Asia United and Scav and decided to fully back away from that. We highly respect each individual in our community and we don’t want to create a game where their countries are portrait as terrorist or evil, by making the story about individuals who play a major role in their nations search for power, we eliminated this.

The Reticule – You’ll be launching on Kickstarter in the near future. What can you reveal about your plans for the Kickstarter?

Pourya Arami – So it’s good to know that our Kickstarter backers will be the first to play the game and also help us define a ton of things, such as buffs/nerfs of factions. game improvements, what we should add or remove or adjust. So basically, they will have a lot to say in how the final game will play, so for anyone who wants to have influence, i would highly advise them to make sure to get ready for our Kickstarter. We hope to launch on Kickstarter end of August/early September.

For more on Commanding Nations, check out the official website here, follow the team on Twitter, or join them on Discord.

You’ll be able to befriend a motley crew as companions for your journey. What role will they play in the protagonist’s story, and what role will you play in their tales?

The basic idea behind the quests in Nighthawks is that each one looks at a distinct part of vampire life/fiction, and the companion characters are very much part of that. Veronica Castigliano, for instance, represents the isolation of immortality, while con-artist Maze represents the more whimsical cruelty of human/vampire relationships. Your presence in their stories varies, but ultimately determines how they handle the pain of their nature.

Together, they’re also something of a family of outcasts. There’s a reason why Nighthawks uses a bar as its social hub – it’s a place to hang out, shoot the breeze, plan and scheme. They’re as much a part of your story as you want them to be, but there are definitely times when even a powerful and successful vampire needs to call on friends for assistance.

Do you have a favourite companion or other NPC?

Quite a few! It’s always fun writing for Monika Vail, the openly cruel ball of ego who acts as vampire society’s crisis PR agent. She’s the one who helps cover up little transgressions like waking up in an alleyway covered in blood, while taking payment in snark. I’m also very fond of Lux and Maze, two of our signature characters. Lux in particular was the first NPC I came up with, with Ivy Dupler’s voice performance in the original demo being one of the big reasons why voice acting went from a Kickstarter stretch goal ‘maybe’ to a ‘no, we need voice acting’.

Vampire stories historically have strong elements of the erotic about them, how will the sexy content be handled in the game?

With consent, and hopefully, with care. While you can hunt, for instance, we don’t do that thing a lot of vampire games do, in considering sex workers to be guilt-free blood bags. I hate that trope. Likewise, all sexytimes are consensual. Your nightclub has a pretty bartender, for instance, Becca, and a few people have asked if you can romance her. The answer is no, because as your employee, there’s a power disparity there that just can’t be overlooked.

But like you say, vampires are sexy! On the player side, we mostly aim for playful naughtiness – probably best summed up by the fact that there’s no strip club in the game, but your magician companion Madame Lux works in a burlesque house. Most of the main cast, male and female, have a turn getting naked at some point, but you usually have to pursue those paths, there’s a comic element to most, and expect a lot of teasing with conveniently placed hands and hair and similar, instead of showing anything overly explicit. We think it’s a good balance, and much more fun than just doing a fade-to-black followed by “Well, sexytimes just happened.”

That sounds a really mature approach to handling that kind of content. But I have to ask, can your character lose their soul by having sex?

Most vampires agree, one of the few perks is being able to get groiny without having to worry about consequences. So, no, you can enjoy your moments of perfect happiness/fanservice.

One of the special aspects of Nighthawks is that you don’t create your character in the classical RPG sense, rather you establish your Blood Origin. What can you tell us about how that will work, and how your choices here will impact on the wider game?

There are mechanical reasons, but the main impetus for the character creation system being as it is, where you largely create your Sire rather than your own character, is that I wanted everyone to be able to feel like they could be the star. Male, female, NB, trans, white, black, whatever. Everyone deserves to be a badass vampire, and working on the Sunless games really highlighted how important that is to so many people who aren’t often well represented. We ask for a name, but it’s explicitly stated that anything else – that’s your own business.

As for how things work, the big choices you make are your blood origin (New World, Old Country, Continental, Imperial and Mandarin), and an archetype for your sire (The Scholar, The Hedonist, The Aristocrat, The Shadow, The Warrior). Again, we try not to lock anything down too much. What brought you to them and why you left them is entirely up to you, so that you can either dream up a complex backstory, or just click the one that gives you the right stats.

Overall, these aren’t super important for the game itself – a few characters will comment on your heritage, and it affects which character welcomes you to the city at the start, but I wanted to focus more on the player’s decisions and how they shape their destiny. The more important decisions are which vampire power or powers they gave you, and your personal sphere of knowledge (Culture, Technology, Academic, Street, Occult). These both give you special options, and slightly tweak how your character sees the world. A regular character for instance might see a computer as ‘an old computer’, while one with Technology will see ‘an ancient 8086 PC’. Just little things that you can easily do with text to add a little spice based on your choices.

The city you live in, and own a nightclub in is promising to be a living city, with others leading their own lives without everything revolving around you. How much variety will players experience in the living city with different playthroughs?

Hopefully a decent amount, especially in terms of callbacks to previous decisions! Just as a basic example, when you first take over your nightclub, you get to decide whether it continues as the 70s style retro place that you’ve been seeing, or completely overhaul it to be a super modern place full of lasers and smoke machines or a dark and moody goth club, as well as picking what uniforms your long-suffering bartenders Becca and Fabian have to wear. Each major act is a month long, with the overall game taking place over two years, and every click moves the clock forwards, so it’s fair to say that while there’s a lot to do, you won’t be able to do everything.

Being able to overhaul the decoration in your club sounds fantastic. How much can you do with the club if you invest your time and efforts in running it?

Each week you have a meeting with Gideon – your ‘vassal’, and the guy who handles the day-to-day management in exchange for your blood. I didn’t want things to get too bogged down in detail, but during those meetings you’re able to exert higher-level control, like, say, “we’re now profitable enough that we can hire a better DJ” or “I want an escape tunnel built into my basement Sanctuary in the event that an angry mob shows up with torches” or “Let’s let local drug queenpin Dahlia Riordan sell her product here in exchange for a cut of her profits.” Basically, you get to make the fun decisions, while Gideon does boring stuff like payroll.

You’ve previously talked about ripping out your original first act, and completely re-working it. What will the early game look like now, and is there one overarching goal for the character you create?

Act 1 always had the same basic idea – you come to the city, alone, broke and starving, before – for plot reasons – being in the right place at the right time to take over a nightclub currently owned by a vampire gangster, Tancredi. The problem with this was that the quests rather inevitably involved things like shaking down an NPC for money, with the result that you felt like a low level GTA player rather than, y’know, a vampire. It just wasn’t fitting the fantasy.

The way I fixed this is that now you’re partly in the city on your own specific quest, to track down a guy called Elijah Morrow – the former vassal of your Sire who for whatever reason has the last item connecting you to your mortal life, a ring, a locket or a wristwatch. This gives you more of a reason to poke and pry into Tancredi’s business and some of the dodgier things he’s up to, which gets us right into cool vampire stuff and turns the crapwork into a means to that end.

How much freedom will players have to do their own vampire thing without focusing on the main storyline?

The main story – I won’t get too into it, but essentially it’s about two things, your rise to (and perhaps fall from…) power, and the state of human/vampire society as we approach ten years of living side by side. It’s intentionally structured so that while there are important things to you, you get a ton of downtime for following companion stories that interest you, to encounter weird stuff on the streets, and to build up your nightclub empire. On the vampire specific side, becoming rich and successful means that you’re in a better place to buy blood rather than having to, ahem, ‘acquire’ it, but you’re always able to… shall we say… hunt fresh.

If you like what you’ve heard about Nighthawks, you can find and wishlist the game on Steam.

Hi Richard, how are things going, are the cats helping out with work on Nighthawks?

My executive producer Humbug is a stalwart PA, reminding me of all the important events in my diary, such as when to put down kitty treats, the appropriate time to buy more kitty treats, and regular updates on the state of kitty treats in his bowl. He’s also my C# consultant.

The Kickstarter campaign completed successfully back in October 2018, how stressful was that whole process?

My hair was brown at the start of it… Kickstarter is super stressful, especially in the middle of a campaign. That’s when you’ve (hopefully) had the big flurry of excitement, and then have to maintain momentum. I said at the time that, while obviously we wanted to hit our goal, an ‘honourable failure’ would at least have some dignity. Of course, that’s easy to SAY…

You’ve recently had your Steam and GOG pages launch, have you seen an immediate increase to the buzz about Nighthawks?

People are happy about it! As far as buzz goes, I think that right now it’s more important that we don’t upstage any of those plucky Nighthawks tribute games. You know. Like Bloodlines 2.

In a recent Kickstarter update, you revealed that an Ouya release was off the table. But you didn’t mention OnLive, was that a conscious decision?

I don’t like to kick a dead horse while it’s a thin layer of jam.

More seriously, you’re talking about potential beta testing later this year, is that going to be fairly locked down or are you also going down the Early Access route?

It’s going to be pretty locked down. We’ll be inviting people to join the beta, but very much in a ‘You are going to be seeing the game at its worst so that we can make it its best’ kind of way. I think Early Access is great for systemic stuff, but a bad fit for narrative-driven things.

This is your first fully original project, after your work on Sunless Seas and Skies, what brought you to start working on Nighthawks?

Honestly, it was something of an accident. While working on the Sunless games, I started pondering how cool it would be to see that kind of style mixed with VTM: Bloodlines. Later, I got the urge to finally download and play around with Unity, and the idea was still in my mind. I wasn’t really intending it to be a thing, just a fun excuse to Make Something. Things escalated a bit when I tweeted about it in a joking ‘Hey, anyone think this would be cool?’ way, and… uh… was contacted by the head of White Wolf saying ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’ This was before Bloodlines 2 was announced, of course. I pitched a V:TM game that they unfortunately didn’t go for, but by this point it was clear that there was some potential interest in the basic idea.

Of course, this meant creating a new setting, and Nighthawks is a very different game to World of Darkness – in addition to the fact that vampires have been exposed and living amongst people for eight years at the start of the game, it’s generally a lot lighter, more about friendship than chains of blood and money, and with a running them that tonight might suck, but tomorrow has the potential to be better. Of course, that just makes the darker bits even more so…

Are we talking, Buffy or Angel levels of darkness?

In a couple of stories? Darker. Even vampires agree, many vampires are… not nice.

Vampire The Masquerade is clearly an influence on Nighthawks, but what else has informed the design of the game? Did you dust off some ancient texts to learn more about historic vampire mythology?

Nighthawks mostly uses the pop-culture versions of vampires – for instance, in the legends, there’s really nothing about turning to ash in the sun or anything of that ilk. That was very much a cinema invention – in particular, the movie Nosferatu. The main reason that I was interested in doing a vampire RPG in particular though is that the basic rules offer some really interesting gameplay mechanics, like needing to get home before the sunrise, most of which we’ve not really seen. The standard vampire game is just perpetual night, etc. Of course, we’ve made some tweaks. For instance, in Nighthawks, vampires not having a reflection is extended to not having any recordable presence – no film, no phones, not even fingerprints can be read.

That said, it’s a world where people definitely are aware of the folklore. The five blood origins are based on worldwide vampire myths and associated themes – New World, Old Country, Continental, Imperial and Mandarin. Imperials, for instance, are primarily known as alchemists from the British Empire, but they really represent colonialism – heading out to the corners of the Empire to find and ‘recruit’ human resources, not caring about the blood in their wake. Old Country vampires meanwhile are believed – there’s no Big Book Of Vampires to say any of this for sure – to share the blood of monsters that once haunted the dark forests and similar. They’re not like V:TM’s clans or families or anything like that though, more national stereotypes that may or may not have a grain of truth to them depending on the individual vampire.

While the world of Nighthawks features vampires who have been exposed, but are there any other mythical creatures inhabiting the world?

Let’s just say, that’s definitely a question people in-game are asking! However, between you and me, Nighthawks is about vampires, because I wanted to drill deep into that, rather than it being a melting pot of monsters. There’s also the fact that if you’ve got werewolves and fae and whatever running around as well, being a vampire isn’t really that special any more.

Combat is going to be handled by playing cards, but Nighthawks doesn’t feel like a traditional collectible card game. How will you build your deck?

You don’t really build a deck as such. Your deck is generated at the start of combat based on your items, your companion, your vampire gifts and ‘sabotage’ cards – melee, ranged, outfit, gear, relics, companion and negative status effects,such as the shivers from drinking toxic blood, or ‘miss’ cards if you’re wielding a weapon that you’re not skilled enough to use properly. A sword for instance will still give the most amateur fighter the same damage card that a ninja master would get, but with a ton of miss cards to represent you just swinging wildly.

Mostly though, we’re trying to keep it simple, and allow players to choose a style of combat that they like, with easily understood restrictions. For instance, guns are powerful, but you’ll regularly lose entire turns having to reload. Simple armour like a trenchcoat offers less protection than body armour, such as one card that shields from minor damage, but the body armour stuffs your deck with cards, making you less capable of fighting back.

There will be an option to skip combat if you want, what was the driving force behind adding that option?

Mostly, “why not?” I think we’ve probably all played games like this where we’ve wanted to go ‘okay, your combat engine is lovely, but can I go back to the game I wanted to play now?’ So, I figured, let’s just do that. You can flip a switch in the options menu, and a ‘skip combat’ button appears on the UI. No mockery, no penalties, just “Okay, you win, moving on.” It’ll make a few scenes a bit ridiculous, like the fight club quest chain that’s intended to offer a bigger challenge to players who want it, but go ahead. It’s literally no skin off my nose if you skip it, and I’d rather people do that than either get fed up or find themselves unable to progress the story.

I’d say though that we’re doing a few things to hopefully make fighting more satisfying even if you’re not typically into it, including an item that makes it easier without turning it off (attained if you fall in battle too often), most of the fights not actually being lethal (if not fighting someone who wants you dead, you’ll usually just end up at the hospital until you take too many untreated Wounds), and winning fights against low level enemies like street thugs eventually reaches the point where your reputation precedes you and they won’t waste their time or yours. Of course, that growing reputation can also bring tougher enemies out of the shadows…

I’ve heard rumour that a rat can kill you, is this true? What happens if you fall at the feet of the rat?

If you didn’t do it deliberately… I don’t know what to say. There is exactly one point in the game where you fight a rat in a sewer, and it’s definitely one of those ‘things I’ve always wanted to see’ moments. It’s a small, angry rat. You’re a vampire. The fight goes about as well for the rat as you’d expect. It has one single solitary hitpoint, it attacks with the lowest damage attack in the game, and you have the first turn. If you lose, there’s a special secret death where your character is so ashamed that they leave the city entirely to contemplate their failure.

Will you be purchasing those powerful (but balanced) guns, and other assortments like armour with that fancy credit card your character has?

That and your ‘wealth’ stat. I wanted to do something a bit different than “You have $500”, so instead you level up your wealth from, say, Bankrupt to Rich, and it’s just treated as ‘okay, you can afford to buy this thing, let’s not worry about the details’. It’s not like money ever really matters in RPGs after the first hour or so anyway – may as well just abstract it all away.

That’s it for part one. Come back later this week for part two, where we dive into the companions, sex and the story of Nighthawks itself. For now though, you can find and wishlist the game on Steam.

First up, how are things going for you with the current Covid-19 situation, what impact is it having on Recolonization?

In my opinion, the IT and games industries are in a slightly more advantageous positon when it comes to dealing with the impact that Covid-19 has on work organization and scheduling.

Speaking about HeroCraft in particular – before the pandemic struck, the Revival team was already spread between offices in two different cities, Kaliningrad and Krasnodar. Coordinating work across different time zones, hosting team meetings over Skype, etc. is something we are already used to.

Sure, we had to take some time to get used to working from home, but our current set up seems to be efficient enough.

It has been over ten years since you worked on the Revival games, what have you been working on since Revival 2 came out in 2009?

The core members of Revival’s team (mainly me and our lead programmer) were dabbling in various other genres – mainly casual games on PC that relied on famous brands from popular Russian TV series and shows. The games themselves were pretty high quality, if I may say so myself – they had decent VO, a lot of well-written humor and interesting characters. Unfortunately, these titles were targeting primarily the domestic (Russian) market, which narrowed their worldwide appeal. In addition, our team was using an engine that was built for the PC ecosystem, so making our titles available on other platforms was time consuming.

A significant amount of time (4 years) was spent on developing Marble Duel and porting the game to a variety of platforms: PC, Mac, Android, iOS, AppleTV. It did not bring in any significant revenue. Instead of making a simple puzzle game, I couldn’t hold back and basically made a strategy game centred around duels with a couple of original game mechanics. Needless to say, that is not what the target audience expected or wanted.

In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best decision to abandon a well-received series (Revival) on a platform that was just hitting a new stage of growth (smartphones were getting big, Apple launched the AppStore, etc.). However, it’s easy to say that now. Back then, the decision to expand also seemed like a logical one.

What lessons have you learned from those experiences that you’re taking forward into Revival: Recolonization?

The main lesson that I’ve learned is to trust my intuition more. When I was developing the first Revival games, I had no prior game development experience and there weren’t any books on making games available in Russia. I just made a game that I really wanted to play myself. Kind of like a self-taught musician, who never attended music school.

Proper education can undoubtedly benefit both game developers and musicians, but it may also hinder creativity by creating a rigid framework, a set of rules that are difficult to break free from.

Revival 2 was still been bringing in royalties until 2019, what do you attribute the continued success to?

I think Revival 2’s success lies in the fact that we managed to provide a full-sized Civilization-like experience on push button phones that still hasn’t been rivaled. If, for some reason, you find yourself stuck with such a phone and want to play a 4x strategy game, there are no other games in existence besides Revival 1 and 2 (that I’ve heard of).

The 4x market is one that is regularly bubbling away, with few matching the clout of the Civ games. What is going to set Recolonization apart from the crowd?

The All-Mind, our version of Skynet in the world of Revival, is what we hope will be the game’s distinguishing feature. As players start changing the planet’s landscape to suit their needs, the All-Mind will notice their presence and react accordingly by issuing edicts.

You can think of edicts as spells that influence different gameplay aspects – from allowing a nasty virus to spread across the land to freezing over entire regions or causing drought. This may sound severe, but keep in mind that some of these changes may actually benefit the player, depending on their strategy for a particular match. The game also provides a variety of tools as means of protecting oneself from unwanted edicts.

What can you tell us about the various Tribes, will they have unique playstyles and characteristics?

There is a fixed amount of tribes in Revival, each with their own set of characteristics and quirks, which we hope players will learn over the course of the game. Each tribe has adapted to thrive in a particular climate.

For example, Arctic tribes can only be found in snow-covered areas and they get the most resources out of that particular terrain type. Their units are generally better in close-range combat and also move across snow faster than units belonging to other tribes can.

If a player has assimilated an arctic tribe, she will have to think twice before conquering or building a settlement in the tropics. Her tribe will not be happy with the decision and the player will have to spend resources to change the captured region’s climate to a suitable one. Unless she wants to upset her followers and risk losing their loyalty.

How will diplomacy between the Tribes work?

The nuances of the diplomacy system are still being ironed out, but to give you a brief overview: diplomacy uses “reputation” as a resource, and each emissary starts the game with a particular number. Players spend points on political actions, such as closing regional borders, increasing bargaining power, etc. Certain decisions will influence how reputation changes throughout the game, including events where players have to make decisions that affect one or more tribes in their empire.

Emissaries look like they’re key parts of the game. Are they predetermined, or can they be user created?

Emissaries are predetermined. We want them to feel like distinct characters, with a set of particular views on life and the future of humanity, similar to how faction leaders work in Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.

Another important goal is to make emissaries quite varied in terms of gameplay, so players will have to keep the differences between them in mind if they want to make the most out of a chosen emissary.

What impact will Emissaries have on the in-game action?

Emissaries fill the role of a settler unit seen in most 4x strategy games – only they can establish settlements. Another important function of the emissaries is researching and launching edicts. By using energy to interface with old-world technologies, emissaries can terraform the landscape to make it more suitable for their people and protect their land from the All-Mind’s influence and its terrible creations – the automatons.

In addition, emissaries serve as army leaders and are able to participate in combat, although not directly. Rather, they use gadgets and technology that they cast on both friendly and enemy units for a variety of effects. Increasing troop morale, taking enemy units under control, stunning them, causing direct damage, that kind of stuff.

You talk about us taking over an Earth which has been devastated by a cataclysm, what happened and how has the planet changed?

I’ll try and keep things brief for fear of turning this QnA into a lore document!

The peak of mankind’s space exploration age marked the creation of the All-Mind – an artificial intelligence based on the structure of Earth’s lithosphere. Found to have unexplained powers, the A.I. came to a realization that it must supersede humanity and initiated a wave of destruction, displacing the orbits of planets and drastically changing Earth in the process.

Millennia have passed and humanity has staggered into a new Dark Age. Those who survived have long forgotten their history. Some even worship the All-Mind as a higher power and do their best to fulfil its meaningless whims. Faced with cruelty, fanaticism and disbelief, players will have to make a choice – will mankind be satisfied with servitude or is it time to light the fires of revolution?

Zombies?! Tell us more…

Despite wanting to move away from the typical bleak visuals and brown color palette of most post-apoc games, we still wanted to preserve some of the cooler elements that the setting provides. Hence, our version of mutated zombies!

Gameplay-wise, zombies are just one of the side effects of the edict system. If the All-Mind decides to increase the radioactivity of a particular region of the map, any human units that stay there for some time face the danger of becoming a rotting pile of flesh. If the spread of radiation and zombie units is not contained, they can quickly fill up the whole map. As seen in the best zombie movies.

How will combat work, will it have a deeper layer like Age of Wonders: Planetfall, or does it all happen on the world map?

We have fans of all sorts of 4x strategy games on our team, Planetfall included. So Revival’s combat system is influenced by our tastes. If I were to summarize, I’d say it’s a mixture of combat seen in Endless Legend and AoW: Planetfall.

When battle occurs, a combat layer is placed over the world map (without loading into separate screen). The type of terrain and obstacles present at the battle’s location on the map are taken into account. The combat layer is then populated with randomly generated cover and destructible objects.

You reference Alpha Centauri as an early influence, born out through promises for terraforming the planet. How much will you be able to change?

At some point during development, we dived deep into the terraforming aspect of Revival: Recolonization and tracked many parameters including wind direction, elevation, temperature, radiation levels, etc.

However, we quickly found out that this had a negative impact on gameplay. Each edict launched influenced so many attributes of even a single hex on the game map that it was hard for players to track all of them and predict what the overall outcome of launching an edict would be.

Since then, we’ve scaled back on the number of parameters, but I hope there’s enough depth and freedom to satisfy both fans of Alpha Centauri, as well as players that have never played that game.

With an Alpha planned for later this year, are you thinking about Early Access? How important will community feedback be?

Early Access is definitely something that we have in mind. With games of this scale, it’s simply too hard to test every game mechanic thoroughly or to explore the nuances of every system. It is our hope and our goal to make analyzing and implementing (where appropriate) community feedback an integral part of the development process.

We are expecting to launch a Closed Alpha in Q3 of this year, where a select number of players will be invited to try the game out and share their impressions. Followed by a public test (hopefully) by the end of this year. You can sign up via the game’s website.

Thanks to Vladislav for his time.

Vanguard was unveiled to the public at EGX, and seemed to have a pretty busy booth, which can only be seen as a good thing for the team working on this ambitious project.

It’s ambitious in several aspects. It will be launching into Beta in January across PC, mobile and VR. Vanguard is a competitive cross-platform multiplayer game pulling together players from the vastly different platforms into one unified space combat arena that pulls inspiration from Roman gladiators.

What’s more, Vanguard isn’t coming from an established group of indie games developers. It is the brain child of Chris Jeffries, the founder and Managing Director of Dev Clever, a bespoke software development company that works across a wide variety of sectors. Some of the projects Chris described to me that Dev Clever have worked on sounded fantastic, especially the work they have been doing in the education sector.

I asked Chris why he had decided to move into games development, and why he chose to create a competitive online action game based around classic Roman gladiator types. He described to me how this is a passion project, that while the core business of Dev Clever is extremely rewarding to everyone involved, the ability to ‘sit down with our team and go “literally, the sky isn’t even the limit, away you go”’ was a driving force. Chris is half-Italian, with a family heritage going back to Roman days. He told me that he has ‘always been fixated with Imperial Rome. I just thought, what a fantastic introduction to competitive gaming is Roman Gladiators. It’s been done to death a little bit, so what would those Gladiators look like in the future, in space and bring them into these massive space arenas.’

Vanguard takes place in a futuristic alternate timeline where the Roman Empire didn’t collapse, but instead kept evolving to a point where it controls 85% of the galaxy, still conquering civilisations and running gladiatorial combat, but now the combat is in arenas in space. You can expect different ships to be styled on the classic gladiator archetypes. Indeed, the setting has given the artists at Dev Clever a chance to really show off their creative flair.

‘When we’re designing the characters, the Vanguards, we’re researching and bringing in type of Gladiator, for instance a Murmillo, having a look at their traditional armour, what they used to wear and just thinking “What would that look like 3,000 years on”. When you look at the characters we’re creating, and a show like Spartacus, you’ll see a real resemblance.’

I had a couple of quick fights against some of the development team at the show across all three platforms. Vanguard was my first ever VR experience, and I was instantly feeling transported into the action, even if my understanding of the Oculus control pad was non-existent. Playing the game on mobile though was fantastic, the game looked great on a mobile device with gyroscope controls adding to the immersion and sense of flying a futuristic spaceship.

The team have a wealth of experience of working on mobile as part of their key corporate work, but getting the cross-platform experiences to blend together with balanced controls has been a challenge. ‘We want to give people their own unique playing experience, but without giving them a competitive edge. So, we’re trying to incorporate the different elements of each platform into the UIs. Even on mobile, even thought it’s a static view, you can move your phone to look around the scene so it emulates a VR experience in that way.’

Chris is looking to build a community, and get fans to engage with the team during the development process. ‘We’re going full open production, sharing everything we’re doing and really taking on board any comments and suggestions people bring to us…Every week we will be releasing our intentions for the ships and new Vanguard Gladiators with the view to letting the Beta version to the first original Vanguards, then polishing towards the full launch in April. Hopefully towards the end of next year, we’ll be looking to the PS4 and Xbox One versions of it as well.’

Vanguard is a wildly ambitious project, but it was already feeling nicely refined when I played it at the show. The enthusiasm Chris has for the project shone through while I was talking with him, and I am sure that the team will deliver the goods. Head over to the official site for more details of how to get involved in the open production.

So this is why i’m rather interested in Phoenix point. Not only because it’s been made by Jullian Gollop and his team at Snapshot Games (Gollop was originally part of Mythos who birthed the original Xcom games back in the nineties, Yes, nineties) but because it is building on everything that made the remakes of Xcom so great. It’s certainly got my attention.

The main premise is the arise of a viral fog that starts mutating sea-life to such an extent that it starts trying to wipe out humanity. Because of course it does. Not that it ultimately matters, this type of game thrives on being in opposition to a seemingly unending and overwhelming opposition; be it alien, crab or giant hideous, 3-story high sea spider thingy.

I’ve been watching this game on and off, from when it was first announced. The ‘made by the makers of Xcom’ caught me like a lobster in basket, and I have to say what i’ve seen so far looks very good.

It’s a curious position for GDC, something which has been covered already by other outlets; but building on something that another developer has built off your original work must be a very interesting position. It’s one of the reasons I have such high hopes from this game (aside from the developers lineage). Often the best refinements, and ideas come from other people seeing and trying your ‘thing’.  I’m actually a scientist by trade, and it is common for us to involve non-specialists (or people from other departments) in the design/analysis of certain data/processes because they can often see things with new eyes and come up with interesting and more importantly, great suggestions and ideas. I wonder if there is a degree of this going on here. Firaxis did a phenomenal job with Xcom. Successfully re-invigorating a genre that had, frankly, been dead and buried for nearly 2 decades. To now have the Original masters of this genre come back and build off that is a exceptionally exciting prospect.

It looks like they’re doing just that too. From what i’ve seen of the game (and regrettably i’ve yet to play it), they keep a lot of what Firaxis has introduced. The control interface, the distance (or AP) markers and the host of other interface niceties that Firaxis introduced seem to be there in one form or another. It’s all instantly recognisable, and i’d wager it’ll feel like stepping into a pair of well-worn slippers. Though with a stronger smell of Mackerel.

A few things have caught my attention from the press releases and coverage so far. The scale is somewhat different. The enemies can be gigantic, with specific body parts that can be attacked and disabled/wounded. Gigantic killer sea-spider coming at you? Shoot it’s legs. It’ll take longer to reach you. It about to smash you? Take out it’s giant claw. But that’s a knife that cuts both ways; don’t expect your heavy soldier to be able to fire their rocket launcher with only one arm. It’s adding even more complexity and tactical options on top of an already rich ‘game’. Had Firaxis not released Xcom and it’s sequel, then it would probably be too much, too complicated for a new game- but the groundwork has already been laid so GDC are free to refine and more importantly expand as they see fit.

There’s more. Ballistics modelling has been re-introduced. In the original Xcom you could accidentally wipe out half your team by shooting a Petrol Station out of your immediate line of sight when you missed a shot. Every single bullet/grenade/rocket/witty-quip is fully modelled; even when it misses and flies into the fog of war. It could hit anything out there, with the appropriate results. This makes choosing your shot all the more important.

The way you aim too seems to have been refined. You literally aim down your sights. Rather than be given a percentage hit chance, you’re given an aiming reticule (natch) over your target. The distance, weapon and soldier skill will determine the size of said reticule (zing) will dictate your hit ratio- with all your shots landing within said reticule (boom). Therefore if your reticule (smash) is completely covering the enemy you’re guaranteed a hit. I’ve seen some writers state their concern over this change, however as a veteran Xcom-er (it’s a word..) I just see the opportunity to position myself thus that any missed shots simply hit the enemy behind…

The enemy, well what can we say about them. From what i’ve seen they seem to be derived from a single aesthetic; namely a nautical(ish) one. Now I would be concerned that that would introduce too little variety were it not for the mutation system, which purports to physically mutate the enemies to combat certain tactical choices you make on taking them out. Like using rockets on crab men? Then expect them to evolve harder armour. Like using machine gun fire? Expect them to evolve a carapace-shield that they can carry. For ‘basic’ enemies I can see this being a fun mechanic. For the larger ‘boss’ enemies, should they be multiple rather than singular, I could imagine this being a major headache. I’m already excited at the thought of trying to plan my way around it.

Which, is a long-form way of saying i’m rather excited about this title. It has potential, it has some serious pedigree and baring an act of Cthulhu, I can’t see how it can go wrong. And i’m Mr Pessimistic 2003, 2004-2011 and runner up in 2017.

Believe me, if I can get my hands on it I will, and you’ll hear about it here first.

The Reticule – Hi Jonas, Figment has been out for a couple of months now on the PC, have you been busy since release?

Jonas Byrresen – Yep, and doing plenty of different things as well. One thing is fixing up all the small bugs and feedback that you always get after a release. No matter how thorough of a QA process you do, there will always be some new bugs. That took priority just after release, to ensure the game works smoothly for all players.

We have also spent a good deal of energy doing PR, both from home and by travelling to conventions and game shows all around. Making the game is just part of it, you also have to tell and show people it exist. This can be time consuming, especially planning for an event and the event itself will drain some energy. But it’s all worth it, since the reactions are very positive.

Other than that, we are of course working on porting the game to the different consoles – something we are very excited about, but it a process that always demands some work.

The Reticule – What has the reaction been like, are you pleased with how the game has performed?

Jonas Byrresen – We are more than happy with the reactions and reception from both media and players. The game world and experience we have created for Figment is definitely something that stands out in positive way. People enjoy the creative use of art and music, which is very unique to the game, but also enjoy our way of approaching and dealing with the series subject of overcoming a trauma. We always knew the theme would work, and it seems players really enjoy a new way of looking at it.

So, so far we are happy. We would always like for more players to try it out, but nowadays you have to think more long-term with a game’s lifetime. We see it as a good thing that games can stay ageless and still be relevant in a year or two. Most great indie titles have been that, and Figment is not exception.

The Reticule – You’re working on a Switch version, along with PlayStation 4 and Xbox One releases. What challenges have you faced porting the game for the Switch?

Jonas Byrresen – There will always be challenges and work when porting, no matter to what platform. We didn’t really know what to expect from the Switch, as we were told it was not that hard, but we had a hard time with the WiiU before. So far it has been going pretty well and the game is essentially running on the console right now. Now it’s a question of getting to run well at all times to create a good experience for the player.

Some of the challenges have been how to handle save games, visual effects and how we compress textures. It was what we kind of expected, as the Switch is not as powerful as many gaming PCs or the other consoles. So it’s not unsolvable – it just demands some good programmers and a load of coffee. Luckily we’ve got that covered.

The Reticule – With Nintendo’s platform still in the early days, but enjoying fantastic growth, do you think you will be releasing on the Switch at an ideal time to make the most of the buzz around it?

Jonas Byrresen – That’s what we’re hoping. It’s a new, fast-growing market with motivated players that want some games to play, and we hope to be one of those games. But it is also because we feel Figment fits the platform very well. The aesthetics of the game work great on both the small and the big screen, and we feel the game itself fits the mentality of the Nintendo platform very well. It has a lot of players who value games with fantastical game worlds, who value aesthetics over fidelity, and who never forget the value of fun and good gameplay. Figment is made with that mentality and we hope it’s what Switch players want more of.

The Reticule – The game has quite a unique concept, being a musical, but also exploring issues of the mind. What led you to making this game?

Jonas Byrresen – The very first idea for the game came flying home from GDC in San Francisco some years ago. We had some award success with the early version of our first game, Back to Bed, and had been asked if we had plans to keep going in that style of game. Back to Bed took place in a dream world, so we asked ourselves “what if we went even deeper?” and ended up deciding on diving into the subconsciousness, where dreams are made.

Adding to this we wanted to make something that had a deep world the player could explore, as that was what players had asked for after Back to Bed. They liked the world, and wanted to stay in it longer than a straight-up puzzle game allowed. So we decided to create a game world that can best be described as a metaphysical location that represents a human mind and then letting the player explore it via a good story.

The Reticule – The music has received a lot of praise, who did the work on it?

Jonas Byrresen – The big focus on music was actually not part of the original plan for the game. We always wanted good music on the game, but it was not one of the main pillars. That was until our audio designer Niels Sørensen, aka. StÖj Snak, joined the team. Niels had already worked as both sound and game designer for some years, plus doing music tours as StÖj Snak, and when we got the chance to get him on the team we jumped at it.

He asked if he could do some experiments to start with, and he came up with connecting movement in the world to rhythm and letting many of the big bosses have musical pieces throughout the game. We really liked the idea of having the big central enemies in the story communicate their theme through music and song. It feels unique and can tell more than words at the same time.

Having a sound designer that also has experience in game design and storytelling was a big bonus. Especially for me as the creative director, as it was so much easier to jam together and make the gameplay and story work with the audio.

The Reticule – What are you most proud of about Figment?

Jonas Byrresen – Hmm, that is a really hard question to ask when we are so many people that have put so much work into it, and I think people have different things they are very proud of. So I will be a bit rebellious and say the two things I am most proud of, and hope it also encompasses the rest of the team.

An element in the game that many people have reacted very positively to is our approach to a very deep subject in a new and interesting way. Overcoming our fears is a key part of being human, so everyone has experienced it, but not everyone talks about it. We just approach it in an open way with a bit of humour – something that we find better than just shutting it up – and it seems to have struck a chord with many players.

Also I’m very proud of many of the key events, be they puzzles or bosses, throughout the game, as they often contain both great art, music, gameplay and story, all working together without trying to push the other down. That is the strength of the gaming medium: using all other media to create something new, which just one or two alone could not create.

Our thanks to Jonas for his time. We’ll be taking a closer look at Figment when it lands on the Switch. In the meantime, why not check the demo out on Steam.

I actually enjoy asking people what is wrong with the game and them telling me. I never thought I would, I thought that would be insane. But actually, that’s really good, and there’s some stuff I would have done that I’m not doing because nobody cares about, and other stuff that I thought people wouldn’t be interested in, but they’re saying “yes yes, more of this”. It’s brilliant, and I’m a convert to Early Access basically.

I’ve only just started my car building adventure, but what was nice was a little survey that appeared when I booted up the game, asking what feature I was wanting to see next (hybrid/electric engines) and what I was struggling with (identifying why cars are, or aren’t, selling). I’m not sure how often these appear, but they’re a nice easy way to send some direct feedback on your experience of the game during Early Access to Cliff, without necessarily having to step into the forums of Steam community.

Production Line has its claws in me, and it certainly appeals to the Football Manager side of my brain. There is lots of data to absorb, from how much time an individual part of the assembly line spends on production, or dare I say it…waiting. You can see why people are, or aren’t buying your cars, while there is also a very detailed chart covering the efficiency of your entire factory. But this is what people want, Cliff told me he receives feedback requesting more;

finance stuff, people really like the business stuff; the reports and spreadsheets which I like naturally. I love all of that, but I thought it was just me, but it seems that the people that play this game want a lot of data, want a lot of analysis.

Right now, I’m not really doing too well with my production lines, they are both long and tend to be quite slow. In my defense, I haven’t spent the time researching enough new production methods to break up the flow into as many small chunks as I would like. I have one route where the body fit, and painting, have been broken down into smaller stages. This is great for speeding up production at these points, but then my flow hits a bottleneck at the engine fitting stage.

It’s part of the dilemma at the heart of the game. Do you spend time researching new production methods, to ensure you can keep a constant flow of cars going to the customers? Or do you turn your attention to researching new technologies to fit to your cars? If rival companies have air conditioning installed on their most basic models, customers aren’t going to look twice at your own basic model unless you cut the price back. Which is fine, if you’re producing enough cars to still make money. This is definitely a game that I would love to be able to play without worrying about money, or competitors. The freedom to make all sorts of cars? That would be wonderful.

The game is still quite early in the development process. Cliff told me that he is planning to;

add in electric and hybrid engines, because everyone wants and loves them. There’s more marketing stuff that has to go in, which is only half done at the moment. There are pickup trucks going in and more achievement stuff to go in. The whole idea of stuff breaking down and quality, at the moment a car is naturally of good quality. But we’re going to have stuff like defects and quality control going in there as well.

If you are interested in Production Line, I highly recommend watching some of Cliff’s video developer blogs, they provide a useful insight into how the game works. He has also put together a quick guide to getting started with the game, this covers some of the basic principles of the early stages of the game and will definitely help you get started.

As for a release date? Cliff wasn’t one to be nailed down, and his embrace of what Early Access offers him as a developer is why;

I really like Early Access. I don’t know, January, February, early March. As long as I’m still enjoying working on it, I don’t see a reason to declare it done. Unless nobody is buying it anymore, then I need to move. But I don’t think that’s going to happen by the looks of it, it’s going really well. Definitely next year at the earliest. I like the open ended nature of going “hey lets spend another six months or whatever on this”.

I’ll save any Verdicts until Cliff signs the game off as “finished”, but I’m glad that I got to have a chat with him at EGX and finally start getting into the car business.

Anthology is the brainchild of Lewis Denby, a figure who has become inextricably linked with the British indie game scene. You might remember his work back in the day on Resolution Magazine (where he was kind enough to let me contribute now and again) before moving to the old editorial side of BeefJack. While at BeefJack, Lewis spread his wings, telling me that he “did a bunch of things, from PR to production to general management pieces. Away from the public eye I worked on probably ten or fifteen games for clients, and marketed about 40.” He soon went on to work on his first game, Richard & Alice which our own Steven Fulton greatly enjoyed back in 2013 and was later involved in the development of Sepulchre, all the while working with the team at BeefJack.

Last year, Lewis made a change “I felt it was time for something new, quit my job with no prospects like some sort of idiot, but fortunately managed to weave my way into a career as an indie games… helper person?” Now, he is revealing Anthology which he has been working on with Khaled Makhshoush (background art) and Francisco Gonzalez (characters and animation). After taking such a break since last being directly involved in game development, I asked him what brought him back to hands-on development:

[I have] An incurable desire to take on new projects that I have no reasonable capacity to commit to. That’s only a half-joke. But in fact, what happened is that I found myself with a little more free time than I used to have, and an idea for a world whose story I wanted to tell, and I know from experience I’m a better game designer than novelist – five abandoned novels and counting, and I’m not even 30 yet – so it kind of went from there.

Anthology then is a collection of short point-and-click adventures, all taking place in the same faraway city, on the same afternoon. Lewis asked me to think back to major world events, and pointed out that conversations often lead to a “What were you doing when…?” moment. That idea of shared, but independent experiences lies at the heart of Anthology:

Tapping into the lives of a number of different people, who were simply going about their daily lives at the time a major world event began to unfold. The stories are independent, but as you play through each one, the wider story of the world reveals itself, and it’s this that ties them together.

Looking back at his history with Richard & Alice and Sepulchre and the experience he has built up over the years of working closely with other independent developers, I have confidence that this will come together to offer a unique story telling experience. Yet, despite my faith in what this trio can achieve, I was still confused as to why Lewis chose an anthological format, he explained his decision as coming down to a couple of reasons:

One, I find the concept alluring. When writing a single story there’s only so much you can show about a world, because you’re limited to the perspectives of only one or maybe two characters. Then, on a more practical level, it breaks up development nicely, such that we can build the framework then focus on making a single game at a time. The idea actually started as one larger story, but having a distinct ending didn’t quite seem to fit the idea.

Lewis cut himself off there, clearly unwilling to let slip any more of the story than absolutely necessary. He did reveal some more about how he came to work with Khaled and Francisco. Khaled had never worked on  a game before, but Lewis told me that he “was immediately drawn to his distinctive, minimalist style” and that Khaled has been great at bringing fresh ideas to the project, and injecting a sense of life to the game. Lewis had long been a fan of Francisco’s work, and it was thanks to Ben Chandler (artist on Sepulchre) that the two got together, immediately clicking after Lewis sent through the design document for Anthology.  Lewis told me that it’s been a “joy to work with these guys. I love collaborating with talented people, who can instantly make a project so much richer than you ever imagined at the start.”

If you want to find out more about the game, check out the official site and get voting for it on Greenlight. I’ve heard rumours that Lewis is offering all those who vote for Anthology cute animal pictures. He’s got my vote already, no animal pictures required.

The Reticule –  Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves?

Hi there! We’re a two person indie development team looking to create atmospheric and engaging games. Although we are new to game development, we are very familiar with the development process and fortunately some of those skills do transfer over. In our former careers we were software engineers that developed large, big-data type systems and applications.  And although that was fun, working on HEVN has been much more rewarding. It’s hard to beat learning art, game programming, sound effects, music, and a game engine from scratch only to watch something come to life from it.

Another interesting aspect is we’re developing HEVN remotely. One half of the team is in Seattle and the other half in Phoenix. This means 2 hour video meetings nearly every day (we’ve adapted a quasi-Agile approach) to make sure we’re working towards our goals for the game.

The Reticule –  Tell us about the game, what will players be getting up to?

In HEVN, players are thrust into an unexpectedly mysterious mining expedition millions of miles away from Earth. They are isolated and under pressure to thrive and survive. They can also expect a narrative that spans time and space with interstellar intrigue, adventure, and characters and objects that fill out the world. There are random events, puzzles, choices, survival elements, and even optional combat. There is quite a bit of backstory as well. Not for the sake of just more content, but it’s all built into the world to help make it that much more immersive.

The Reticule –  What is the inspiration behind the game?

It seems like we’re always finding new inspirations, whether it be from other games, movies, books, or even real life. Originally the idea was born from a simple question when we first started to get involved in game development (it wasn’t HEVN at the time, but a generic mobile helicopter rescue game that was uninspired). A family member asked “why not make a game you’d play?”. And with that we immediately switched gears and HEVN was the result.

But we are both huge fans of science fiction. While designing HEVN we drew upon our individual and collective favorites like Deus Ex, System Shock, Bioshock, Fallout, Mass Effect, Moon, The Martian, Alien, and 2001: A Space Odyssey!

Gameplay-wise, there have been a few games in the past where the immersion would kind of break due to minor object interaction issues such as, “Why can I pick up this particular object but not that one?” or “Why does this trash can move under physics but not that chair?” or “Why can I do this but not that?”

Although these things are common in games and definitely don’t prevent a player from finishing or even enjoying a game, there have been times where we’d notice this. It’s just something we try to address when creating objects, but obviously it’s a huge challenge. Just something to strive for as far as immersion goes.

The Reticule –  Pick one thing you are most proud of about the game, and tell us about it.

Recently I think we’ve become more proud of the story and how it has evolved throughout the development process. As more mechanics and features find their way into the game, we’ve figured out ways to adapt the story to those mechanics in a way where everything seems to fit pretty well and provide more gameplay depth overall.

The Reticule –  What excites you about the future of the industry?

It’s just really cool that more and more people are becoming interested in games. A big part of that is likely due to having more accessible platforms, but really the incredible developers out there are making some amazing things. And it feels like there is no shortage of inspiration and growth. Developers are willing to experiment, and people are willing to take chances on indie titles!

For more on Hevn, check out the official website or the Steam Greenlight page.