The Star Command Kickstarter project mentions that the developers are shooting for a late 2011 release for the game. While we wait, I reached out to War Balloon Games with some questions about Star Command.
GeekDad: As an X-Com superfan, I totally get the concept of Star Command – are there any features of X-Com that you felt had to be included in your game? Are there any nods or in-jokes for X-Com fans?
War Balloon Games: To us, the best part of X-Com was the atmosphere. The very first time you stepped off your ship into this dynamic environment, never knowing what you were gonna face, it was frightening. You would take that chance, turn an extra corner and run out of time units and see three sectoids – and really just be freaked out. So this sense of atmosphere is really important – never knowing what you’re gonna face. Strange aliens that kill you in horrible ways and surprise you with tactics like mind control and planting eggs in your soldiers. If we can get 10% of that we will have something special.
The other thing we really love is the story that you fill in yourself. You have this crew that you take your time building, leveling up and sending into these horrible situations with a 50/50 chance of survival. You would have a guy make it through 12 missions and you just start picturing him in your head as this grizzled veteran, hardened to watching new soldiers come in and die – and this is just stuff you’re making up. Oregon Trail was great at this as well – the game would say “Jordan Coombs died of dysentery” but you would fill in a lot of the blanks on your own.
There will be X-Com jokes for sure. And a lot of other sci-fi stuff. We love Aliens, Total Recall, Star Trek – all of these are gonna poke their way in to the game.
GD: Will Star Command have an ending like X-Com or can players just roam around the galaxy picking fights and discovering new life and new civilizations?
WBG: There will be an ending, but not a story driven one. It will be more like moving over for the next crew – the next generation if you will.
GD: What was the reasoning behind the 8-bit graphics? Was it done for programming/processor purposes or was the decision made for more artistic reasons?
WBG: All of the above. We really appreciate art direction. Valve is fantastic at it. Team Fortress 2 really isn’t that cutting edge technology wise, but it’s a game infused with character and fun – and that’s because of some amazing art direction. Blizzard does this as well – WoW still holds up to this day. Age of Conan came out quite a while after WoW, and was really a cutting edge graphics type game – but it really had no soul, and no one really stuck around.
When we approached it, we just liked the look of these characters. To us, nothing is better than these fun pixel guys dying these incredibly horrible deaths – it makes it all very fun. It also helps that you can put a ton of sprites on a screen, so the game will run on anything. Nice bonus.
GD: How much customization will we see in the game such as uniform color or ship design? Are there any limitations you’re having to deal with in order to make the mobile app work well or are you pretty much able to take the game in any direction you want?
WBG: We want there to be a lot, but customization is a luxury piece. We love Duke Nukem Forever – not because the game was good (it wasn’t), but because of the lessons it taught the industry. You can’t have everything. At the end of the day, making a game is a balance between what you want to have vs. what you can get done in the allocated time and still make the game amazing. We could easily take 3 years to make this game, and it would be epic and have everything – but by then we would all be broke and the industry may have moved on.
And that brings us to our #1 limitation: time. The hardware is great – no problems there. The thing we really have to be diligent about is making sure the game doesn’t explode. For instance, we originally had relationships with the crew – people they hated, loved, worked well with, etc. But it was just massive to do and really would have just moved the game into a 2 year development cycle. Lots of things have to get cut so that you can sit there and really nail the stuff you feel is at the core. For us that’s really fun combat, really fun rooms and missions, interesting research and lots of crazy alien species. Everything else is great, like customizing uniforms and ship color, but not essential.
GD: Are there any geek dads in the War Balloon Games camp? What are some of the teams’ inspirations and/or interests that have steered the game’s development?
WBG: Jordan Coombs is the only father, with a boy that is eighteen months and another on the way. Justin is the uncle, so he has dabbled in insanity that is fatherhood. Steve is a lover, a fighter and a poet – and a man like that has to keep moving.
We all love the outdoors, skiing, life in Colorado. We’re all also big, giant geeks. Comic books, film buffs, etc. We love Penny Arcade, Ugly Americans, Team Fortress and long walks on the beach.
Really our love for Sci-Fi is fueling this game. But more than that it’s the thought of “what does Picard do when they’re not fighting some epic battle”? What is it like having to empty the engines of waste, or restocking the bar? Just doing the day to day stuff on a starship. That’s fun and interesting stuff. And it makes the payoff when that engineer you have been building since the start of the game gets sucked out of an airlock that much worse.
GD: With an expected late Q4 2011 release date, it seems that the game is further along than many Kickstarter campaigns — how will this Kickstarter campaign help WBG to get Star Command in our hands?
WBG: We couldn’t start a Kickstarter early in the process for a couple reasons. First, with this being our first game, we just didn’t know if we could do it. We didn’t want to get all this money for vaporware. And second, if we could get it done, would it be fun. We have a pretty good alpha right now and it made us say “yeah, this game is gonna be something special” and felt good about asking the public get us over the finish line. Music, sound effects, android development, promotion – those are some of the things we can use the money for.
GD: The Kickstarter description makes note of updates and DLC — will there be campaigns? What about new weapons? What can players expect to see in future updates/DLC for the game?
WBG: Lots of DLC and updates. The game is kind of built for that, almost episodic. We can introduce new species, new zones to explore, new rooms and weapons, new upgrades – lots of stuff. Most of that will be free and regular – just expanding the game universe and giving our fans new content.
GD: Are there any improvements or new features that War Balloon Games would like to see for Star Command after the game is released? Are there any long-term goals for the game?
WBG: Definitely. For expansion packs, we have plans for things like Away Teams – allowing players to visit other worlds and explore them with members of their crew, which would be really close to X-com. We also are thinking about the ability to take over other alien species, like the Antorians, or space pirates. That would be stuff that our Kickstarter supporters get for free with the Intergalactic Promo Code. We would also get into multiplayer someday, but that’s further down the line.
We also have plans for a PC release and some other really cool things that I probably can’t divulge yet.
GD: The screenshots appear to be for the iPhone — you mentioned in a reply to a backer that an iPad/HD version is planned — will that be released on or around the same time as the iPhone version? Will there be any differences in gameplay between the phone and tablet versions?
WBG: There will be a tablet version shortly after release. It should be the same game only larger. But the interface, menus and layout will be designed for the iPad to take advantage of the real estate.
GD: Is there any additional information you’d like geek dads to know about the game? Will it be kid friendly? Will there be a GeekDad planet that can be conquered and looted for ancient alien technology?
WBG: I don’t know if kid friendly is the right word. The violence level will be on par with an episode of the Simpsons, graphic but clearly cartoony and fun (in nature). But it is gonna be a fun game. I wish there was more of an educational element since it is space, but really it’s an adventure game, not really sci-fi. I would let my son play it though (not that I’m the standard-bearer for fatherhood). We could probably work in a geekdad moon, maybe call it Dadkeeg VII. Pillage away!
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I’d like to thank the War Balloon Games crew for providing more details about Star Command. And, rest assured, when the game is released I’ll be following up with a complete review for our readers.
