“Chicken space pirates, psychic dog advisors, and rhino bounty hunters. Just another adventure in Flotilla! Fight, trade, and explore to make a name for yourself in the galaxy.”
Flotilla is a turn based space ship battle simulator (think something along the lines of Battleships only in space) which prides itself with a randomly populated universe, full in space 3D movement and lots of fun. Developed by indie game house Blendo Games, the creator of Gravity Bone, Flotilla is going to be available for the PC and XBOX Live Indie Games.
Brendon Chung, the man behind Blendo Games was kind enough to have a chat with us about what it means to be indie and more excitingly about Flotilla. Read the interview after watching this video of a skirmish in Flotilla from the man himself.
Andrew C.: Would you like to tell us a little about the history of Blendo Games?
Brendon Chung: I found myself out of a job, so I packed up my stuff and started Blendo Games. I’ve been making games for a number of years, both on a hobby level and professional level, so the decision wasn’t 100% nuts.
It’s a pretty exciting time for indie game development. The advent of digital distribution and inexpensive/free tools makes development very accessible, and games as a form of media is still incredibly young, so there’s a pretty amazing amount of unexplored territory.
A.C.: Is it difficult to run a one man show?
B.C.: You get to dip your feet into everything – design, art, programming, production, marketing. It’s definitely very satisfying to constantly learn how to best do something.
Of course, I’m not good at everything, so you get limitations that forces you into a desperation-fueled creativity. The reason why everyone in Gravity Bone has a giant cube for a head is because creating a decent human face is beyond my piddly 3D modeling skills. Hence – a giant cube.
A.C.: I guess most people found out recently about Blendo Games and Flotilla from mentions on websites such as Rock, Paper, Shotgun but aren’t aware that you have other games in your portfolio. Want to talk a little about them? Also, how has the starting media coverage influenced your development style?
B.C.: I suggest everyone check out Gravity Bone and Grotto King! They’re free to download and play. I’ve also posted up my older mod work for Half-life.
I can’t say media coverage has really changed how I develop things. Ask me again in a few months.
A.C.: How hard was it to get started in indie development? Any important hurdles you had to get through in order to get your games out there?
B.C.: Getting started is actually the easy part – there’s a lot of free tools and documentation out there, and the internet makes it simple to distribute your stuff. The hard part is getting past all the failure and sticking with it to completion.
A.C.: How hard was it to get your games approved for the XBOX Live Indie Games?
B.C.: I haven’t yet submitted Flotilla for approval.
A.C.: OK, now that we got that covered let’s move on to Flotilla: why the move to a TBS considering that the number of gamers which enjoy this genre is small?
B.C.: I wanted Flotilla to play with the idea of flanking fleet maneuvers in 3D space.
I felt that trying to visualize all the angles and approaches in real-time would’ve been too stressful. The turn-based structure attempts to place the focus on your decisions and forgives you for having sloppy thumbs (like me).
A.C.: Also, why a synchronous TBS approach?
B.C.: I find the synchronous approach elicits the same excitement of watching the action of a real-time battle, but nicely removes the control problem of commanding multiple units at the same time.
A.C.: The randomly generated universe is an interesting idea; does this mean that we’ll have a meta-map of sorts of the universe (moving fleets, visiting planets etc.) or will it be based just on combat mission? And how will that meta-map operate in the context of the game?
B.C.: The idea for the meta-map was to give each playthrough a unique narrative.
Every planet on the meta-map is randomly populated with an encounter or character, resulting in a different adventure for every playthrough. Depending on the choices you make in the encounters, you’ll unlock (or potentially preclude) different storyline branches.
A.C.: The feel and play seems very Homeworld-y; how much of an influence was the series in the development of Flotilla?
B.C.: There’s certainly a Homeworld influence. The Homeworld games have a great sense of style and really broke new ground with their 3D space movement.
A.C.: Talking about visuals, will the ships remain Red and Blue in the final release?
B.C.: The ships aren’t locked to those two colors. As you visit different planets, you’ll encounter different factions, some friendly and some hostile, that have their own associated ship colors.
A.C.: While still on this topic, are you afraid of being “too indie”? I mean, the quirky humor (panda pilots), the graphic style, music score are things that keep indie games in their universe, but this in turn can driver more “serious” gamers away. How important is the so-called indie cred to you?
B.C.: That’s part of the charm of indie games.
They have the ability to take stupid risks and do weird experimental things that you don’t get anywhere else. It’s certainly granted that because of that, the failure rate can be high – god knows my hard drive is a giant graveyard of sad, broken prototypes. But I believe that’s where you find the really interesting stuff – by failing horribly over and over again.
A.C.: How is the story going to blend with the randomly populated universe? Is it going to be strongly focused on comedy or will there be more mature moments?
B.C.: There is no one “main” story – every playthrough will generate a different series of events. There’s a healthy mix of absurd and somber moments.
A.C.: Jumping back to gameplay, it seems to be really tactical, but how does luck play into all of it if at all?
B.C.: Flanking the enemy is the main focus, but there’s some behind-the-scenes dice-rolling involved.
Missile barrages at long range lose accuracy, but you’ll occasionally get a lucky hit. Ships generally have heavy front armor, but every now and then you’ll get that one-in-a-million missile that penetrates.
A.C.: You claim to have no “up” in space, does that mean that you can rotate ships so you can have one that appears to be at a higher elevation but is actually upside down?
B.C.: Something I didn’t show in the gameplay video was Manual Mode. Instead of choosing to orient your ship toward an enemy, you can instead click on the Manual Mode button and choose whatever arbitrary yaw, pitch, and roll you like. This gives you better control over your turret’s firing arcs and your armor facing.
So yes – you can definitely be at a higher elevation but be upside-down.
A.C.: How many different types of ships can we expect and how do they blend with the game mechanics?
B.C.: Right now, there’s seven ship types. Each one handles differently, and you’ll have to learn how to best orient them to take advantage of their turret firing arcs.
A.C.: Any large scale battles with a high number of ships on the battlefield?
B.C.: Definitely. You’re able to recruit a number of pilots in your adventures and grow quite a large fleet.
A.C.: We’re going to have both co-op in splitscreen as well as skirmish; how well do you think will the splitscreen work on PCs versus consoles seeing their limited input options (keyboard and mouse vs more than one controller)?
B.C.: On the PC, one player will use mouse & keyboard, and the other player can either use a gamepad or Xbox360 controller.
A.C.: Any true multiplayer options? LAN, over the internet etc.?
B.C.: Flotilla supports splitscreen multiplayer, but no online play.
A.C.: Now a more close to our hearts question: how close to completion is it and will both the PC version of the game and the console one be launched at the same time? :D
B.C.: I’m kinda curious about that myself – this is my first time going through the Xbox indie approval process. We’ll see if the release dates happen to coincide!
A.C.: What are your views on DRM? Will Flotilla incorporate any form of digital rights management?
B.C.: I don’t intend to include DRM. I’m not aware of any DRM system that effectively deters piracy and isn’t a nuisance to legit users.
A.C.: How is the game going to be distributed on the PC? Are you considering digital download services such as Steam or a self-distribution model on your own website?
B.C.: I’m currently in talks with digital distribution services.
A.C.: Talking about distribution, did you think about an estimate price for the game? Are you taking the more common highly reduced indie game price (think Braid for example) or the more reserved, “this is still a full-feature game” price Cryptic Comet (Solium Infernum, Armageddon Empires)?
B.C.: I’m still doing research on digital distribution and haven’t decided on a price point.
A.C.: Are there any plans to switch from the XBOX Live Indie Games to the full arcade games? There are certain countries who get screwed out of the indie games channel (such as Australia for example).
B.C.: It’s something I’d certainly like to try someday!
