Ok, so I understand its hard to tell what the game is meant to be like right now. Nothing is really set in stone and you cant tell from a single image what Damzel is meant to be about. But let me at least describe for you what its not about. Its not about FPS style escort missions! There was always a risk when talking about using a first person view, that it would evoke the first person shooter gameplay to mind. Add on protecting someone and its pretty natural to think “escort mission”. But as I woke up this morning I realized there might be a way to explain why game will feel different than that.

I’ll use the old PC game “Space Hulk” to explain what I mean. I know many of you wont remember this game, but certainly many of you will be aware of the setting.

Space Hulk PC

I use the example of Space Hulk here to explain that in the game, you are controlling squads. Ok, in Space Hulk you controlled individual marines, but in Damzel you control squads of up to five agents. Space Hulk built up a lot of atmosphere with its presentation, but I’m interested in the tension of the game here. It was no dumb blast-all-the-aliens game here. You had to carefully plan your way through the Hulk, trying to get to an exit point. You had a squad, you had weapons and individual loadouts etc. But its the tension that I’m trying to get across here.

If people go into the game thinking “first person shooter” then I’ve lost. Because it wont feel that way at all. But there’s a dilemma in that I really love the immersion that the first person viewpoint brings. I also enjoyed the Brothers in arms squad control mechanic enough to want to try and recreate it somewhat for this game. So in effect the emphasis is not on an individual so much as it is on the arrangement of squads. Hopefully gameplay videos and teasers will be able to explain this when the time comes. But it does still worry me that people dismiss the game without really understanding where its coming from. The depth that comes from the sheer number of possible configurations of squads, enemies, world and protectee (I definitely need a better word for them) is staggering. But I think thats for another post.

Hope this clears a few things up and explains the game a bit more. I highly recommend reading the peice on Rock Paper Shotgun about Space Hulk, it was one of my favourite games of that era (I still have it in a box somewhere I think).

Here is the link again

Thanks for reading.