Wolfire's Black Shades

Trawling through some of the comments on the kotaku link to the Damzel page. I noticed a couple of things:

  1. People think it sounds like wolfire games Black Shades
  2. People think that escort missions suck

So to clear things up a bit. This game really isnt like Black Shades, although its pretty easy to see why you would think that. Black Shades did inspire us to go the FPS route. But the focus of the game is very different. You’ll have to wait and see. The other thing is that escort missions typically DO suck. But they suck for a very different reason than you think. The reason is very much tied to the typical FPS gameplay style. To be honest, the first person viewpoint is one area of the games design thats a bit risky. The idea is to implement a brothers-in-arms style first person view, where you control your squads. The real aim here is to make things feel immersive, whilst providing some tactical interest and strategic depth. But you could play the game entirely outside of the first person view (we’re going for a hybrid model) to control the squads in a far more Syndicate style of play.

The real issue for us design-wise is to make sure that the whole package feels right. Its also the fun of developing our own game! Suffice to say that of course there are potential risks involved with the gameplay and references to be drawn to other games, but you have to have faith that the game that comes out at the end avoids those pitfalls and is its own thing. Not much point in being and indie developer if you can’t deal with a bit of risk right?

Thanks all for the interest in the game though. It feels good to know people might give it a shot.