(PressFire.no): Norske Rock Pocket Games, which has previously released games such as “Shiftlings” and “Moons of Madness” (and which most recently worked on “Kaptein Sabeltann” and the “Flåklypa Grand Prix” remake) has announced its next game:
“Somber Echoes” is a proper “Metroidvania” platformer where you step into the role of the warrior Adrestia, who must stop her evil twin sister on board a huge spaceship where something mysterious has happened – and where enemies and big bosses have run amok .
The game will have a focus on exploration, mobility and variety in the fighting, the developers can report, and has a plot inspired by Greek tragedies (with a sci-fi twist).
In the trailer below, we see Adrestia swinging around both with a sword, throwing a huge spear and flipping around at great speed.
We had a chat with Lead Designer Vangelis Kalaitzis and designer Tom-Ivar Arntzen in Rock Pocket about exactly what makes “Somber Echoes” different from the popular genre.
Neither of the two are newcomers when it comes to platform games – Kalaitzis has recently been involved in games such as “Kaptein Sabertooth”, while Arntzen won game of the year at the Spillprisen 2022 for his “Klang 2”.
Rock Pocket’s newest game has been in development for well over three years now, and time has passed to hammer down the “feeling” of the game. Arntzen believes that much of what separates a good platform game from a bad one lies in the way the characters move – the important flow.
Lead designer Vangelis Kalaitzis
(Photo: RPG)
– There has been a lot of interaction, a lot of game testing where we play a lot and then take a step back and leave it for a while.
– Over time, we have landed on a focus on verticality, which allows us to explore the important core mechanic in our game – which is mobility.
In the game, you will be able to both double jump and “dash” from the start – but not quite as we are familiar with it from other games, where you tend to only fly in one direction.
Instead, here you have “Aether Lanterns” that are deployed in what you dash, and which transform you into a glowing sphere – which can then be moved in any direction, or reset by falling back into the lamp.
– It’s a bit like you get an “end game” way to move, only at the very beginning, laughs Arntzen.
Getting the flow to carry over into all aspects of the game is something they’ve worked hard to get right, say the developers – not just the running itself.
– With games like “Metroid Dread” fresh in our minds, we were very aware of how important it was that everything is connected, says Arntzen.
– It is super important to achieve, and we have tried to not only make it feel right with the running, but also in more “simple” aspects such as walking, climbing and jumping.
This also carries over into the way Adrestia fights, the developers say, and a lot of work has gone into making the enemies react correctly based on how you hit them.
She also has a huge spear that can be thrown in all directions, preferably to impale enemies against walls.
– Getting the weapons to have a physical presence in the game has been something we have worked on a lot, says Arntzen.
This is reflected in the fact that the spear must be manually retrieved – otherwise you will have to do without it for a while.
Designer Tom-Ivar Arntzen (Photo: RPG)
The game will have “shrines” you come to, save points where you can calm down a bit (and get your spear back if you’ve lost it).
Some of these will let you flip back to previous shrines as well, hinting at a semi-open structure in the game, which takes place entirely on a huge starship.
Adrestia’s journey through the ship (which is not a space station, it is clarified) is still something the developers don’t want to go into too much detail about, but one narrative twist they reveal is to give the player more information than what Adrestia has.
– We use typical tricks from Greek tragedies, where the player can think “wait a minute, she doesn’t know that so-and-so”. We have had a good response to using so-called tragic irony as a means of action, and I don’t think that is very common in computer games today, says Kalaitzis.
The tropes within the genre can be, for example, that we as players know that the choices the characters make will have a tragic outcome – something Kalaitzis says has been a difficult thing to juggle together with the fact that games are interactive.
– We don’t want to give the player information that makes them an observer to a total train wreck where they have no choice. We have been very careful about that, because players can quickly become unsure and perhaps step in to avoid something.
– There is also no point in forcing people into elections they do not agree with, because the dramatic effect would have been lost anyway, Arntzen interjects.
Kalaitzis says that the theme they have focused on has also paved the way for an interesting visual design.
– We think we have found a good thematic style that we hope will engage the players. It is a Greco-Roman sci-fi mix that tries to tell a little about how such a society would have developed in the environment in which they find themselves.
– It’s not quite ancient Greece, but not quite science fiction either.
The game will have a number of secrets that players can find themselves, as well as different endings – and the progression is very similar to how “Metroid” does it, with new features that come along.
There are excited developers who are now showing off the game for the first time.
– The challenge is that it is initially difficult to make games, but perhaps especially games that belong to a genre that is so well established and that has very specific expectations attached to it thanks to all these wonderful games that belong to it, says Kalaitzis.
– So the second part of the challenge is to find out how we can come up with something new. How can we give something back to the genre, not just ride on what came before and cut from the games that exist.
– The hope is that we manage to establish our own thing in the niche, which makes people say “oh, this was different and cool”.
For the record: Former PressFire editor Jarle Hrafn Grindhaug is currently COO at Rock Pocket Games.
2024-03-02 19:04:00
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