5/30/2023 0 Comments Steel assault steam keyArcade mode will be based around the idea of a “one-credit clear” (1CC), of course. It’s the least time-consuming way to do this, and also the best way, in my view. That’s our approach for accommodating modern tastes: difficulty modes. I’ll admit, I died a time or two (or a dozen). I think you must have played on the normal mode, since the arcade mode has no checkpoints.Īh, okay, I wasn’t sure which mode was harder. Obviously Steel Assault aims to deliver an old-school experience, but what changes, big and small, have you made to accommodate more modern tastes? Checkpoints are pretty generous, for instance. You can see that experience in a kind of bastardized form, when you play the second section of the recent demo. And then I took a bunch of photos for the artists, although I don’t know how well they translated. I thought, all you would need to do is add some overgrowth here, some vines over there, and you’d have a stage for Steel Assault. Not one person around for miles, but the billboards were still flashing, and they were running ads for films that had come out almost a year ago (at that time) or for stores which you could no longer visit. I remember during the start of the coronavirus crisis last April, I was walking through Times Square on a Sunday afternoon, and it was completely empty. But it’s been funny seeing certain elements kind of become reality. I wouldn’t focus too much on relating our game to the current political climate any similarities are incidental, not ideological. But yes, the broad strokes of the game’s story have barely changed since the Kickstarter in 2015, although some details have. This is an arcade side-scrolling action game, so telling a nuanced story isn’t our highest priority (and can’t be, really). Are you keeping the same focus with the story? It only feels more relevant 4 years later. Protests turning violent, a tyrant aiming to seize power with promises to Make America Great Again (so to speak), etc. Speaking of changes, the story you hinted at during the Kickstarter campaign was rather pointed stuff. If we can gather the resources, for the next game I would like hire a few full-time artists and musicians to define these things at the very beginning of the process. Many of the artists had previously worked on GBA and DS games, for example WayForward’s titles, so that’s probably why you see the resemblance. In terms of art style, due to budgetary limitations (and our early inexperience) the game’s style has had to kind of evolve organically based on the artists we were able to get on board over the years, rather than by imposing the game’s style completely from top-down. I think both of those games are higher quality than what our original pitch promised, and on top of that, the backers also get the final version of Steel Assault. The 8-bit fans got two free games in an art style similar to what they wanted: Panzer Paladin and Cyber Shadow, the latter of which uses some of the OG Steel Assault assets. Some of the original doubters even told me that it ended up being the best campaign they ever participated in. There was some outrage when we announced the shift, but I think the Kickstarter backers are very happy in the end. The late-NES thing didn’t survive very long past the Kickstarter (5-6 years ago). It’s my understanding that a lot of the original Steel Assault art was reused for the recent Yacht-Club-published game Cyber Shadow. I'd say it looks like a GBA title more than anything. The Kickstarter campaign for Steel Assault said you'd be aiming for a late-NES-inspired visual style, but the recently-released demo looks rather different. As for the game’s setting, it wasn’t inspired by any specific games as much as post-apocalyptic movies such as “I Am Legend” or “Children of Men”, although we referenced concept art from “The Last of Us” at certain points (a game which I still need to play!) Meanwhile, some of the bosses and set pieces take cues from Treasure and Konami’s Genesis/Megadrive output. Taro’s 8-way electric whip is of course inspired by Castlevania, and his slide move by Contra: Hard Corps, but his double jump is our own addition as is his zipline, which was an idea from our original artist Daniel Garcia. Steel Assault is a kind of amalgamation of many different 16-bit titles, and it seems like every person who plays it sees a different inspiration. In terms of movement, I'd say there's also a touch of classic Sunsoft games, like Batman on NES. What games inspired Steel Assault? I think a lot people will immediately jump to Bionic Commando due to the zipline/grappling hook, but there's a lot of Castlevania and Mega Man in there too, particularly Mega Man Zero.
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