![]() The pair successfully crowdfunded Prodeus in early 2019, and they expect to release the game next year. ![]() It’s something that you just don’t get from mainstream games today.” Prodeusīoth Mojica and Mike Voeller have been working on Prodeus since 2017, having first met while working together at Raven Software on the 2010 shooter Singularity. ![]() ![]() “It’s amazing how clean their design was. I’m a level design junkie by trade, so digging into these older games was extremely interesting, and gave me a different appreciation for them,” he told EGM. It was purely passion driven by a desire to learn and get into that old school mindset. For Mojica, developing a throwback first-person shooter was born from a pursuit to understand the more classic elements of the genre. Others are experimenting with classic engines and visual styles to create something original, like a new evolutionary line splintered off from a species long thought extinct.ĮGM reached out to the creators behind Dusk, Amid Evil, Project Warlock, Prodeus, Hellscreen, Ion Fury, and Wrath to learn about what made classic shooters so interesting and memorable, the role childhood memories played in bringing the genre back to its roots, and the challenges of trying to appeal to new audiences with willfully outmoded design.Īccording to the developers we spoke with, several key components of ’90s first-person shooters made them special: fast-paced gameplay, maze-like levels filled with secrets, and unscripted action as opposed to choreographed setpieces.Īs one of the developers behind Prodeus, Jason Mojica joined this retro revival after working for years on more modern takes on the genre, including Payday 2, BioShock Infinite, and the Call of Duty: Black Ops series. Some of these smaller studios are looking to build new games closely inspired by those they played when they were teenagers. The 2017 Doom found id Software attempting to return to the early days of its own series, while other classic properties, like Wolfenstein, Rise of the Triad and Shadow Warrior, have been handed over to new developers in an attempt to recapture that retro spark.īut it’s a wave of independent developers that have become the biggest driving force behind the rise of the throwback shooter. More recently, though, we’ve seen a concerted effort to pare back those elements and reclaim something closer to the genre’s origins. Both these branches eventually sought out ways to build out the core experience of shooting, most commonly with RPG-style progression and customization. The other, as embodied by Half-Life, BioShock, and Deus Ex, shifted the focus to cinematic storytelling and immersive worlds. One, spearheaded by games like Counter-Strike, Halo, Call of Duty, and Battlefield, leaned heavily into multiplayer. In the almost three decades since, shooters have largely branched off in two different directions. Together, they innovated on a shared foundation of fast-paced action, tons of big guns, and enemies that wanted to stop you at all costs to birth the first-person shooter. The early work of companies such as 3D Realms, id Software, and Epic Games defined the standard for a new genre. In the 1990s, it was the perfect formula for a video game hit.
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