For all the players who like to have customization options such as costumes and a distinct ship parts, we will have decorative items on sale in an in-game store. Since we are a small team, we have to satisfy our core players and build the game for them. To disrupt game balance would be unfair to our core players. Player gear is inseparably tied to the core game play. For Guns of Icarus Online, we could not afford to have pay to win. We just felt that we would end up having to make design and balance sacrifices to cater to free to play. We went through that thought process as well, but decided resoundingly against it. Overall, setting the rewards were a lot of fun, and it wasn’t too difficult.įree to play is all the rage now, was there ever any thought of going that route with the game? Once we were sure of good design and quality at prices we could afford, we set the reward levels on Kickstarter. We then looked for vendors that had cool samples and designs. For other items such as the USB stick, we basically sat around during lunch one day and tossed some ideas around, creating a wish list of what we would dream about getting for ourselves and fans. Some of the more interesting gift items, such as the captain’s log book, were the result of that. Having gone through a successful campaign for our other game CreaVures, we learned some good lessons about what worked and what didn’t work. We also hoped that the campaign would cover the costs of sound design, music, and some game art, so the amount was based a bit on that as well. We tried to figure out a minimum number of closed beta players we needed, as well as what it would roughly cost us to support those players in terms of paying for game servers, hosting solutions, etc. We realized then that Kickstarter was a powerful way for us to reach out to and interact with fans, so when Guns of Icarus Online’s development finally got to a point in alpha where we needed players to help us test the game, we knew creating another Kickstarter campaign was the best thing for us to do to start building a beta community, to interact with fans in a deeper and meaningful way, and to raise funding to cover for things such as sound design, music, and art. We created a campaign two weeks before we were set to launch the game on Steam, and we were really surprised by the positive feedback and support we received. We actually started using Kickstarter early in 2011 for our other project CreaVures after hearing about it from a friend who used Kickstarter. You guys did a Kickstarter before it was cool, why did you decide to fund your project that way? How did you come up with the amount of money you asked for? Was it difficult to come up with the different reward levels or not? While inspired by steampunk, we also wanted to infuse designs from various cultures to add a sense of diversity. In addition to these aesthetic guidelines, we combined various aesthetic elements of Team Fortress 2, Final Fantasy, Ratchet and Clank, Steamboy, Otomo Katsuhiro’s “Cannon Fodder”, Jasper Morello, and various photo reference from the early1900s. In a very literal sense, our game is the culmination of three distinctive artistic genres: steampunk, post-apocalyptic, and pre/post World War I. But with contact comes conflict, and the Age of Air is in many ways a new age of war.Īre there any particular inspirations for the art style behind Guns of Icarus? With resources scarce and most of the old technology lost, humanity is just beginning to rediscover the techniques for building airships to cross the barren deserts and reestablish contact and trade among the far-flung settlements. The game is set in a world where the Great War never ended, and three hundred years later the scattered survivors are living in isolated settlements in a landscape that has been ravaged by war. The game is all about teamwork, tactics, and fast-paced action. Each player takes on one of the three roles aboard the ship-Captain, Gunner, or Engineer-and must work together to take down enemies and keep the ship flying. Captain or serve as crew aboard an airship with your friends and fly into battle against other ships in a steampunk/dieselpunk-inspired, post-apocalyptic world. Guns of Icarus Online is a team-based multiplayer online airship combat game. We were able to get a few questions in with the team before they headed up to Boston.įor those who haven’t seen the game, can you give us the quick elevator speech on Guns of Icarus backstory? Such was the case with Guns of Icarus Online which will be making it's big debut at PAX East this week. Some of them are probably a bit too far out there but some of them just pop in your imagination. One of the cool things about running a gaming website is the constant barrage of cool and interesting game concepts.
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