OUYA DevLog: Tripwire Interactive
Hey OUYAns!
Tripwire Interactive has taken over the blog! Read below to find out just how they made the trek from PC to TV! When you’re done here, check out the DISCOVER storefront on your OUYA to see Tripwire’s Top 10 favorite OUYA games.
– BAWB
How a First Person Shooter on PC turned into an Overhead Action Shooter for the OUYA
A QUICK BLURB ABOUT US:
Tripwire Interactive is an entertainment software developer and publisher founded in 2005 by the award-winning mod team and winners of the 2004 edition of the “$1,000,000 Make Something Unreal” competition.
Based in Roswell, Georgia the team released Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45, to both critical and commercial success, garnering several awards including “Multiplayer Game of the Year” and “FPS of the Year”. This was followed by the immensely popular Killing Floor, which went straight to the top of the best-seller list on Steam and has now sold over 2m units, making it one of the best-selling PC games of all time.
Red Orchestra 2 was released in September 2011, to high praise and PC Gamer’s award for “FPS of the Year (Multiplayer)” followed by Rising Storm in May 2013 (“one of the best military FPS games I’ve played” – IGN), Along with publishing other Indie titles, Tripwire Interactive continues to build a reputation for strong support for all their titles over a prolonged period of time.
A NEW “SPIN” ON KILLING FLOOR YOU SAY?
We had worked with Robin Flodin and his team in Sweden in the past and had published their first title on Steam a couple of years ago (the silliness that is Dwarfs!?). Robin and his team (that became Toadman Interactive) did a couple of other projects after that. Early in 2012, Robin said he wanted to try a different take on Killing Floor. The PC game on Steam is still immensely popular and we continue to produce regular updates for it, like the Twisted Christmas event running right now. Fans love the new content packs as much as we enjoy producing them and we love experimenting, so we started trying a few ideas out.
We explored an RTS option (among other crazy ideas) and started really thinking about where we could go with this spinoff thing. We’ve been wanting to explore “couch gaming” since we’re huge fans of co-op and had started exploring a few options, but weren’t actually sure which platform/format.
As timing would have it, we met up with the OUYA folks (Bob and Julie) in January of this year and they expressed a desire to somehow get Killing Floor onto their new system. We reckoned that OUYA had a real shot at disrupting the console market – and it is truly Indie-friendly, so we went for it.
The new design we had been working on with Robin was a Unity based action shooter with a top-down viewpoint, so when we showed them the rough concept things sort of just clicked and BOOM!
Killing Floor: Calamity was born…a reimagined version of the original game, running on a completely new platform. Having started with a PC game, it turned out to be quite the challenge – but we’re there now!
WHAT’S NEW ON OUYA?
We were big fans of the OUYA platform when we first heard about it and like the way that they’re leading the charge in disrupting the way in which games are both created and consumed today. We’re really fascinated to see where OUYA can go with a $99 console. We’re certainly not shy about embracing early, new digital distribution models as our history suggests with our successes with both Red Orchestra and Killing Floor. So we thought we’d build a game for it!
As mentioned above we went with a top-down style as development progressed so that we could get 2 player co-op AND a ton of zeds on screen at once, running on lower-spec hardware. The tech was pretty much done early, so we’ve spent a lot of time on the gameplay, balance, fun and polish – and more gameplay.
Killing Floor: Calamity takes place in the devastated cities and countryside of England, after a series of cloning experiments for the military goes horribly wrong. You and a friend are tooled-up survivors, dropped into these locations with a simple mission: survive long enough to cleanse the area of the failed experiments. Believe me – the action is furious and relentless!
Other features of the game include:
- 2 player Co-op on one screen – The “couch gaming” aspect we were looking to inject into the design. Now you can team up with a friend (bettering your chances for survival).
- 21 of your favorite characters from the PC version
- All 10 loveable Zeds are here (Clot, Gorefast, Scrake, Siren, Crawler, Stalker, Bloat, Husk, Fleshpound and the Patriarch)
- All 7 Perks upgradeable to Level 20 – Power up your character’s perk levels and unlock/obtain new weapons based on that perk
- 9 new maps specifically designed for the top down shooter viewpoint
- 35 unique weapons – including 3 special weapons (Golden AK47, Leafblower, Dual Mac-10)
We also support PlayStation 3 controllers (as well as OUYA controllers of course!)
We’re really excited to bring Killing Floor: Calamity to the OUYA and we’re hoping that the fans enjoy the game as much as we do. The OUYA team has also been extremely supportive and a pleasure to work with over the last year.
The Killing Floor brand still thrives today because we love it and keep producing fresh content to keep the community tremendously engaged. People have already started asking us about new/additional content for Killing Floor: Calamity and basically it comes down to demand. If enough people are playing it and asking for new stuff etc. we’ll definitely take a look at it and see what can be done!
