Interview with the Developer of Rogue Eclipse
The team at Six One Indie have always loved games like Starfox. There’s huge nostalgia there for us so seeing games with Starfox as inspiration are immediately on our radar. And Rogue Eclipse was no different. We were super excited to have them as part of the showcase.
Huge thank you to Husban for answering my questions about the game.
Can you tell me more about the team behind Rogue Eclipse?
I’m Husban/Mcdoogleh, the Project Lead on Rogue Eclipse. For the past couple of years I’ve had the privilege of working on this project with an amazing small core team that’s both remote and internationally based (although the majority of folks are based in the UK!); it’s hard to sum up the team given all the walks of life and roles everyone has come from! We vary from folks who’ve never worked on a game before to individuals who are seasoned developers and are just incredibly talented at what they do! 🙂
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t tip my hat over to the fine folks over at Outersloth/Innersloth, without whom I wouldn’t be here right now!
What inspired the team to make a game based in the deepest reaches of space?
From a more personal standpoint, I’m very much a fan and enthusiast for this genre as far back as I can remember (does anyone recall ‘Rescue on Fractalus!’ or ‘Rogue Squadron’?), it’s one that runs deep in my blood! Now while there have been no shortage of great spaceflight titles in the past decade, I really wanted to create a title that was much more focused on being action-oriented and arcadey, the likes of which I wish I could’ve played growing up! However, in making this title we didn’t want to just remake what had come before and instead try to meaningfully push arcade spaceflight action forward in ways that hadn’t necessarily been done before. So for example, some players experience motion-sickness with these types of games, is it possible to alleviate that? Are there mechanisms that we can add to allow players to be more aggressive? What kind of setpieces or encounters haven’t we seen in this genre before? Given a roguelike structure, what interesting opportunities could arise from that? We hope the experience we’ve crafted really delivers on these areas we’ve been thinking about.
The other aspect to this is an intrinsic desire to create a sci-fi setting inspired by my own cultural heritage, which has manifested as a lens that we’ve come to refer to as ‘Arabesque Futurism’. This has percolated through to every aspect of the game, whether it be the characters, story, world design and environments all the way through to the soundtrack! As a fun fact, we even have an invented language inspired by this lens which you would’ve heard a snippet of in the trailer!
Rogue Eclipse was inspired by games like Starfox and Armored Core. How does Rogue Eclipse’s gameplay compare to classic titles like that? How does it differ?
Really great question! So with regards to Star Fox, I think what was special to me about that particular title (beyond the charming characters and story!) was the approachable controls, how effortless it was just to fly around and blow things up immediately, it just felt amazing. Another element I was curious to explore was taking the ‘All-Range Mode’ setup and seeing how far we could push the combat intensity in that kind of an encounter space.
In terms of Armored Core’s influence, there’s a speed and spectacle to that series that I felt like I hadn’t really seen in a spaceflight game before, along with its approach to combat design. I’d be remiss if I also didn’t admit we were very much inspired by how they handled storytelling, worldbuilding and customization in that series as well!
With regards to how Rogue Eclipse differs? Well for starters we also took inspiration from other titles beyond the ones mentioned and even influences from outside of the genre itself! Whether it be the more aggressive and push-forward combat of games such as RollerDrome, Boltgun or Doom, the fast and frenetic spectacle offered by Ace Combat or Project Wingman, or even non-gaming media such as Gundam Wing or Macross! On top of this the bullet-hell elements were very much inspired by the likes of Enter the Gungeon and Returnal. Artistically beyond the cornerstone lens of ‘Arabesque Futurism’ we also have a great fondness for the likes of Wipeout and the Homeworld series!
So in the end, we’re really hoping that folks will experience something that is quite fresh, yet familiar in some ways!
What are some of the ways that you can upgrade your ship in the game? Are there any other ways to customize your ship?
Absolutely! So in Rogue Eclipse we somewhat differentiate between customization and upgrades (while we are a roguelike, we definitely bend the conventions in some unusual ways!). To start with, players can change their ‘starfighter frame’ (basically the spacecraft they’re flying) which acts as a baseline platform that they can further tune, whether it be swapping out the engines to go faster or the onboard shield generator to boost defense capabilities. Alongside this players can choose the heavy weapon system that’s on board (such as missiles or a railgun), select an ‘expansion’ which is essentially a special ability that they can use in combat, and then of course they can choose the colour of their starfighter!
In terms of upgrades these are only available, unlocked and applied during a run, but pretty much every aspect of your ship is covered from the throttle speed or handling characteristics through to the weapons (and some of those upgrades are specific to the weapons that you’ve chosen!) So ultimately, your starfighter and components are more about tuning to your playstyle, and hopefully during a run you get the upgrades that you’re looking for to maximize your starfighter to its full potential!
The long short of it, there are many ways you can upgrade and customize your ship.
In most roguelikes, dying is inevitable. Can players expect to lose a lot of battles in Rogue Eclipse? What kinds of things can they take from run to run to improve their chances?
‘Dying is inevitable’ is certainly one way to view it! I prefer to see it as ‘challenges and foes you have to overcome’! At the heart of Rogue Eclipse I would say we lean a bit more towards player skill mastery and view upgrades more as perks that give players a slight edge during combat!
With that said this is one area in particular I’ve spent a significant amount of time thinking about wanting to ensure that death didn’t feel cheap or that you had been cheated by the game in some way and that it wasn’t just ‘oh you’ve died’.
So the way that we view ‘death’ is that the player always has some kind of a new takeaway or reward. Whether it be knowledge that they didn’t have before or a starfighter or component that they can try out in their next run (and these unlocks persist between runs!); or even the anticipation of facing an enemy that they haven’t encountered before!
Conversely, I also understand you can’t have a roguelike without some form of loss and that’s where the upgrades come in. Only by progressing and getting through a run can a player see their starfighter realized to its full destructive potential! However, another twist is along the way they can unlock shortcuts as well, which only disappear once they’ve advanced to a new chapter of the game. So in essence when players jump back in they’re presented with two paths, face off against the foes that took them down with less upgrades or fight through more encounters to maximize the lethality of their ship.
To sum it up, loss is a step forward towards future victory, players won’t walk away completely empty handed and really it’s about flight mastery over your foes more than anything else!
What’s a type of technology you’ve seen in science fiction media that you wish we had in real life?
Gotta say it’d honestly have to be a toss up between a ‘Replicator’ from Star Trek (I’m a heavy tea drinker so I’d love something like this in my life!). Alternatively some kind of teleportation or portal tech would be awesome as well, the idea of just being able to instantaneously travel towards where you’d want to go is too tantalizing to pass up!
What does “indie” mean to you?
Getting quite existential here! Well, I suppose indie to me means the freedom to create or author a creative vision freely without any external demands or interference! The opportunity to craft something to life from the soul!