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Indie gaming is on the verge of an immersive sim eruptionThe devs of interesting upcoming im-sims on the impending boom - and what it means for the genre
The devs of interesting upcoming im-sims on the impending boom - and what it means for the genre
Image credit:New Blood Interactive
Image credit:New Blood Interactive
Ellis Tucci grew up playing games likeThief,System Shock, andDeus Ex. Now she’s making an immersive sim of her own. It’s calledSpectra, and it’s set in the US in an alt-history 1972 where Soviet Union is the dominant military power after President Roosevelt was deposed in a fascist coup. You play as a Soviet agent tasked with infiltrating and fomenting revolution in a fortress city called Hiwatha.
It sounds like everything immersive sim fans want. But there’s one big difference between Spectra and the games that inspired it. Tucci is making it on her own. And she isn’t the only indie developer working in one of the most ambitious, developmentally complex genres in the industry. Games likeShadows Of Doubt,Fallen AcesandGloomwoodare merely the steam rising from the bubbling magma chamber that is indie immersive sim development, Like the recent revival of retro shooters, the indie space is on the verge of an immersive sim eruption.
Spectra |Image credit:Ellis Tucci
The way history has repeated itself is uncanny, but it’s also a little portentous. Commercially speaking, immersive sims don’t share the same track record for success that shooters do. “It’s the video game genre [equivalent] of the Ring videotape,” Rogers says. “You make an immersive sim, and then you die several years later.”
Immersive sims are also substantially harder to develop than shooters, something New Blood has an acute understanding of. “David has talked about the way he designed levels for DUSK”, Rogers says. “He could knock out a level pretty darn quick, especially near the end because there were deadlines, so he was like ‘I have to knock out a level every couple of days.’ We could not do that. It takes us as least three to four months to make a single level.” This is partly because those levels need to be coherent believable spaces with numerous avenues of approach, but it’s also because all the mechanics underpinning the level are interlinked. “I’ve talked to everyone making an immersive sim, and I’ve heard the same story from everyone. The moment you continue to make the game and one system changes, it reverberates out and starts affecting all these other systems.”
At a time when independent developers are making all manner of games, the idea of indies tackling the immersive sim remains slightly preposterous. So how is it possible with a team of three, two, or even as a solo dev? Tucci points out that both the tools and knowledge needed to make such games are far more readily available than they were even a few years ago. “I do all my modelling, texturing, and animating in Blender, which I learned from YouTube videos. I make Spectra in Unreal Engine, which I also learned from YouTube, and since I’m a really visual learner, I’ve been able to use Unreal Blueprints, their built-in node based visual scripting system.”
A guard in Thief-with-guns immersive sim Gloomwood |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/New Blood Interactive
Rogers, meanwhile, points out that indies aren’t obligated to compete in the graphical arms race that big-budget im-sims likeDishonoredand Deus Ex are. “There was this quote from Raph[ael Colantonio] where one of the most frustrating things about working at Arkane was that they had to put so much time and effort making sure everything looked fine,” Rogers says. “That rubs against immersive sims really badly, because the thing about immersive sims is that you want to offer a lot of different options. And some of those options are going to look weird because some of them aren’t going to be intended.”
Making immersive sims outside of traditional game development isn’t just about mitigating problems, of course. There are outright advantages too, namely that it lets developers create experiences that would never get past a AAA publisher. One such project isETOS, a “pacifist immersive sim” that sees you trying to escape from a subterranean city on a remote desert planet.
ETOS |Image credit:UnderSide Games
ETOS’s pacifist angle also lets Mab explore the world narratively in a way other immersive sims can’t. “I can write characters to be vital to the story, since the player can’t decide to kill off anyone they choose. This [includes] enemies, and I will be exploring the long term relationships you build with the guards who are trying to keep you from stealing stuff.”
Image credit:Ninth ExodusImage credit:Ninth ExodosPeripeteia
Image credit:Ninth Exodus
Image credit:Ninth Exodos
