{"id":1006,"date":"2017-09-29T21:45:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/306809"},"modified":"2017-09-29T21:45:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T21:45:00","slug":"surviving-the-unexpected-in-indie-development-to-make-ruiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/09\/29\/surviving-the-unexpected-in-indie-development-to-make-ruiner\/","title":{"rendered":"Surviving the unexpected in indie development to make Ruiner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ruiner<\/em> is a new twin-stick shooter from Reikon Games that\u2019s dripping with atmosphere, a pulpy murder-filled story, and intense action that\u2019s\u2026well, admittedly rather difficult. It\u2019s another feather in publisher Devolver Digital\u2019s cap, and we were lucky enough today to get to talk with Reikon co-founders Magdalena Tomkowicz and Jakub Styli\u0144ski on the Gamasutra Twitch channel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a fun time, and a great chance to look at a game that mixes pulpy, polished violence with an interesting revenge story. You can watch our full conversation with Tomkowicz and Styli\u0144ski up above, but in case you\u2019re already on your way to KILL THE BOSS right now, here\u2019s a few noteworthy takeaways.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s storytelling power in top-down spaces<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tomkowicz, the game\u2019s narrative designer, was kind enough to explain her philosophy for fitting a proper revenge story inside a twin-stick shooter. She shared some practical tips, including making sure no line of dialogue was longer than 3 lines, but also she said part of the goal was to make sure much of the game read \u201clike a comic book.\u201d<\/p>\n

In comic books, Tomkowicz said, readers still take a long time to read pages even though there\u2019s less dialogue than prose. So with Ruiner<\/em>, she attempted to paint the game\u2019s story through images the player can process as they move through the environment, helping add flavor to the top-down perspective.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Be prepared for ANYTHING<\/strong><\/p>\n

Styli\u0144ski spent a lot of time talking about how, despite years of experience at companies like CD Projekt Red and Techland, the Ruiner<\/em> development team couldn\u2019t have predicted the challenges they\u2019d run into. The worst of them (which they survived) was when it licensed a track for Ruiner\u2019s<\/em> announcement trailer\u2026which had to be promptly taken down because the musician they\u2019d licensed the track from had used music they didn\u2019t own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As Styli\u0144ski said (in exasperation), there was literally no way to predict this happening, so the journey to make sure they could have an announcement trailer for PAX East was a huge challenge that they hadn\u2019t anticipated. If you\u2019re going indie\u2014even with experience\u2014Styli\u0144ski advices you to get ready for challenges like this, along with the normal creative and technical ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Faceless characters don\u2019t have to be generic characters<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lastly, Styli\u0144ski and Tomkowicz talked about the main character\u2019s design, and how his faceless LED helmet gives players a character they can project their own ideas onto. We asked how they felt about their hero compared to the supposedly \u201crelatable\u201d generic shooter heroes of years before, and they said that there\u2019s still something specific about Ruiner\u2019s<\/em> violent hero that rewards player\u2019s imagination, instead of depressing it. If you\u2019re working on a game in need of an interesting hero, Tomkowicz’s insights might help you make something memorable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For more developer interviews, editor roundtables and gameplay commentary, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ruiner is a new twin-stick shooter from Reikon Games that\u2019s dripping with atmosphere, a pulpy murder-filled story, and intense action that\u2019s\u2026well, admittedly rather difficult. It\u2019s another feather in publisher Devolver Digital\u2019s cap, and we were lucky enough today to get to talk with Reikon co-founders Magdalena Tomkowicz and Jakub Styli\u0144ski on the Gamasutra Twitch channel.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}