It’s a harmful world on the market for the indie developer seeking to make a splash with a brand new dwell service sport. All video games launch vulnerable to failure, however the aggressive multiplayer area has proved a no man’s land for a lot of a promising sport over the previous few years.
Omega Strikers, launching this April to all platforms, is dashing in nonetheless. With its cocktail of sports activities, combating game-adjacent motion and character-based teamplay, is diving headfirst in direction of launch. I had an opportunity to play the sport in the course of the PC beta late final yr, at which level I made observe of the stable foundations on the coronary heart of Omega Strikers.
This week, at GDC, I used to be in a position to leap in but once more, and chat to the trio of Odyssey Interactive advertising and marketing director Ryan Rigney, co-founder Richard Henkel, and fellow co-founder Dax Andrus. The sport has come a good distance since final yr, however I wished to grill the group on how Omega Strikers would maintain folks enjoying within the months post-launch – one thing that has probed to be a pitfall for a lot of of their friends.
Their reply? A deal with gameplay, fairly than the “BS” patterns you see elsewhere. That, of their thoughts, is what trendy audiences need. “The most important factor is, truthfully, authenticity from a dev,” states Andrus. “I will say that is one thing that we have been very fortunate and privileged to have the ability to simply lean on. There’s no BS in Omega Strikers: the gameplay is the factor that ought to promote you.”
Of their eyes, one other boon to Omega Strikers is crossplay between all platforms, one thing the staff believed essential for the accessibility and general attraction of their sport. “We’re making an attempt to do like cross platform cross development in a approach that is simply simple,” Andrus elaborates. “Make every part seamless, make it in order that you realize what you are stepping into whenever you play the sport and it by no means seems like we’re making an attempt to, you realize, ‘nickel and dime’ you alongside the route first for different issues.”
“By being crossplatform, you will be wherever the gamers are. It is like folks do not need to be instructed they’ve to purchase a console if I need to play that sport or they should be on my telephone,” Henkel provides.
However there’s another facet Odyssey Interactive favours extremely in its bid to make a mark on this tremendous aggressive area, one thing the staff (composed of former League of Legends workers introduced with them from Riot Video games) values very extremely certainly: characters. Lovable and interesting characters that gamers can genuinely join with.
“A giant a part of the enjoyable of enjoying a character-based sport is a relationship that you simply really feel such as you’re constructing with a personality within the sport,” Andrus states excitedly. He factors out Arcane, the favored League of Legends animated sequence, and the way it made the featured characters extra essential to their participant base.
“Our hope is we are able to make an IP that may final for Omega Strikers, future video games we make, and we’re making the primary steps in direction of different media like anime and different issues. After we create a personality we maintain this concept in thoughts; ‘if this character was the primary character of their very own anime, may they’ve a full season?’”
With this laser-focus on characters, then, it needs to be no surpirse that the studio goes exhausting on character updates post-launch. “We’re aiming for 3 weeks per new character launch, till we’re on the level the place we’re round 20 to 25 characters, after which we intend to decelerate to in all probability round half that fee or somewhat decrease,” explains Andrus.
Odyssey Interactive felt that one of many weakest facets of the Omega Strikers beta was a scarcity of characters, which performed a component in lessening the joy from the ~1.5 million gamers who jumped in final yr. Nonetheless, with the tempo outlined above, the devs hope to deliver the sport to a “fairly wholesome” state at round 20 playable characters.
The staff can be releasing character-specific affinity ranges for every playable hero, a kind of mini-battle cross that gives cosmetics and in-game foreign money (a-la Valorant, League of Legends, and quite a few different video games within the area). The trio additionally hinted at an anime-style visible novel for characters that they’d like so as to add sooner or later, pointing to the League of Legends ‘Spirit Blossom’ narrative occasion for instance of the kind of content material they’d prefer to create, so gamers can get to know their favorite fighters even higher.
As for a way Odyssey intends to cease ‘the Hanzo drawback’ – a standard incidence the place gamers who love their particular character will lock it in no matter what the staff wants – it has religion in its design, albeit with a goal-sized caveat.
“We’ve tried to design most characters, 80% of the roster, in order that they are often performed in quite a lot of positions,” Andrus reveals. “It covers most circumstances. There’s additionally this improve system, which you should utilize to boost your character all through a match. This might help add flexibility.”
“The one place the place this generally is a problem is the goalie function,” he confesses, smirking. “Clearly there are gonna be characters who’re higher at goalie than others. However that’s the place we hope that gamers queuing for goalie should not doing so and deliberately choosing a personality that’s not suited to that place.”
Morale is outwardly at a excessive proper now at Odyssey Interactive as launch creeps nearer. However that is, naturally, paired with a worry of how the sport will likely be obtained, one thing Andrus believes is a shared “existential dread” of all indie devs. With religion in its work and inspired by the response from beta testers and followers on-line, Omega Strikers could possibly be one of many few on-line service video games to shoot and rating the place others have failed. We’re simply going to have to attend till kick-off to search out out.
Omega Strikers launches April 27 on cell, PC, and consoles.
