When you first hear about Blue Manchu’s Void Bastards, roguelike seems like it would be a fitting term. Players move through randomly generated areas and even become a newly generated character after dying while retaining a bit of progress, both of which are hallmarks of roguelike games. That being said, roguelike actually isn’t a term that the developers are using to describe Void Bastards. DualShockers noticed this, and asked Blue Manchu’s Jonathan Chey why the developers decided not to describe Void Bastards as a roguelike.
Jonathan Chey, who actually was one of the co-founders of Irrational Games before staring Blue Manchu, revealed that they aren’t using the term roguelike for a few different gameplay-related reasons. First off, while the two aforementioned elements are common within roguelike games, players also usually have to start from scratch in those titles after dying. This isn’t the case with Void Bastards as progress is persistent as the player moves along through its 12-15 hour campaign.
He also pointed out that every tool and gadget built carries over after a playable character dies, so dying doesn’t really halt progress much and feels more like BioShock and System Shock 2, two other titles Jonathan Chey has worked on. He also revealed that skilled players can actually get through Void Bastards without dying and began to toy with the idea of adding an achievement that rewards players who do so:
“The term “roguelike” suggests a few things that aren’t really true of our game, most importantly, the idea that you are going to be replaying the start of the game over and over again. Void Bastards has a very different feel, largely because most of the game progress is persistent (i.e. doesn’t reset when you die).
Every tool and gadget you build is carried over from one client (prisoner) to the next so the game feels a lot more like System Shock 2 or BioShock, both of which had respawning systems that meant you largely didn’t lose progress when you died. It’s also entirely possible to play through Void Bastards without dying at all. In fact, that’s another achievement that we should add to the game!”
DualShockers full interview with Jonathan Chey will be going live tomorrow, so keep an eye out for that. That being said, you can still see what he had to say about a colorblind ability and the lessons he carried over from System Shock 2 and BioShock‘s development. Void Bastards will make its way onto PC and Xbox One sometime in Early 2019.
The post Here’s Why Blue Manchu Doesn’t Want to Call Void Bastards a Roguelike by Tomas Franzese appeared first on DualShockers.