Are you ready to save the galaxy? Well, now you can do that in Element Space! Element Space launched on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 24th!
We decided to host an interview with one of the devs of Element Space, Javier from the Sixth Vowel team, and we also asked the community to send us some questions for the devs, so these are included as well!
Were you influenced by any games or other media? What aspects do you like about them?
Indeed, “Element Space” was influenced a lot by “Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle” in terms of video games, and I would say it was the biggest inspiration in most things related to gameplay, because we also use the concept of making combat feel like a mix of puzzles and tactical decisions without the random element (there is no random hit chance like in XCOM games). XCOM was also a big inspiration, since it is a close game to the genre and also a staple in tactical squad combat games, but mechanically speaking, Mario had a much stronger influence.
It's also important to mention the series “Cosmos” when talking about influences, since it was while watching it that the whole idea for the story of “Element Space” came into fruition. The mere idea of humanity having to face extinction and the need to expand towards the rest of the galaxy to prevent were inspired by Neil De Grasse Tyson´s enlightening ideas on the matter. People can find a backstory for the game up to the point where the campaign starts here.
Did anything in Argentina influence the game at all?
I would say that the biggest influence derived from our country was the way we see and talk about other cultures. Since Argentina doesn´t have a tendency towards racism or xenophobia, we felt we could be fair when creating a sci-fi universe in which everyone was at their peak, in both development and cynicism, without being insulting to other cultures. We wanted to create a universe of humans that represented both the best and worst extremes of their political and ideological backgrounds, so we decided to capture historical moments for the many different factions and bring them back to a futuristic and dystopian setting.
This is also why we chose to handle all relationships in the game with an ideological system instead of the classic good versus evil dilemma. Being a follower of Humanism doesn´t always translate into being good, nor does being a focused believer of Autocracy make you necessarily tyrannical. We felt that using Humanism versus Independence and Bureaucracy versus Autocracy allowed us to explore the vices and benefits of belief and make everything feel more realistic when in terms of relationships in the Three Systems.
Element Space was inspired on games like XCOM and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.
What was your favorite memory from making Element Space?
Oh, that is a tough one, since there were many awesome moments, both in development with the team, during parties with all the staff to the awards in Dreamhack or the Official Selection in the Indie MegaBooth. But honestly, my personal favorite was the day we launched the game on PC. It was long overdue and it felt like a massive accomplishment to press the Launch button and just know that all our hard work was out there, ready to be felt and played by gamers world-wide. I remember that day because it was also the birthday of one of the people in the Animators team, and my partner and I decided to let her be the one to press the release button, since she was part of the team from day one and it felt right to let her do it.
What was the process for creating Element Space?
It took, including pre-production, between 24 to 30 months to create “Element Space”. The team that we gathered during that time worked fantastically to create a product they could believe in and everyone felt that we were constantly making some improvements, both as professionals and towards the industry in our country, by making a game that, size-wise, hadn´t been attempted before in our region. We found many challenges on the way because many of the positions required in the studio to face the challenges of production just didn't exist in Argentina, so in many cases we had to train people as best we could to produce the desired results. All-in-all, we are super happy with the end result.
Size-wise, Element Space is one of the games with the largest scope ever developed in Argentina.
What led to the decision to create a tactical turn-based RPG?
Well, initially “Element Space” was supposed to be a real-time action-RPG. After many iterations with the rules we created we started realizing that the game gained more depth and quality the more we pushed back the camera and gave more control to the player over the entire squad, reducing random factors to a minimum. I remember the day we did the full switch and we realized that not only did the game feel much better, runned much smoother, looked prettier and it didn't affect immersion in a negative way in the slightest. It was a good realization to learn during production that our team was better able to create a much stronger tactical turn-based RPG than to attempt to produce a game that wouldn't quite hit the note.
In regards to the process of the gameplay being turn based, was there ever a stage in development where it was in real time?
Indeed there was! The games started as a Real Time Action RPG, then veered towards a Real Time Tactical squad RPG and then finally landed on a turn-based tactical squad RPG. We still have those builds from the early days and, who knows, maybe one day we´ll walk that path, but “Element Space” became a much better game because of this paradigm change. You can still notice some of the Real Time elements of the game whenever a character does a Melee attack (specially those aimed specifically for that purpose, like Alice or Starkill), since most animations were planned towards that in the beginning.
Element Space started as a real-time action RPG, but ended up becoming a turn-based squad RPG, as it became a more fun and better game.
What makes Element Space different from other turn-based games?
I think that the main ingredient that differs Element Space from other games are the mix of a strong story, a huge amount of replayability and the challenging-but-not-unforgiving difficulty that makes every playthrough experience feel different yet consistently fresh to keep the player engaged. Usually story-driven RPGs tend to lean more towards the one-shot experience, but the size of “Element Space” makes it easier to tackle the game again to unlock new characters, missions, weapons and see the result of those decisions by ideology. The differences in all endings are so varied and the tactical approach to every companion changes enough to make it worthwhile to go at it again as many times as you want, so I think that is pretty unique.
Element Space combines challenging gameplay with a rich story with a huge amount of replayability.
What advice would you give to people interested in game development?
Coming just from our experience from our first game, I think my greatest advice is to be able to learn that sometimes, doing less is more: the use of the word “no”, specially to cut scope and stuff from a game is a key part of making the right decision. In production, sometimes it's very difficult to notice how small things can escalate into a huge amount of work, and cutting the rough edges or needless features can lead into a greater focus on the strength of a game. This is particularly true for independent devs that have much less resources to put into their game, like it happened to us.
When we embarked on the idea to make “Element Space”, the game was three times as big and with around twenty times the amount of content, and to be honest, that initial game would have been impossible to do in Argentina at the time, and probably very difficult to make in any other country in LatAm. It would have taken double the team size and triple the time of production, resources that we literally couldn't afford.
Reducing the size of a product does not harm it, actually, many times it improves it. By focusing on your strengths, you diminish the amount of needless content. In our case, reducing the game to this size allowed us to not only release a first draft which we can all be proud of as a game, but also keeps a lot of material and ideas to further the story with additional games and content. It was a good lesson to learn and it allowed us to finish production in the time we wanted it to be over.