One of the games you may have noticed in the Racing section of our 120+ Upcoming Indie Wii U Games feature is Velocity Stream. Cavelight Entertainment has been in touch with us multiple times over the past few weeks, discussing their plans to bring the game to Wii U. With its asymmetrical gameplay and F-Zero style, it would be a perfect match for the Wii U GamePad and a Nintendo audience. It’s almost like Nintendo made Velocity Stream as a tech demo to show how the GamePad can be used to innovate the F-Zero formula of racing.
You can ask questions directly to Cavelight and engage in conversation with them on our Meet the Developers forums, in their thread.
Cavelight answered a few of our questions to give Wii U owners a better ideas of what to expect:
Can you tell us about your studio? How many staff members do you currently have?
Cavelight consists of 7 graduates from the University of Skövde, Sweden’s foremost gaming university. We started developing games in 2011 and are a part of Gothia Science Park, an incubator that currently houses 20 game studios, including Coffeestain Studios and Stunlock Studios.
What is your past experience in video game development?
Apart from our education within game development, Cavelight has previously released a game for iOS, called Lovetender. Beyond that, several team members have participated in different projects, ranging from internships at Pieces Interactive, to participating in the sound of independent movie “Filmen om Estrid”.
What kind of games do you hope to be able to make?
As many developers, we want to move on towards bigger and better things. Making games for PC and console feels like an obvious step up. If Wii U owners show us proper support, we might even become Nintendo exclusive. Time will tell.
We wish to create games that appeal more to mature gamers. And I don’t mean mature in the traditional sense of filling our box art with as many PEGI icons as possible. Instead I mean the bold and the brave who took on 3D for the first time on the N64 and have memories of split-screen parties. Or perhaps even pioneered online gaming with the original Counter Strike. People whom have now grown up, have jobs and maybe children to think of. People who might not be able to enjoy 45 minute missions and desire more mature stories.
How long has Velocity Stream been in development?
It’s a bit difficult to give a straight answer there. Some pre-production work happened in the spring of 2011, as the concept had become a semi-finalist in Dare to be Digital that year.
However, since you’re not allowed to actually start developing the game until you reach the finals, practical development didn’t start. We then created a puzzle game for iOS called Lovetender. It wasn’t until that game was finished, in the summer of 2012, that we actually started working on VS.
How much longer do you anticipate for development?
We anticipate to have the game finished for release on Steam by late spring or early summer. Thereafter we’d like to port the game for the Wii U, before we start adding additional content
via patches and DLC to give the game a long lifespan.
Where did the inspiration for the game come from?
It was one day when I was playing a flight sim. I flew a twin-engine jet and chased after another plane. I dove, rolled and made all matter of aerobatic maneuvers to catch up with that other plane. Once I had shot it down, I looked back and saw my smoke trail. The twin trails looked like a flat surface, like a road, which I thought would make a cool roller coaster… or a track for FZero.
Nintendo has ideas about asymmetrical gameplay with the Wii U GamePad. Your game has
similar asymmetrical gameplay. It almost seems like a perfect match. Was any of this in your plans originally?
The idea predates any announcement of the Wii U by far. As mentioned before, we competed with it in Dare to be Digital in the spring of 2011. However, being huge Nintendo fans, it didn’t take us long to figure out how to make good use of the pad. One Nintendo idea that however inspired us from quite early on was the term Bridge Game: a sort of middle ground between core and casual.
What are your plans regarding bringing Velocity Stream to the Wii U?
A PC version is our primary concern, but we are planning to get to work on a port as soon as possible after the release.
Can you describe the gameplay in Velocity Stream?
It’s an asymmetric racing game where one player takes control of a spacecraft called a ‘Paver’, which can fly freely through the game world. In its tracks, the Paver leaves a trail of energy. It’s
on this trail that the other players compete to be the first to catch up with the Paver, while the Paver tries to shake his pursuers off. To accomplish this goal, the Paver can both perform gravity-defying aerobatic maneuvers and use power ups, such as narrow road and obstacles.
How will the experience be different playing as the paver than the racers?
The Paver will have full freedom to fly through the quite large game world completely freely, like in a true flight-simulator, while the racers have to stick to the road that the paver creates.
Summing things up, racing will be about being able to adapt to the road ahead of you and drive as smoothly as possible. The Paver on the other hand needs to be unpredictable, plan his moves and generally to mess with the racers.
The track layouts are created by the paver. So are there any different tracks to choose from before you begin racing? Are those changes just in the aesthetic background?
There will be several different tracks. However, because they’re so large, we’ve decided to add different spawn points for the Paver. These make sure that the races don’t start the same way
every time, creating even more variety.
For racers, it’s a purely aesthetic matter. The Paver, on the other hand, needs to pick up additional time to be able to continue laying out the track. In general, the checkpoints and power ups are close to the ground, meaning that the levels in fact are true obstacles for the Paver to avoid. We also have plans for future levels where the environment will have an even greater impact on gameplay.
Part of what some people enjoy in racing is learning the tracks and improving their times. With the format of this game, will part of that experience be lost?
As is now, yes, this is a game centered on racing other people, rather than getting good times. We have considered the possibility of adding a mode where a player can create a track and upload it online for their friends to compete for the best time. That feature is however not going to appear in the game, at least not at launch.
At what price are you planning on selling Velocity Stream?
We are yet to decide, however we are considering 20€.
What are your plans for after you release Velocity Stream?
All I can tell you in that matter is that we’ll continue to support the game with additional content and tweaks. And that we won’t get on with creating a sequel straight away. Instead we desire to
make Velocity Stream an experience with a long-term appeal.
How has the feedback been so far for the game? Were there any design critiques people mentioned that you took into account and changed?
In general, the idea has been positively received. Most complaints have been down to the game not being finished, however there are several tweaks in the game which have been done after feedback. For example, some players have complained that it’s difficult to look over crests when going downhill. To combat this, we made the Paver more capable to pitch up than down.
For anyone who’s interested in following the game, please check out our twitter and IndieDB pages.
Twitter: @CavelightEnt
IndieDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/velocity-stream
The post Velocity Stream is an ‘Asymmetrical F-Zero’ Coming to Wii U, Devs May Become Nintendo Exclusive If Shown Support appeared first on Nintendo Enthusiast.