Review Fix Exclusive: Inside ‘Planetoid Pioneers’

Review Fix chats with Jeroen van Hasselt, who breaks down the fun and creative process behind “Planetoid Pioneers.”

About Planetoid Pioneers:

Review Fix: How was this game born?

Jeroen van Hasselt: As Data Realms’ previous game Cortex Command had a dedicated modding community, out of which some even landed jobs within Data Realms and other parts of the games industry, we awakened a passion within us to share the love of modding. This combined with the love for physics and non-scripted situations happening in-game has resulted in Planetoid Pioneers.

Review Fix: What was development like?

van Hasselt: For Planetoid Pioneers to reach the stage we’re in now was incredibly hard because Data Realms has a huge passion to build technology. With building technology there’s the danger of feature creep and that certainly was a continuous threat looming over the project. In the end, we believe we were able to bring all of it together into focus and deliver an experience that enforces the core strengths of the game, namely the physics and editor.



Review Fix: Any fun dev stories?

van Hasselt: Because we’re a so to speak ‘virtual team,’ we work in our own places from all over the world. We’re present in 4 continents in more than 15 countries. This means we don’t get to see each other in real life, but every once or twice a year we try to meet up. We rent a place for all of us to stay in the middle of nowhere and we’ll work for a couple of weeks dedicated to the game while we enjoy food and some fun activities together.

Review Fix: What makes this game special?

van Hasselt: The physics! Data Realms has spent more than 8 years making its own unique engine and then the last 3 of them making a game in the same engine. There’s no game that feels quite the same as Planetoid Pioneers and we can proudly say we have one, if not the most advanced 2D physics engine out there. On top of that, the editor is super in-depth, which allows you to build your own ideas into the game, but also provide a behind-the-scenes look at how we have created things.

Review Fix: How is this different from your previous games?

van Hasselt: First of all it’s a completely different engine to Cortex Command, although they both share a lot of the same love for physics. Every object can be tweaked down to what material and how it reacts to gravity, heat, cold, erosion etc. This time we’ve empowered the community even more by providing them the in-depth editors, so they can mod the game however they like.

Lastly, we focused a lot more on building a proper campaign around all the tools and mechanics we’ve built for Planetoid Pioneers, providing a story mode that revolves around the use of acquiring blueprints the player can destroy or build to overcome all kinds of (physics based) challenges.

Review Fix: What games influenced this one the most?

van Hasselt: That’s hard to say, but Dan Tabar, one of the founders of the concept took the original inspiration for Planetoid Pioneers from the old Blaster Master game out 1988. Used as an original inspiration there were a lot of other influences on top of that from Metroidvania-like games for the campaign as well as our previous game Cortex Command for some of the physics behavior.

Review Fix: As an indie studio, what do you think you guys do differently than the big studios?

van Hasselt: We’re focused on empowering the community as much as possible and giving them all the tools needed to edit and change the game as they see fit, while also giving them the right to copy any of the work we ship with the game and use it for their own ideas within Planetoid Pioneers.

Review Fix: What’s your favorite memory as a gamer?

van Hasselt: I couldn’t pick out a favorite moment among all those cherished memories. But one moment that I still remember well, would be from playing the horror shooter F.E.A.R. I just came out a battle fighting the amazing A.I. feeling quite tense and on edge when I get confronted with a brief glimpse of Alma (the scary little girl with supernatural lethal powers). She was just there.., but still managed to scare the shit out of me, making me shoot my shotgun all over the place.

Another one would be the revelation moment in Hellblade; it had moved me to tears.



Review Fix: How does this game disrupt the video game landscape?

van Hasselt: If there ever was an interest in game development with the use of practical examples, then I think this is one of the rare commercial products that allow you to play and learn from the same game how to do just that.
Also, as far as I know, Planetoid Pioneers is the only game that auto-injects the game with community created content without you having to leave the game.

Review Fix: Who will enjoy this game the most?

van Hasselt: Players that love to fiddle around with everything and approach the game as one big toy box to play and have fun with. And players that love to watch their character fail in ridiculous ways while fighting the whacky physics of the game.



Review Fix: How do you want this game to be remembered?

van Hasselt: As a game that’s still alive and has evolved with crazy ideas within the game that I couldn’t even come up with now.

Review Fix: What are your goals for the game?

van Hasselt: Our goal is to keep adding more content and challenges for players to play with and polish up any of the rough edges. Planetoid Pioneers is not only a sandbox physics game but also a creator’s game. And all three aspects are bound to have unpredictable behavior that makes it hard to polish. However, we believe that’s part of the beauty of the experience, as this will result in behavior in-game you won’t expect and can’t be pre-scripted.

Review Fix: What’s next?

van Hasselt: Ohhh… well can’t really discuss it, but the engine is made keeping in mind that we should have the ability to add online multiplayer later. This was probably the most requested feature for Cortex Command (but unfortunately infeasible) and now Planetoid Pioneers, so maybe we can add this somewhere along the line for the game. Fingers crossed.



Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?

van Hasselt: If you ever wanted to play as yourself in the game, it’s really easy to set that up and put your face, voice and even body into Planetoid Pioneers. Also, the game does have local shared-screen multiplayer for up to 4 players.

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