Review Fix chats with Will Lewis, Rupeck Games Owner, Designer, Programmer & Artist for Caveblazers, who lets us know all about the retro awesomeness that is Caveblazers.
About Caveblazers:
Journey into a mysterious cave, fighting orcs and goblins with an abundance of weapons and magical items! Make friends along the way to aid your adventure, then watch in despair as they are crushed in to a bloody pulp under a troll’s fist. Each game is unique with procedurally generated levels to explore, and a massive amount of items, weapons, and equipment.
Review Fix: How was this game born?
Will Lewis: Caveblazers was an idea that was floating around & being prototyped for a few years before full-time development began in January 2016. I believe the idea came through playing other real-time roguelike games and always finding that they had very simplistic combat systems. I always wanted a more action-oriented roguelike game, thus the idea of Caveblazers was born!
Review Fix: What games have inspired this game?
Lewis: Risk of Rain and Spelunky are the obvious inspirations, but I also found a lot of inspiration in the Zelda games, as well as more classic roguelike games.
Review Fix: Lets talk about the art. What inspired that?
Lewis: The game’s code and art are done by the same person. I’m not much of a pixel artist, but I wanted the graphics to complement brutal, scrappy nature of the combat, which I think I achieved quite well! There’s a persistent blood & gore system in the game which really adds to the whole theme. More often than not, literally everything will be covered in blood after a boss fight or a tussle with a clan of orcs.
Review Fix: What has development been like?
Lewis: We’re coming up to the one-year mark for full-time development, and it’s been a great experience so far! The game’s vision has been very clear from the start, and for the most part we’ve stuck to that original vision. However, I think it’s always a great idea for Early Access games to try to involve the community as much as possible. We’ve received a lot of great feedback & suggestions from the community, a lot of which have been implemented in the game.
Review Fix: With all the competition on the mobile market and in the indies now, how difficult was it for you guys to try and make something that stood out?
Lewis: It’s always very difficult to come up with original ideas in such a saturated market, but Caveblazers has a number of great features which I haven’t really seen in other games within the genre. Firstly, making compelling combat was a big focus for the game – swords parry against each other, enemies block your attacks, combat is very fluid & fast-paced. This isn’t the kind of game where you can stay still & continually fire in one direction.
To add to that, Caveblazers features a fairly advanced pathfinding system for friendly characters and enemies in the game. Nobody likes enemies simply walk up & down on platforms! Enemies in Caveblazers will relentlessly hunt you down throughout the level, using ranged & melee weapons, wall-jumping and avoiding traps just like you.
Review Fix: With so many retro styled games on the PS4, this would be a perfect fit. Any chance of seeing it on that console?
Lewis: There’s definitely a chance! Currently Caveblazers is only on Windows, but I’m hoping to target Mac, Linux & Xbox One for the full release. PS4 is a possibility too.
Review Fix: Bottom line, why must someone play this game?
Lewis: Anyone who enjoys challenging roguelikes or platformers would love Caveblazers! There’s a massive amount of content, loads of unlockable things, challenges to complete, and lots more of all of that to come. Best of all, it’s only $5!
Review Fix: How do you want this game to be remembered?
Lewis: I want the game to be remembered as one of the greats in the genre – up there with The Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain & Spelunky. I truly believe the game has the potential to be up there!
Review Fix: What are your goals for this game?
Lewis: I’ve had four main goals from the start with Caveblazers:
– Interesting combat
– Replayability
– Tight controls
– Mystery & secrets
With the release of the BETA, I feel like all of these goals are coming together!
Review Fix: What’s next?
Lewis: The full release of Caveblazers is planned for early 2017. Before then, I’m going to be working on getting more mystery & secrets in the game, improving the tutorial & story elements, getting an epic final boss in the game, and hopefully getting unique daily runs in the game too.
Multiplayer is a very highly requested feature, and is something that I’m going to be considering after full release.
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