Review Fix chats with Kevin Sawall Project Director and Lead Designer of “Final Equinox: The Arrival,†who lets us know all about the game’s creative process and future.
Review Fix: How was this game born?
Kevin Sawall: Jon (my co-founder) and I had just finished working on an unreleased platformer for 3 months. We had been pretty burned out working with an artist friend of ours and decided that the next game we made was going to be much different.
I have always been a fan of RPGs so that was the genre I really wanted to go into. Jon liked sci-fi so the sci-fi setting made sense. We both are big fans of turn-based board games so that happened quite naturally.
We really wanted to make something that we were really excited to play, and that’s how Final Equinox: The Arrival was born.
Review Fix: What has development been like so far?
Sawall: Most likely very similar to the development of a lot of other indie games. We have a very small budget and are really trying to make it last, so on the production side that has been really hard, but we are really happy with the product we’ve made. That has also forced many of us to wear many different hats. I know for me it’s always fun switching between the designer who wants to add more content and the project director who is trying to make everything on time. Many of the other team members have been learning new skill sets as well. It’s been a lot of fun though, and the great reaction we have been getting from fans has played a big part in that.
Review Fix: What makes this game special?
Sawall: Two words: Crew management. Our game features a lot of in-depth crew management. We really wanted each crew member to play an important role in combat, and think we have done that successfully. Each position on the ship plays a crucial role in the stats of your ship. We also have an interesting leveling system. At level five the admiral can decide whether to put the crew member on a senior officer track (giving them more stats to a specific skill) or the captain track (giving them a wider range of skills and allowing them to captain a ship). We really put a lot of thought into our crew management system and hope we did that successfully.
We also have a really bright and unique art style. We really looked at the 70s and 80s sci-fi art and wanted to make sure that the world was bright and colorful and that the aliens looked strange and intriguing. I think those decisions have been well received, and I am happy to see that.
Review Fix: What games influenced this one the most?
Sawall: I would have to go with classic RPGs. Original Fallout and Planescape: Torment were integral in the way we crafted our dialogue and narrative. There are some really wild and weird things in the Planescape setting, and we’ve added a few of those as well.
On the tactical side, we looked quite a bit at board games. I think the Battlestar Galactica and Firefly board game has been really influential. Battlestar Galactica is really intense, with a lot of great resource management, while you won’t have crew members turn out to be Cylons, events will deplete your resources and you will be forced to keep an eye on that.
On the turn-based side, we looked at games like Battle-tech, Banner Saga, as well as many other turn-based tabletop systems.
Review Fix: Any fun stories or wild moments during development?
Sawall: We have met a lot of really cool people throughout this process, many of which we had been fans of before we started developing. That has been really cool. But I will add a kind of fun fact. We are mostly a remote team, but Jon and I meet almost every Saturday in his second bedroom which we have completely converted into an office. Last week we got to put up a poster for our own game, which was really cool.
Review Fix: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?
Sawall: I think this may be somewhat controversial to say, but I look at it as the rule of thirds. Each game I think needs to take something that has worked in a past game, needs to add something new the player hasn’t seen or experienced before and improve something the player has experienced before. I know I heard that somewhere, but that is my general rule of thumb when designing games. For our game we took an old-school approach to the narrative with text-heavy dialogue, We added a crew management system that has not been seen before, and we made our own turn-based combat system.
Review Fix: What’s your favorite memory as a gamer?
Sawall: I will add two because one is such a typical RPG gamer answer. I think the first time I really fell in love with games was when I played my first playthrough of the original Fallout and was able to talk the master out of his own plan by pointing out all of the flaws it had. It was an amazing moment because it felt so natural and like the game was reacting perfectly to the way I was thinking. I think that game had a lot of really great moments, but that has to be by far one of the best in RPGs.
Another one is the many age of empires LAN parties I had when I was much younger. My dad owned a software company so we had access to a large training room filled with computers and it was always fun to get a lot of people together and play deep into the night.
Review Fix: Who will enjoy this game the most?
Sawall: I think anybody who really enjoys tactical games or RPGs. While at its essence our game feels very hardcore, I think there will be a lot of appeal to the more casual gamer. We tried to make the system feel very intuitive and have everything feel very natural to the player.
Review Fix: How do you want this game to be remembered?
Sawall: I really hope that people see that what we are doing is quite unique. We really wanted to make something that didn’t feel like a clone of something else, and I hope we succeeded in doing that. Everything from our art to design should feel unique to the player.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Sawall: June 1st we officially release our demo and Kickstarter. We hope everyone really enjoys the game and considers backing us. We have a lot of really cool stretch goals (Robot companion, you reactivate after an over 200-year slumber) that we would love to add to the game, and could with your awesome support.
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