I hopped onto this bandwagon early on in the development process and I've been watching the game grow slowly over the years. The last couple of years have been tough for the team and development seems to have slowed down. However, the game was greenlit by the Steam community and it is coming to steam soon for early access. I posted about this game long ago over at wargamer. Now may be a good time to jump in and support the developers. The game has tremendous potential.
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The INTERSTELLAR MARINES: Trilogy is a high quality first person simulator, experienced in a realistic and unpredictable future where first contact with another sentient species is slowly becoming reality.
The games balance the military realism and cooperative action from tactical shooters with the character development and narrative depth from Role Playing Games.
Key features:
Heavy focus on creating a thick realistic feeling of immersion through graphics, sound and gameplay.
Single player or up to four players cooperative gameplay.
A number of different interactive environments, ranging from claustrophobic space stations to large outdoor levels.
Persistent character development and skill system
Non-linear game play and open ended level design
Freely customizable weapons simulation
Captivating epic storyline written with focus on the co-operative part of the game
Ok, so let's have a look at the game play of Interstellar Marines, what sets this game apart from all the other great games out there?
Well, Interstellar Marines is at the core a Sci-fi First Person Shooter (FPS).
Now that's not really anything special to say the least, however there is a bit more to it than that. When we as developers (and not to forget gamers) began to create a new FPS game, a main motivation was that even though lots of great games came out, we always seemed to miss something.
One game would have a great open ended world while another featured a cool skill system, one game offered intense combat while in yet another you got the chance to play cooperatively. However we wanted to bring all the features we as gamers enjoyed the most together in one great FPS game.
Ambitious? - hell yeah, but on the other hand you could also just look at it as evolution of the genre. Not really any point in (re-) creating what has already been successfully made by others, and as mentioned, we saw an empty space in the selection of available games still waiting to be filled.
So off we went starting filling that gap with what will eventually become Interstellar Marines, and here are some of the key features we have focused on:
RPG
Playing a pre-made character in a game can be great fun, but when designing Interstellar Marines it was pretty clear that we wanted more than that, we wanted to give players the freedom to shape and mold their character themselves.
In the game the characters will enter the solar system as rookies, but during the progression of the game all gradually become more and more experienced as the story unfolds. With experience comes new skills and abilities as well as access to new and better weaponry, and it is now all up to each player how they want to build and equip their Marine.
Create a stealthy medic with hacking skills, a heavy armored sniper with explosives or maybe an officer with excellent strategic abilities and a minigun?
It is all up to the player to decide.
Just like the character is growing and taking shape by gaining skills during the course of the game, so are the weapons of the marine. In a somewhat similar way to traditional RPG character progression we also wanted the players to be able to "personalize" their weaponry and equipment.
As an Interstellar Marine moves up in rank, he gets to choose more and more weapons and weapon utilities from the vast armory of the IM corps and is now able to freely customize his guns and items. If you pick an assault rifle you could choose to improve it with the shotgun extension and hollow point bullets or perhaps a silencer, piercing rounds and a scope?
The options are plentiful and it is all up to each player to freely make the decisions that suit his or hers preferred play style.
Co-op
What is more fun than playing through a stunning adrenaline-filled game that completely blows you away? Doing so with your friends!
In Interstellar Marines you will have the option of teaming up with up to three of your friends and play through the game in co-operative mode (co-op). From the very beginning of designing this game, we knew we wanted co-op to be a core element and because of that we have shaped all of the other features to enhance the co-operative game play.
The skill system will give players a vast number of options for all kinds of team play and all of the levels of IM has been designed with the clear focus of supporting co-op game play. Even the story line is written with multiple protagonists in focus so that all players in a group will have their unique place and doing in the upcoming epic saga.
Of course there is always the option of playing on your own, but should you choose to invite some friends to a game (or find some new ones on-line) a whole new challenge awaits you and your band of elite soldiers
Open Ended Level Design
When we were to create the world of the Interstellar Marines, plenty of ideas came up for great locations and places for the players to explore. However no matter where the story would take the marines, we were pretty sure about one thing; the places should all be open ended and not in any way force the players to just take a pre-chosen path through.
So we constructed the game in such a way that there are always several ways to achieve the main objectives/complete the levels and players will have the option of using brute force, stealth tactics and/or make use of the various skills as a mean to successfully clear a mission.
However not only should players be able to explore the areas of the game freely, we also wished for the levels to be as dynamic as possible, so that the game would stay fresh and exciting even when you came back for the fifth or sixth time. The cool thing about a dynamic environment is that it allows for tactical choices, and the player should consider the effects of shutting down the lights, turning on the sprinklers and how the enemy AI will react to such changes in the environment.
To add to the re-playability all levels are non-scripted and the various "inhabitants" of a location will have a life of their own (guards patrolling, scientists working, crew personnel cleaning, etc) until the players intervene one way or the other, so there are no monsters jumping out of the closet when players step on that exact trigger on the floor.
http://www.interstellarmarines.com/ (http://www.interstellarmarines.com/)
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Thanks for the update, JH! I'd forgotten about this.
Yeah - thanks for the heads-up! This game looks like it's totally eeking of potential !!!
Love that they have Lt. Hicks showing in the HUD.
Wow that looks awesome. Does Steam Greenlight mean it is ready now or will be soon? I haven't visited the greenlight section as often as I should.
Quote from: Gusington on June 26, 2013, 10:00:41 AM
Wow that looks awesome. Does Steam Greenlight mean it is ready now or will be soon? I haven't visited the greenlight section as often as I should.
Now that I have a great system, I won't shy away from these types of games. BRING IT ON!
Yep.
Waiting for my backer Steam key :)
I remember you posting about this one long ago.
Let's hope everything goes quickly & smoothly in the home stretch.
Quote from: Gusington on June 26, 2013, 10:00:41 AM
Wow that looks awesome. Does Steam Greenlight mean it is ready now or will be soon? I haven't visited the greenlight section as often as I should.
Sounds like first week of july
Wow, I remember you posting about this a long time ago, too...forgot all about it.
Gotta try it now. And thanks for you know what! ;)
I'm downloading my Spearhead edition early access copy now :)
And I've got a gift-copy left *wink wink*
I had a look at it on Steam today but I see that it's currently only 4v4 team death matches. I think I'll hold off for now.
I am hoping a single player campaign of some sort is planned.
The steam release is admittedly underwhelming. The unity powered web based game had a lot more content, including two SP modes called Running Man and Bullseye. I'm sort of at a loss as to why those modes, which are pretty engaging are not included with the steam product.
So I spent an hour with it tonight on Steam playing 8v8 deathmatches.
Boy, this is seriously alpha stage. There is a RPS article that is pretty spot-on, so I won't repeat it all here, but I agree pretty firmly with his findings. It's fun...matches are about 6 minutes or so, so it's in and out. There is always severe pleasure of machine-gunning your opponents as well.
But there are not any stances other than full-on standing. No grenades. No voice chat that I could tell. Only one gun and I'll be darned if I could hit crap with it, although everyone else had no problem hitting me.
On the good side, I like some of the environmentals a lot. There's one map where it sort of goes into a mode like at the end of the first Aliens movie with the sirens and lights, and that's pretty cool. I like the Space Mountain-sounding radio intercom stuff. And when the lights go out, it is seriously cool, where you're hunting one another by flashlight and muzzle flashes. That was overwhelmingly popular in the text chat, and it seems so obvious that you wonder why more games don't copy it.
Overall, tough call on whether it's worth spending money on in its current stage. I had some light fun, but it's not Red Orchestra for sure.
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Quote from: eyebiter on January 01, 2014, 02:31:02 PM
Has Interstellar Marines improved in the last six months?
Most definitely. Still has a long way to go though.
Apparently this game is really shaping up now and it does look amazingly good. I prefer the tactical pace of games like these compared to the super-fast shootouts in games like CS:GO, and the sci-fi setting really is the icing on the cake.
Any updated impressions from anyone?
Oh well - I bought it anyway. :P
First quick impressions are that it's clearly unfinished but does show incredible potential. I love everything about the aesthetic of this game. The environmental effects are really immersive with night time bringing its own tactical challenges (do you use your laser sight for from-the-hip shooting at the risk of exposing your position?), rain obscuring the view from your helmet (which you can raise but you lose your HUD), sirens and lovely intercom voices announcing the action etc.
The multiplayer is faster than you'd think for a tactical game. As observed by Toonces matches only take a few minutes because you're unlikely to respawn if you're killed. You're no superhuman either...only a few shots required, although you do appear to regenerate health if your opponent can't finish the job.
Multiplayer matches are conceived as "training missions" and as such the environments are essentially huge domes which simulate real-world scenarios, so the weather changes a lot and the environment itself sometimes shifts about, with platforms raising and lowering for example. It's really cool. Oh, and there's now a crouch stance with a cover system; you can get up against waist-high cover and peek above it, with or without your iron sight. There are now also two guns in the game. The default gun is a SMG which I find is better for close quarters because its iron sight doesn't zoom and it holds 30 rounds in its magazine. The assault rifle holds 20 rounds and has a decent scope which is obviously much better for longer-range shooting.
Still no grenades but there's in-game VOIP now.
With the latest update a single-player campaign was released which can also be played cooperatively with up to three other players. I've barely looked at it yet but apparently it's quite good. I'm hoping to play this with Geek soon so I'll report back when we've seen it in action.
The developers seem to be quite active and engage with the community a lot, so I'm hopeful for more updates soon. Actually, I just saw this on the dev blog:
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October - Content Update (2 current maps retro-fitted for co-op and SP + other features) - estimated release Oct 22nd.
November - Content Update (2 current maps retro-fitted for co-op and SP) - estimated release 2nd half Nov.
December - Content Update (2 current maps retro-fitted for co-op and SP) + Major Update (to be decided, Kim is drawing up the design doc now) - estimated release mid-Dec.
Nice!
Just picked this up and have to say I'm quite impressed. My impressions are in line with Huw's. The graphics and sound are great and it all works well. Although my outing in MP reminded me strongly of CS (and why I'm no good at that) I had enough success to fancy another try. Co-op sounds like it could be a little less frenetic. For £6.99 (on sale at the mo) I'd recommend it.
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on July 04, 2013, 10:43:33 AM
The steam release is admittedly underwhelming. The unity powered web based game had a lot more content, including two SP modes called Running Man and Bullseye. I'm sort of at a loss as to why those modes, which are pretty engaging are not included with the steam product.
My Steam description still calls this an "early access game." At $10, given the praise JH has for it, I think I'm in.