If you’re a long-time fan of the shooter genre, then you probably remember back in the ’90s when there was a trend for six-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) shooters, with the Descent series probably the most memorable example of the sub-genre. They were good times, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Indeed, the developers at Woodhound undoubtedly feel the same as I do about this almost-forgotten niche of shooters, and that’s why they gave us a 6DoF roguelite shooter last year. We really enjoyed it – check out our Desecrators review for all the reasons why – and so when I was offered the chance to put some questions to the team, I happily accepted. Here’s what they had to say!
First of all, please introduce yourselves!
TV: Thomas Vestergaard & Oliver Chime are both software engineers. Together, they make up Woodhound. Oliver Chime has previously released PION, a top-down shooter. Desecrators are their first game together.
What kind of game is Desecrators?
TV: Desecrators is a retro six-degrees-of-freedom shooter set in a 41st-century galaxy where outlaw hovercraft pilots plunder deep-space installations.
In the spirit of boomer shooters, Desecrators aims to feel the way you remember 90s first-person shooters.
What made you want to make a 6DoF shooter?
OC: I played a ton of Descent II and was frustrated that the genre kind of died after that. I also wanted to play a 6DoF game with proper online co-op. And the abstract nature of 6DoF levels offered an opportunity to do interesting procedural generation.
What are the biggest challenges when making a game where attacks can come from any direction?
OC: Player spatial awareness and sense of direction. Labyrinthine levels and full freedom of movement can easily lead to maximum confusion.
We counteract this by always having some kind of gravity indicator, like debris, bullet casings or sparks falling somewhere, to subtly show the player which way is up and down. The ground vehicle enemies also serve this role. Then there are less subtle things, like the ship automatically aligning itself to gravity.
The whole fantasy of vertigo and flying around only becomes interesting if you can contrast it visually. Otherwise, it can quickly feel like controlling a floaty ball sliding around arbitrary rooms.
Where did you find the sweet spot between classic gameplay and modern design ideas?
OC: We deliberately avoided being inspired by modern games and tried to imagine how a dev team 25 years ago would approach the design problems, and what their inspirations would be. Often this means ignoring “obvious” modern solutions and instead taking some existing part of the game and trying to evolve it into something new.
Like most retro-inspired games, we want the stability and accessibility of a modern game, mixed with sensibilities from an older era.
In terms of roguelite progression and build theory, what were the hardest things to balance?
OC: Everything! The combat has a tight and complex balance, so any kind of progression or upgrades has to be tightly tuned to be useful without messing the balance up.
Progression is an area where we think the game still has a lot of untapped potential.
If you were able to go back to the beginning of the project with what you know now, what would you do differently?
OC: Focus more on ship upgrades and meta-progression. The original version released in Early Access actually did not include upgrades at all- it turned out that was a little too old-school.
The game has been out for more than a year already – time flies, eh – what have you been working on since then?
TV: Since launch, we’ve been adding content and making a lot of improvements (and squashing a few bugs).
The biggest addition is VR mode, which also supports co-op between VR and non-VR players. Co-op in general has much better netcode and now supports up to 32 players.
Procedural level generation has seen major improvements, the ship weapon slot system has been reworked, and there are several new weapon upgrades to choose from. Encounters with Rivals, competing desecrators, are significantly improved. We’ve also added a new level, the Prison Lab, and a new alien faction, the Biomorphs. Finally, there are now online leaderboards and player stats.
There will be more updates. We still have concepts and ideas we want to explore, and we keep a development roadmap on Steam so players can see what we’re working on.
Any plans to bring Desecrators to any new platforms?
TV: We are open for bringing Desecrators to new platforms, but we do not have any concrete plans.
Thanks to both Thomas and Oliver for their answers, and Amie for sorting everything out!
