When a small studio stumbles upon a creative new idea for a game, they’ll fight to raise the funds to produce their masterpiece by any means necessary. A lot of the time, the struggle to raise money for smaller projects leads developers to Kickstarter – where fans, the people who will live and die by the upcoming game, can become a part of its creation.
Today’s article is focused on a studio in this exact circumstance. Game Over’s pilot project Failsafe grabs all of the best ideas from multiple AAA titles and mashes them together in an attempt to stand out from the crowd, and it might just work. I caught up with Game Over’s managing director Daniel Lisi for some of his thoughts on where Failsafe stands in terms of audience, gameplay, and AAA competition.
What is Failsafe?
The narrative of Failsafe features an adventuresome young girl who wants nothing more than to get out of her isolated village and explore the world.
Our goal is to provide huge, sprawling environments for the player to explore using dynamic parkour to navigate the remains of a mysterious civilization. The game plays like the better parts of Mirror’s Edge, with some pivotal refinements on the movement systems.
-Failsafe’s Kickstarter page
With so many great games mentioned in just the first two paragraphs of their Kickstarter, it’s clear to see from where Failsafe was born. I asked about the relation of Game Over’s upcoming game to Electronic Art’s Mirror’s Edge, which seems to be Failsafe’s greatest inspiration.
So many AAA titles have begun creating first person parkour-esque titles, so I asked Daniel, from a developer’s point of view, why he thought the genre has suddenly exploded in the industry.
BlacktideTV (BTTV): Why do you think it’s taken so long since the original release of the game-changing Mirror’s Edge for the industry to start focusing on advanced movement in-game?
Game Over is fairly level-headed regarding the intensity of the parkour genre. Failsafe’s entire “intuitive command system” is controlled with a single button, allowing for ease of access with younger and less experienced players.
Our designer & programmer Evan Hemsley was determined from the beginning to make this system work. Even when I met the whole idea with skepticism, Hemsley really championed it and created a supremely sophisticated button. It’s a piece of flipping art, really.
Not only will players be naturally gifted at the art of parkour while playing as Isra, the heroine of Failsafe. Game Over is also including a grappling hook so players can soar to new heights.
BTTV: Who is the intended audience of Failsafe? As previously mentioned, the control system is extremely simple and the possible “lessons learned” from the campaign, already leaning towards learning to venture out on one’s own and make one’s own conclusions, seem to point towards a younger audience. Even still, I think the game looks great and would want to play myself, at an older age.
Regarding the “standoffs with occasional giant robots”, Failsafe isn’t going to make players kill them. Though inspiration surely came from Team Ico’s Shadow of the Colossus, which made us cry every time we engaged in a boss battle, Failsafe, as mentioned above, has “no combat to speak of”.
I think if you’re looking for a meaningful story with some rad gameplay, Failsafe’s the game for you.
When asked how players will engage the giant robot portions of Failsafe, Daniel told me that, “You’ll have to be crafty, scale them, climb around on them, and disable them.”
My final question for Daniel concerned the title of Game Over’s pilot game.
BTTV: The final, and possibly the most important question of them all: why Failsafe? Is there any specific importance to that title that you’re willing to share with us?
To which Daniel cryptically answered:
Failsafe is in alpha build, with a projected completion date sometime in summer of 2016. Pending console arrangements, Game Over would like for Failsafe to be released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but will definitely be releasing the game on PC, Mac, and Linux.
Game Over have reached $20,000 of their $80,000 goal on Kickstarter. The final 80k is going towards level completion for Failsafe’s campaign mode.
With a full development/writing team with history branching from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots to Borderlands 2, and inspiration coming from games like Journey, Mirror’s Edge, and Shadows of the Colossus, Failsafe is looking to be a mighty competitor in the tough first-person parkour market.
Images courtesy of Failsafe’s Kickstarter page.
