wfmag.cc \ 25InteractiveInterface
“It often happened that I had
to rework or discard finished
stages and game elements”InteractiveInterface
Rebenstorf admits that he “underestimated”
how long it would take to make Rigid Force Alpha,
but nevertheless kept in mind the essence
required to make a satisfying 2D shooter. For
him, it’s all about feedback: “The player’s ship
must react immediately to any input, its weapons
must feel powerful, and explosions should
deliver a real punch. I tweaked these elements
a lot in Rigid Force Alpha, and adding rumble
effects, screen shakes, and really fine-tuned
sound effects helped substantially to create the
right feeling.”
A solid soundtrack is also vital for any decent
shooter, and Rebenstorf managed to assemble
some sterling talent for his game’s musical
backdrop. “The music
supports the tempo,
defines the rhythm, and
generally carries the
game’s atmosphere,”
Rebenstorf says. “I was
very lucky to have two top-notch musicians, the
Finnish synthwave artist Dreamtime and US-
based indie game composer Michael Chait.”
Rigid Force Alpha emerged on Steam in
August 2018, and Rebenstorf hopes to port it to
Switch and Xbox One. He’s also thinking about
a successor: “With modern technology, there’s
a lot of potential for completely new ideas,” he
says. “Just imagine a battle royale shoot-’em-up.
A totally wild idea! And let’s not forget, there
are already some interesting efforts in terms
of creating genre mixes such as Starr Mazer or
Drifting Lands. In short, the genre isn’t dead, and
hopefully, we will see many more interesting
game ideas in this direction in the future.”GERMANY’S
INDIE SCENE
Although there are plenty
of developers in Germany
working for major firms, or
creating games as a hobby,
Rebenstorf says that setting up
a small indie studio is far from
easy. “The immense costs that
arise here every month alone
deter many founders from
becoming self-employed in
this quite difficult sector,” he
tells us. “And also the pressure
to succeed – if your first title
isn’t already a substantial hit,
that’s it for you, and you’ve got
nothing but a pile of debts.”needed as a solo developer. For modelling the
game’s spiky spaceships and bio-mechanoid
enemies, meanwhile, Rebenstorf used a piece
of software many indie devs will recognise –
Blender. “For 3D modelling, animating, sculpting,
and texture baking, I’ve been using Blender as an
all-round solution,” Rebenstorf tells us. “Despite
the steep learning curve, I’m always amazed by
the range of features it delivers, and believe that
there are only a few things where Blender can’t
compete with its commercial competitors.”
Rebenstorf
also wrote certain
tools from scratch,
including an editor
for configuring enemy
attack patterns. The
greatest challenge, though, didn’t come from
the technical side of making the game, but
rather the logistics of designing and balancing
a game as a solo developer. “During this long
development period, you constantly develop
your graphics and programming skills, try
out different visual styles and game design
approaches, and after several weeks of working
on the same stage, you realise that it’s at a very
different level of quality compared to anything
you’ve done before. So it often happened that
I had to completely rework or even discard
finished stages, game elements, and graphics
that worked well in the beginning because they
no longer met current standards.”
“My first finished game was actually also a small,
minimalistic shooter on the C64, where you had to pop
balloons using a turret,” Rebenstorf reveals. Rebenstorf has plans to bring his game to consoles,
but he’ll have to port it to a new engine to do so.
“The chances this will work out are good,” he says.