In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor has been announced today via a blog post on the Arcen Games website. Arcen Games is a company that was created in 2009 by Chris Park and has since created AI War: Fleet Command and A Valley Without Wind. The have been discussing this game now for a while on their forums but with this announcement they are explaining the creation process of their game. The most recent game from Arcen Starward Rogue suffered financial issues leading to massive downsizing of the team despite it being a well regarded release.
In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor allows you to control a raptor through procedural generated levels as you face robot foes, and maybe there'll be a TechRaptor in there somewhere too. This is going to be a smaller game that will be self-contained and will be a way for Arcen to fund their survival game that is currently in development. The plan at the moment is to have no upgrade tree for the raptor and they expect smaller dinosaurs like compys will be used to regain health. There will be a variety of powerups that will also allow you to take advantage of environmental features. There will be two modes in the game "Power Trip", where you will have free reign to do what you please with infinite health, and "Danger" where you are powerful but also able to die. There should be a trailer for the game released later this week.
Arcen Games wanted to let people know that they were using various packs from the Unity Asset Store, a place where people can buy and download a variety of textures, code, and other assets helpful to make a game. There have been a variety of cases where these assets have been used to drag and drop a game together and release it on platforms like Steam but the developers at Arcen wanted to ensure fans that they are using the Unity Asset Store correctly.
Park explains that they are going to be using models, textures, and animations but are making their own tweaks and improvements and working to ensure that they all fit together. For shaders and code that they are planning on using they are combing through the code themselves changing anywhere between 5% to 80% to not only ensure that the code is optimized but also to make sure that they have access to coded features that might be something they had never thought of before.
The rest of the blog post details all of the different assets from a wide variety of sources that the team has been using to put the game together. From Raptor model, to procedural generation, all the way to post-processing everything is being used to its fullest. Park was also sure to point out that they weren't just using the assets without change stating "No. I hate asset store flippers as much as you do" referencing Jim Sterling's Asset Flip video.
What do you think of a game where you get to be a raptor fighting robots? What are your thoughts on using the asset store as a base to build upon? Let us know in the comments below.
