Set in the year SE 3256, the player is thrust into mankind's first interplanetary war between the Earth Alliance and the Ares Confederation. As the promising captain of the experimental dreadnought prototype, codenamed Sierra. Your sole objective is to help turn the tides of the war, utilizing the ship's advanced combat systems, flexible energy allocation and optimized platform deployment capabilities.
To the captain, the core principles of prudence, guile, resource management and patience are essential to survival. The technology incorporated in Sierra allows it to explore multiple paths to victory: evade and assault enemy ships in classic broadside warfare; research armaments and upgrades to outgun the enemy fleet; or outnumber them with remotely-controlled weapon platforms. Rout the enemy’s armada in order to quell the rebellion and save Earth from the corrupt colonials.
Gameplay Features:
"The bulk of the music was made keeping in mind that they were supposed to be as refreshing as possible. A total of three different tracks for the out-of-game interface that changes depending on how much progress the player has made should come as a nice surprise. Several stage tracks were made and built around certain themes to fit into the Earth and Mars motifs.
As far as game design goes, I personally think the gameplay is solid and balanced enough. There were actually a lot of issues just before the game was released, but they were summarily addressed and several playstyles can come through just from the wide variety of equipment the main ship has.
It certainly does play more like an Action RPG than other conventional space games. My playstyle for this game focuses on heavy energy allocation management and protecting platforms and allies with a heavily fortified Sierra while bringing to bear a lot of kinetic cannon fire, but I've seen another playstyle involving a more mobile Sierra and the use of the weapons along the Pulse tech tree. The game does become more difficult along the later stages and I'm quite satisfied to note that the increase in difficulty, while a major part of it is artificial, is from new enemies and situations calling for new strategies.
We've yet to see anyone beat the game in one straight playthrough without retries, but I suppose this game isn't really one that can be 'speedrun' unless you deliberate through the plethora of hidden (and actual) weapon stats and invest a lot of time into the game."
- Tremingway, Audio Producer/Game Designer
"Operation SD: Space Defense is our first game, and it took us a year to complete. Everything I've learned along the way was worth it.
Some of the trials during development time was quite hilarious, like the ship AI falling back across the screen when their hp goes low, or how we argued about how casual or hardcore the game should be when I couldn't pass through stage 5 because of the nuclear missiles going through armor and instantly shutting down shields.
There were also misunderstandings when it came to integrating my artworks into the game, to the point that some planets were zoomed in at original resolution making all the brushstrokes as big as snakes in front of your screen or the scrolling parallax stars having cut lines along it. So I had to create a solid workflow with our programmer, Kemeo to sort everything out. I asked him to create a version of the game where I can replace the assets on the spot so I can test the spacing, scaling, and blending of the artworks right away.
When I was playtesting the beta version, as a casual player I kept asking for features to make the game easily understandable by the players. There are tooltips in game when you hover over the UI, there are tutorials in the first few stages and hotkeys that are easy to use."
- Helrouis, Background Artist
You may try out the free demo linked below or buy the full game at Desura for only $2.99. The playable demo has 5 playable missions and the full game has a total of 20 missions. It also has the soundtrack composed by Tremingway which you can play directly from the game content folder.
Game Engine:
FlatRedBall
Free Game Download:
Gameplay Features:
- Extensive Features:
- EN(Energy) Allocation System
In the lower right section, the icons represent shields (Shield energy and regeneration),weapons (Attack Cooldown) and boosters (Speed). In the screenshot, the shields are down/grayed out because of the enormous damage taken. - Development Screen
Per upgrade, you can unlock more weapons or abilities which you can use. - Platform Deployment
Point Defense Platforms
"The bulk of the music was made keeping in mind that they were supposed to be as refreshing as possible. A total of three different tracks for the out-of-game interface that changes depending on how much progress the player has made should come as a nice surprise. Several stage tracks were made and built around certain themes to fit into the Earth and Mars motifs.
As far as game design goes, I personally think the gameplay is solid and balanced enough. There were actually a lot of issues just before the game was released, but they were summarily addressed and several playstyles can come through just from the wide variety of equipment the main ship has.
It certainly does play more like an Action RPG than other conventional space games. My playstyle for this game focuses on heavy energy allocation management and protecting platforms and allies with a heavily fortified Sierra while bringing to bear a lot of kinetic cannon fire, but I've seen another playstyle involving a more mobile Sierra and the use of the weapons along the Pulse tech tree. The game does become more difficult along the later stages and I'm quite satisfied to note that the increase in difficulty, while a major part of it is artificial, is from new enemies and situations calling for new strategies.
We've yet to see anyone beat the game in one straight playthrough without retries, but I suppose this game isn't really one that can be 'speedrun' unless you deliberate through the plethora of hidden (and actual) weapon stats and invest a lot of time into the game."
- Tremingway, Audio Producer/Game Designer
"Operation SD: Space Defense is our first game, and it took us a year to complete. Everything I've learned along the way was worth it.
Some of the trials during development time was quite hilarious, like the ship AI falling back across the screen when their hp goes low, or how we argued about how casual or hardcore the game should be when I couldn't pass through stage 5 because of the nuclear missiles going through armor and instantly shutting down shields.
There were also misunderstandings when it came to integrating my artworks into the game, to the point that some planets were zoomed in at original resolution making all the brushstrokes as big as snakes in front of your screen or the scrolling parallax stars having cut lines along it. So I had to create a solid workflow with our programmer, Kemeo to sort everything out. I asked him to create a version of the game where I can replace the assets on the spot so I can test the spacing, scaling, and blending of the artworks right away.
When I was playtesting the beta version, as a casual player I kept asking for features to make the game easily understandable by the players. There are tooltips in game when you hover over the UI, there are tutorials in the first few stages and hotkeys that are easy to use."
- Helrouis, Background Artist
You may try out the free demo linked below or buy the full game at Desura for only $2.99. The playable demo has 5 playable missions and the full game has a total of 20 missions. It also has the soundtrack composed by Tremingway which you can play directly from the game content folder.
Game Engine:
FlatRedBall
Free Game Download:
No comments:
Post a Comment