Making games is really hard. And I mean really hard. The amount of people it takes to make games these days, along with their budgets are staggering. Development teams for mainstream games are in the hundreds these days, and development costs are in the 10s (sometimes 100s) of millions of dollars!
While that means games like Grand Theft Auto: V and Call of Duty: Modern Infinite War Ops have the shiniest graphics and bring in Willem Dafoe to play the lovable super powered janitor, something very important can get lost in this budgetary one-upmanship. The game itself. That’s where independent games come in. If you’ve noticed, Slickster’s “Kickass Kickstarter” series has covered independent gaming and the efforts they require, as well as the help some need.
In this new series “Greenlight Spotlight,” we’ll look at independent game developers that want one thing: your interest. For those of you who don’t know, Steam Greenlight is a program on Steam where you can read up on independently produced games and vote for whether you think a game should or should not be on Steam. Here I’ll explain why I think a game should be given the green light.
In this edition we’ll look at: Mana Spark
What is Mana Spark?
Well a quick trip to the Greenlight page shows that Mana Spark is a “roguelite with bow and arrow action, focused on strategic combat, and on a special artificial intelligence that makes enemies not only smart but makes them collaborate between themselves.” Let’s dissect this description to get to the meat of things. Playing the demo, I had the chance to see every aspect the description in Mana Spark.
In Mana Spark every time that I died, I had to start all the way back at the beginning of the game, losing my progress. So it has rogue game tendencies for sure. The bow and arrow action is a whole lot of action. Power ups only came in treasure boxes, or in coins you got from defeated enemies in the procedurally generated world.
As for the strategy involved and the collaborative A.I… Be ready to die. A lot… If those stupid imps catch wind of you, they’ll not only alert all the other enemies to try and attack all at once, but they’ll hop onto one of the wolves and charge at you while firing off from long range!
Who is Mana Spark?
The team behind Mana Spark called Behemutt Studios; a two-man team made up of Douglas Oliveira and Ed Freitas. These fine Brazilian developers have worked together in three different companies before deciding that Mana Spark is where they wanted to focus their talents. They described the path to developing the game as “creating a lot of prototypes and dumping a lot of game ideas, they chose the first project, Mana Spark.”
Where is Mana Spark?
In the world of Mana Spark, humans are the only race who cannot use mana, which is the source of energy for all magic. Without magical abilities, its up to the player to use their bow and arrow to investigate a series of kidnappings in the deep crawls of the dungeon. Using one part Binding of Isaac and one part Dark Souls, the world of Mana Spark is a difficult, unforgiving world.
When is Mana Spark?
Right now the game is slated for release in the second quarter of 2016, so expect the game out before July. If you don’t want to wait however, feel free to check out the demo over at GameJolt.
How is Mana Spark?
This game is not complex. This game is not easy. This game is not run-of-the-mill. The gameplay is very straight forward in its design: Aim to shoot, don’t get shot, upgrade to shoot even better. Rinse and repeat. The key aspect is that it executes this in a very great way.
There are a lot of enemies taking up the screen making a coordinated effort to take you out. They’ll rush you, they’ll flank you, they’ll kill you. With very little health, and some enemies (like those damned zombies) able to take you out in a single hit, you’ll need to move, attack, and roll away from harm with precision.
Mana Spark has managed to do something that escapes many independent game designers. Instead of doing something simple as a marketing scheme to bank on things like nostalgia, anti-establishment, or those hipster gamers who “only played on the Hunton X35 console,” Behemutt made a game with a simple concept to focus on execution. Smaller studios don’t have all the moving parts that big-time developers do. So instead of trying to fit a bunch of rusty parts that don’t go together in, they’ve polished a few key parts and have the game running like a well-oiled machine.
The other great thing is that there are great extras to enjoy as well! The coordinated efforts enemies take in a procedurally-generated world always felt similar to each other, but continued to surprise me. The fact that it replayed how I died gave me a chance to see what I was doing wrong and laugh at my silly mistakes. The pay-for-power-up mechanic made me use my map to scour every inch of the levels to make sure I could get the increased shooting speed perk IF it showed up at the shop.
Independent games having a lot of challenges but a lot of advantages as well. With a small team able to really focus on exactly what they want, Behemutt has taken simple concepts and turned them into a great game that I’m extremely excited to play.
If you want to like them on Facebook click here: https://www.facebook.com/behemutt
Play the Demo: http://gamejolt.com/games/mana-spark/146969