We’re coming up on the release of our public demo. The work is 100% in place, and we’re releasing March 14th! Keep an eye on the website.
Then at PAX we’re going to be boots-on-the-ground promoting this thing, appearing at panels (thursday night’s “Romance in Games” panel notably) and taking meetings and talking with anybody who wants to flag us down. If you see me at PAX, say hi — I’ll be patently obvious as probably the only dude with dwarfism riding a mobility scooter there. I’ll have bookmarks with character art and info on ’em which you can have, too.
Now, for today’s dev blog post, I’d like to talk about some pie-in-the-sky ideas I’ve been having for how to translate the modern indie game culture into the arcade scene. While most of the games depicted in Arcade Spirits are decidedly retro… what would a modern arcade game look like?
Now, there’s two obvious answers for this, since there are still arcade games in 2018. One is the devolution into a kiddie casino form, Dave ‘n Busters style, with single-button spin to win mechanics. But y’all know I hate these, so let’s move on. Next are the modern revival games coming from Raw Thrills, but these are mostly driving and lightgun based or are ticket-powered remakes of mobile games, which are… eh, okay. Let’s think beyond that, though. Beyond even dance, driving, lightgun, or even VR games already common on both sides of the Pacific… how can we work with genres that are supposedly impossible to adapt?
Well. I’ve got ideas.
MOBAs / RTSes: This is easier than you think. Killer Queen is a MOBA-esque version of Joust, a 5v5 game where each player has a distinct role and there are a number of win conditions. Then there’s Tooth and Tail which uses a uniquely simple control scheme to present quick multiplayer matches in local splitscreen. And finally, there’s the insane-o idea in Arcade Spirits itself… Fist of Discomfort, a full blown two-lane 1v1 MOBA, with an item store and special moves on cooldowns and creep waves. By shrinking down the concept, speeding it up, you can make a high intensity but quite rich multiplayer game experience well tailored for arcades and eSports.
Roguelikes: Just imagine an arcade version of 20XX, Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy, or any other action-packed indie roguelike (or roguelite for you sticklers). It wouldn’t even need any major modifications! Each run is a quarter. Stay alive as long as you can. Ah, but how do you record your unlocks and progression…? Simple — USB port on the front of the game. Plug in any USB thumbdrive, it’ll record an encrypted save file. If these were standardized you could pack a keychain thumbdrive with saves for any number of games at your local arcade on it. Japan already has done this with a few games, storing your save data on cards, but what if it was standardized? What if it allowed for bite-sized chunks of longer-form experiences? In fact…
Narrative Games: An arcade version of Firewatch? Sure, why not? If a narrative game is divided into chapters or milestones, each costing one quarter each, you could end up playing the normal price of admission across a complete 2-3 hour game experience. Add in some replayability elements like branching paths and you’re good. I mean, it’s not like libraries or book stores don’t exist anymore just because video games exist, and there could be a market for folks wanting to consume a story a chapter at a time, coming back the next day to continue pumping quarters and seeing more unfold.
Party Games: Large-scale four-plus player installations are possible in arcades, so why not games like Mario Party? Or mobile device enabled games, like the Jackbox Party Pack — just use a mobile app to pay to join the game, and you can chill out in the corner and eat vending machine snacks between more intense arcade sessions while still playing a game. Or heck, just leave Jackbox running for free and rely on the natural snacking impulse to subsidize it.
MMORPGs: Okay, I’m pretty sure Japan’s already cracked this particular nut, but taking everything above into consideration… thumbdrive with login credentials, play a slightly more action-oriented game, pay per raid or quest, adjust the timing to deliver an intense session each time. Or use existing F2P mechanics. Done. Keeps folks coming back for more.
In summary, I think there’s a lot of ways to use the communal experience of an arcade to play modern genres. So in a universe where arcades never died, we might see some of our modern classics like Rocket League translate perfectly to that environment. If the economics supported it, I’d love to see some of these ideas in action. Anybody wanna take a shot at it?