#iocaine studios

[shattered-earth]

wAIT OH MY GOD do you think you could propose to have the steam bandit music purchasable i just love it so much i want to listen to it all wahhh

Yea of course @o@ Once all the tracks are complete anyway, I’m sure they would be more than happy to put it up for sale. I mean i can’t guarantee it but something tells me it’s likely? I’ll tell them they have a fan already for sure though :’D

[steambandits]

Adventure Awaits!

One of things I talked about was adventuring and exploration in the game.  That’s been a point of interest with our fans, so I figured I would elaborate on that a little.

When I designed this game initially, it was purely as a town-building game with some quests (mostly like ‘Deliver X resources’ and such). Due to a few factors that cropped up, we had to delay the game to replace some key people that moved on to other studios.

While looking for replacements, I thought about the future of the studio and our core philosophy of bringing gamers closer together. If we were losing people, could we feasibly get to making the next two games in this series to hit that trans-gaming mechanic we wanted? I had to look at all angles of this. If Steam Bandits: Outpost was going to be our only game (due to extreme circumstances.  we’re going to make more games any way we can), I wanted it to bring gamers closer. And then it hit me, if you can visit your friend’s islands, why not visit other islands that have some exploration and quest content? You already have an avatar in the game, and you already control them directly when you’re on a friend’s island. It made perfect sense to extend this feature to cover cooler things.

As we tried to recruit people to replace those we lost, I began designing this other part of the game with my designers. This really appealed to us since our senior designers worked on Fallout: New Vegas before this and were itching to make some cool RPG stuff. We decided to do it, but only if it wouldn’t delay the launch of the game. It took time to recruit enough people to get the rest of the game back on track, so the town-building part and the adventuring part synchronized nicely in their schedules.

So what can you expect by the launch of this game? We’re making an awesome town-building game that pairs with a casual adventuring and exploration RPG. Want to focus on just town-building and customization? That’s totally fine and you’ll still have a great time. Everything you do in your town will help go towards unlocking things to make your town even better. Want to explore the strange islands beyond, fight exotic monsters, take on challenging quests, and find amazing loot? You can focus on that and have an amazing experience. Most players will do a bit of both since the two parts interact with one another nicely. This system also allows us to bring the player away from their island and put them in more story driven encounters to immerse them in this fantastic world we’ve created. Plus, if you’re into RPG stuff, but your friend is into town-building games, you’ll be able to both play this game together. We’re sure you guys are going to love it :-D

- Jason

If you’d like to suggest the next topic we talk about in the blog, leave a comment here.

[steambandits]

Check out our video update about Trans Gaming and our future Steam Bandits games! There's just 2 days left to the Kickstarter and we're $5k away from our second stretch goal. Spread the word if you can :-D

[steambandits]

[steambandits]

"My inspiration [for Steam Bandits: Outpost] is the original SimCity. It's upsetting that there isn't a casual game where you can build a town online and come back later and check out how it's doing," said Jason Fader, creative director of Iocaine. "We want our players to play with their friends, not spam them with requests for energy so they can make one more move."

[steambandits]

[steambandits]

We've rebooted our Kickstarter campaign after the awesome feedback we've received from the community.  The biggest change is our greatly reduced funding goal (now at $30k).  We realized that we could still make a great game if we aimed a bit lower in terms of content.  If we go above that funding goal, we will add the originally planned content, but having this phased approach will help us better launch this game.

Also, we've added physical rewards like posters, shirts, and art books.  There are some limited "early bird" rewards for those of you that donate early :-)

Please help us spread the word for this project!  We have a lot of great developers that have recently lost their jobs due to industry layoffs.  Most of whom worked on Fallout: New Vegas. Help us keep this team together so we can continue making awesome games for you guys!

Thanks!

 - Jason Fader, Creative Director