Klei Entertainment was founded in 2005 by Jaime Chen, who lives in Canada Chinese, literally in the garage, which developed the first game of the company – ETS: Hunger. It’s Emotional. This, if you remember, was a two -dimensional puzzle, in which a charming creature was jumping on the levels behind the pieces of food attracting it, made strange sounds and dropped the shells on the backs of artillery pigs (more about the game – in the insert). Then there were Shank, Mark of the Ninja and Don’t Starve, who brought Chen commercial success and glory. It would seem that the normal story of Indi-Uspekh, Edmund McMillan also spent approximately. In fact – not so. Immediately before the foundation of Klei, Jaime Chen worked in ThQ, and he was a co-owner of a small package of shares of the company, and https://giant-wins-casino.co.uk/ he was not engaged in it there, but programming of artificial intelligence in Warhammer 40 000: Dawn of War. He had something to lose, and, having sold his share, and also occupying $ 10,000 from his brother, he risked great.
The mission is impossible
Eight years have passed, ThQ is no more, and the Klei Entertainment affairs seem to be going well. Despite the preserved indie status, they work on several projects at once, write large-scale business plans and try themselves in different genres. Starting a two-dimensional stlax explosion Mark of the Ninja, the authors were simultaneously engaged in a clone Minecraft Don’t Starve, at the same time thinking about the concept Incognita and starting the first samples of the new idea. Mark of the Ninja and Don’t Starve came out recently, and Incognita is already close to alpha testing. Successful indie now work at this pace now!
According to Jaime, Incognita organically develops the ideas of Mark of the Ninja and Don’t Starve. In fact, this is their hybrid.
From the first she got visual aesthetics and a general genre vector. Heroes penetrate protected objects and hide from the cones of the review of villains; Everything is like in Mark of the Ninja, with the only difference being that Incognita is a step -by -step and tactical strategy performed in an isometric perspective.
[[Bullet]] Jaime Chen learned to release one game per year-this is a new standard for many indie developers.
The generator of random events, scattering enemies, objects and terminals that need to be hacked through the rooms of the rooms, inherited from Don’t Starve. Here we will immediately make a small reservation. Jaime is no coincidence returns to already familiar topics – stealth and total random. It can be seen that this is a very mature developer who is not trying to storm the inaccessible peaks, but is looking for perfection in the fact that he has once tried. Algorithms of enemies behavior, honed in Mark of the Ninja, will also be used in Incognita, and the randomizer from the Don’t Starve will fit more harder into the gameplay. According to Jaime, working on Don’t Starve, he gained invaluable experience in introducing accidents in the gaming process, and in Incognita an event generator will work no worse than AI Director in Left 4 Dead.
The task is to penetrate the protected object and steal some information. At your disposal a small detachment of spies (perhaps on a task you can take only one agent) with different abilities. It is yet known for sure that you will have to hack terminals, access surveillance cameras and monitor enemies. The characters move in step mode in cells.
Shoot in the back
According to Jaime, this is primarily a spy thriller, and not a sweeping action movie, so the monitoring and extraction of information will be paid much more attention than shootings. However, if you are still discovered and killed, death will be permanent, it will not work to restore the deceased hero-just like in Xcom.
XCOM is another important source of inspiration for Incognita. The authors say that their game can be considered a clone XCOM, where battles give way to the collection of information, but the essence remains the same – this is primarily a tactical puzzle, the disposition decides in it. Jaime believes that if you abstract from all the secondary features of XCOM, there will be only a positional war in the dry residue: you are trying to get around the enemy so that you can shoot him in the back, at the same time making sure that you do not shoot you in the back. According to him, 90% of the game is a competent regrouping, the choice of a point where to put the agent. It is worth making a mistake with the choice and you will die.
[[Bullet]] something similar several years ago tried to do Introversion, authors of Darwinia. The project has stalled.
10% – information collection. Each hero has a viewing cone; Only if the enemy got into it, you can see him. That is why the hacking of cameras is so important – so you determine the whereabouts of even those opponents who fell outside the review.
The method of trial and error will not work here. Even if you sacrifice a scout to die, but before his death you see where the enemies are standing, this will not bring much benefit. At the next passage, they will already be in other places. The accidental location of opponents and objects is the basis of the complexity curve of the new game. Then Jaime has great hopes on the community. According to him, Mark of the Ninja was a linear game with a clearly spelled out story, so it was impossible to immediately include players in the testing process. But Incognita, like Don’t Starve, is tied to procedural generation, and the help of fans will be required at the very early stage of development. Observing their passage, Jaime will make edits to the randomizer so that by the time of release he worked flawlessly, giving out extremely interesting, balanced game tasks.
It is interesting to follow the evolution of the ideas Jaime Chen. He thoroughly risked only in 2005, putting literally everything on the card. Since then, it has been acting much more carefully, releasing games with some stock of popularity, with an aim for a specific audience. This is understandable – Klei has turned into a real mass indie factory, which emits one project per year. Try to compare this with the production of Edmund Makmillan, who produces in the game in two to three years, Phil Fisha, who brought five years Fez to perfection, or Jonathan Blow, whose Braid I went out six years ago, and Thewitness Still in no hurry to release. Maturity and balanced – valuable qualities in the market of independent games, overflowing with non -working crafts of ambitious newcomers. But will the main feature indie will not disappear in pursuit of quality – originality? Xcom we have already passed, Monaco Same.
We will wait?
A step -by -step strategy about the theft of information, combining the best features of Mark of the Ninja and Don’t Starve.
Readiness percentage: 70%
Leming rage
First game Klei Entertainment
In the insert, we first wanted to briefly tell about all the games of Jaime Chen – but Shank, Mark of the Ninja and Don’t Starve, you probably saw. But the debut project Klei called ETS could well miss. This is a cute puzzle with a thin art director that would now go straight to the App Store, but it was in 2006, and therefore the game was only released on RS. You indirectly controlled a certain creature, making sure that it does not fall into the abyss. In style Lemmings The game could be paused, put on the map “traps” and bonuses, then click “Play” and look at how the hero reacts to the objects provided to him. He fought and jumped far from the red “pills”, from green – he fell into despondency and was afraid to leave the edge of the platform, lamenting “Mommy”. The azure sperm whales swallowed, and then shot a hero high in the sky, green oblong physiognomy took a miserable appearance when he rolled them to the edge of the abyss, and there was another charming pig. The pig was to knock on the back – then she made an indignant face, put her eyes, inflated, and then shot another pig from her ass – much smaller, but in a red cloak. So in the game a banal bazuka was decorated, breaking obstacles. In general, if you have not tried ETS, we strongly recommend doing this – now Klei are engaged in completely different games.