Hello again survivors!
We are incredibly excited to share a conversation with Haemimont Games about the sci-fi inspirations behind Stranded: Alien Dawn, and the work that went into crafting the game’s incredible world. They’ll also provide additional insight into the process of creating gameplay mechanics and systems that combine survival with city-building.
Read on to learn more:
Hello, thank you so much for joining us! The community has noticed a lot of sci-fi references in Stranded: Alien Dawn. Could you share a little about the game's science fiction influences?
There is not a single flick to point out, but if we had to choose, the episode “Suits” from Love, Death & Robots is probably the best example of inspiration source. Raised by Wolves is another title that should be mentioned.
Also, kudos to the modders that created the crew from “Firefly” in the game – there is a stable crowd of browncoats over at Haemimont Games that got a kick out of that!
The "Suits" episode has been brought up a ton by the community as well! Your survivors are not just fighting bugs in mech suits, there's also an element of city-building games as well. What was the thought behind marrying all these different elements?
Re. the setting, our studio always wanted to explore the survival genre. The team has solid experience with city-building games, we are all interested in sandbox modes, and have ventured in that direction with our earlier titles (Surviving Mars). It was our desire to do a sim game at the intersection of the survival and city-building, and thus Stranded: Alien Dawn was born. We’ve been enjoying seeing everyone take to the game as we flesh out its potential after release.
The alien planet is both alien and familiar at the same time. Was it the plan from the beginning to combine these design directions?
Right from the start there was a discussion on how to portray the environment on the alien planet. The question was whether to go into exploring completely alien environments or keep the familiarity and add alien elements for key experiences. We decided to go with the later for several reasons: Our goal is always to put gameplay first. There is a lot to learn, and a lot to track in Stranded: Alien Dawn. We wanted to make the gameplay situations recognizable, not put additional difficulty for the player to figure out what is what.
The second reason is that by borrowing from the real world, what you get is authenticity – there is an inherent complexity in everything around us, which we get to know as we grow and mature. Going into the “full alien” direction sometimes simplifies things to the point that the setting may become too shallow and unconvincing.
Then there are the points where we wanted to go “alien” – the flora and especially the fauna that will give the specific threat to the survivors. This is the point where we used recognizable archetypes like giant insects but decided that would be enough. Some of our favourite examples are the Drakka and the Glutch in this regard.
We are driven by the belief that gameplay comes first, and as such the environments were designed with specific gameplay implications in mind. Meaning that we did not aim to recreate a specific environment in the “most realistic” way possible, but instead to figure out which parameters mattered most for the gameplay, and then create the environments around variations in these parameters.
Our goal at Haemimont Games is to make different games, and to challenge ourselves with every game we make. While we learn a lot from every project, there is no ready-made solution to the creative process for each game. What we believe in is iteration. The more iteration, the better the game. Rinse and repeat – until it clicks.
While the setting and theming is definitely sci-fi, the soundtrack is more akin to a modern western. Can you tell us anything about the music and sound design in Stranded: Alien Dawn?
The sound effects are there to create a convincing reaction to the player’s action, expected environmental immersion, and in the case of aggressive fauna – the sense of threat lurking beyond the base.
The music, on the other hand, is a more complicated challenge – especially in a sandbox game where a single playthrough will often go over 40 hours, and then it has its own dynamic with specific pressure points, which timing is unique in every game. The music needs to be entertaining, not repetitive, not too dramatic as to keep the focus on the gameplay, and then thematic. Getting back to “Firefly”, we are happy to say that the space western theme of the music was a very satisfying solution for us, and, hopefully, the players.
Was it difficult to create the progression systems and building player motivation?
In sandbox games where you tend to open more and more options as you progress, giving the player a sense of progression is a noticeable challenge. We try to make sure that no solution is permanent, and really depends on the scale of progress. The player should always have a bigger problem to solve. While a permanent solution to any one of the player’s problems has an immediate sense of achievement, in the long run it basically eliminates parts of the gameplay, and makes the game more trivial as the players progress.
Crafting is crucial in surviving games and Stranded: Alien Dawn is no exception. Every resource in the game was designed with the idea behind its usage, and re. crafting possibilities. Of course, the resources also depend on their environment – for example wood is the prevalent construction resource in the Sobrius environment but is hard to come by in Desertum. This, by itself, leads to some considerable gameplay changes, and in turn make the structures built by the survivors different in those environments – as it is in real life.
It must have been challenging to balance the game's difficulty and pace? How do you avoid the game becoming overly frustrating for the players?
Stranded: Alien Dawn is a complex game, and we hope that it is and will be enjoyed by a multitude of players. There is no one-difficulty-fits all approach here, and we added variables from difficulty, to moons, to survivor selection, and ultimately, game rules, that allow the players to chose the difficulty that they find interesting and engaging long-term. In this respect, having the players perspective is invaluable, and having the game in Early Access ang getting that feedback early on was the right thing to do.
What were some of the challenges or lessons learned during the process of creation and how did the team overcome them?
While in development we experienced an interesting challenge – the game was looking good on paper, we created all the elements in the game, but something was missing. The game wasn’t fun, even though it should have been. Something was missing.
At the end, that something was balance – we iterated on it, until at some point the game just clicked and started “working”. Team members started staying late at the office, just playing the game. They did not want to let go. At this moment we knew we had something on our hands. The lesson we learned, is that if we believe in an idea, we should keep getting at it. As we mentioned above, nothing can replace iteration. Again and again – until it clicks.
Thank you all for joining us!