Greetings again, pilots!
Welcome to our second Swordship Dev Diary! We hope you enjoyed the last one where we introduced the team behind Swordship. This week we are taking a look at the inspiration behind the game and how we ended up with the dodge ‘em up we see today.
One of the very first elements of the game was to create a ship that moves on the surface of the water. The inspiration came from a French and Belgian comic strip called Black & Mortimer that features a similar vessel. Then we introduced the elements of pursuit, agility and dodging. That last word stayed with us and was really the cornerstone of the whole creative process.
The project went through many different versions. We were very inspired by James Bond or The Fast & Furious-movie series, and it was after watching the 2015 film “Mad Max: Fury Road” that we decided on a reversed game camera* like the one in the current version. This conceptthen unlocked a lot of things in the game design.
(*By “camera” the developers refer to the point of view that you, the player, has when playing Swordship. Often in games, the “camera” is set behind whatever person/creature/ship the player is controlling. But in Swordship, you steer your vessel towards the direction of the camera - reversing the traditional perspective.)
With early prototypes Swordship differed a lot from the game it is today. We overall went through three phases. The first phase featured an open world setting, with the camera placed behind the Swordship.
In the second phase Swordship was a smartphone game with a top-view camera:
The third and final phase featured the reversed camera that is used in Swordship as it is today:
And yeah, that was the inspiration behind Swordship - as well as the three phases we went trough while figuring out what kind of game we would (literally) launch one day! For the next Swordship Dev Diary, we will take a closer look on the enemies that you will encounter in-game - plus our thoughts and ideas behind them. So, raise your shields and dodge!
Have a great rest of the week, friends! ːsteamhappyː
Happy dodging everyone!
Benjamin & The Swordship Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1804270/Swordship/