Fallen: A2P Protocol Interview

Couchpotato interviewed Martin Cao from Red Katana about Fallen: A2P Protocol.

RPGWatch: Welcome to RPGWatch can you introduce yourself, and your studio Red Katana for our readers?

Martin Cao: Hello, my name is Martin Cao and I founded Red Katana 5 years ago. My motivation to start the Studio was to follow my passions which are creativity, art and technology that are all included in the process of making a video game. At Red Katana we always try to do the best games with the resources we have. We started doing Simulation casual/midcore games for Mobile, and as the years went by and we acquired more experience and we shifted towards strategy hardcore PC/console type of games which is more the games we like to play as games.

RPGWatch: So lets start with a simple question can you give a brief overview of your game Fallen: A2P Protocol?

Martin: Fallen is a turn based strategy, and tactical RPG, where you lead your caravan through a post-apocalyptic dystopian World on a quest for revenge. 

RPGWatch: I was curious what inspired you guys to make Fallen: A2P Protocol? I know you mention X-Com as one example.

Martin: Yes, we at Red Katana and specially myself love turn based strategy and tactical combat RPGs. We noticed there were not as many titles as we would like to play. I mean, if you take X-COM as an example, I don´t even remember which was the last game published before the last Enemy Unkown of 2012. Also to give you other examples Shadowrun Returns, Wasteland 2, Jagged Alliance, all these titles are great comebacks of classics that were released several years ago. And there are a few more of course, but not as many as I would like at least. What I noticed as a fan of this genre is that if you finished playing one of these games, then you will likely have to wait a long time to play something similar from the same genre. So we wanted to do our own vision and story with Fallen: A2P Protocol.

RPGWatch: As a follow-up to that question I have to ask how will your game be different than X-Com?

Martin: Well, I like to say that there are a lot of small differences from X-COM rather than 1 or 2 main differences. This is mainly because we are not trying to reinvent the wheel. We love this genre, so we want to stay true to the basics from the greatest classics while innovating on small aspects achieving an enjoyable full experience. Just to mention a few differences from the new X-COM: We go back to the action points system, like JA, Wasteland 2 or even the first X-COM, we have limited ammo, looting corpses and specific locations, changing weather conditions that affect gameplay during a mission, a linear story, more like Shadowrun Returns rather than X-COM, melee combat, destroyable environment playing a bigger role on the tactics in some missions, on Fallen: A2P Protocol instead of having your HQ/base, you have a moving caravan, and need to explore the map, while scavenging resources, trading with local trade shops, recruiting caravaneers, upgrading your caravan and more. Also each character counts and you have a main character that you need to upgrade on passive and active skills compared to just having disposable soldiers.

RPGWatch: Your game was funded on Kickstarter last year, so how far has development progressed since then?

Martin: When we did the Kickstarter campaign we already have been working on the game for around 1 year. So we only funded a few additional months to launch the Early Access version thanks to Kickstarter. I would say the game progressed a lot since we did the Kickstarter. By just watching a video or screenshot back then and what we have now, you can tell at a distance all the progress we had on visuals, gameplay and general feeling of the game. We made tons of changes in all aspects of the game and the feedback we got from our Backers was great.

RPGWatch: Fallen: A2P Protocol is still in Alpha on Steam Early Access, so do you have a set release date yet, and how has feedback been from players?

Martin: We don´t have a fixed full release date yet, but it could range from 2 to 6 months. Feedback from the Early Access community and Kickstarter backers have been phenomenal. We are eager for more. It is great to have the community involved playing your game and giving you feedback about what they would like to have on the final game, or what things are still not good enough and we need to iterate. It is very rewarding to see we are very aligned with our community and also must be rewarding for them to see we are listening to them and implementing a lot of the feedback they give us every day.

RPGWatch: Can you talk about the various factions that will be the game. I know you have a few updates on your webpage, but a brief summary would be good?

Martin: Yes, of course. Genkorp is the corporation that started researching and developing the A2P (a new type of energy that changed the World forever). They started more as a scientific company but now became a more militarized super power that rules almost all the World. Arkane are the enemies of Genkorp, they were opposed to the development of the A2P since the beginning but they are not peaceful at all, they are also as militarized as Genkorp, they have their own scientists and research facilities and fight against Genkorp all the time for World domination. Then in the Dust you can find smaller factions like the merchants that are always neutral and they only care to trade at a good price, the raiders that are kind of the modern vikings, they like to steal, fight and take whatever they can, and the purgatoris this last group is the A2P worshipers. They think A2P came to this World by some mystic reason and don´t believe in all the science behind its development, they just worship A2P and follow their own beliefs. Also in the World you will be able to find male and female humans, mutants and probably if we can make it happen invits among other small mutated creatures.

RPGWatch: One area of the game you always highlight are the weather effects. So can you share an example of how they work in the game?

Martin: We wanted to do something within the mission that may make you change your tactic/strategy. We thought it could be an interesting twist to the genreto have some condition altering the rules of the mission. So for example "heat" can diminish your movement action points, so if you were thinking of sprinting and using a melee weapon with one guy, you may not do it as easy on a heat condition. If you encounter heavy rain you can get a penalty on the aim percentage you have, so a sniper could be less effective firing from long range, and you may want to be closer to perform a kill and so on.

RPGWatch: Another question I'm always curious is asking how long will the final campaign be, and will you have different endings?

Martin: Since it is a turn based game, is hard to say a specific time, but we are aiming at around 15 hours of gameplay for the final campaign. That includes all the missions and an average time spent on the metagame, trading, leveling up your characters, scavenging, exploring etc. I think there will be people that can probably end the game sooner if they rush it, or longer if they like to think more and enjoy the game without any rush. As for now we don´t have different endings on the game on our pipeline.

RPGWatch: Going back to the games kickstarter can you share any lessons about what you learned from using crowd-funding?

Martin: I think crowd-funding is great. Although it is like everything else, you need to be sure you know why you are doing a crowd-funding campaign. It is not always about the money, I think it is much more than that. It is about opening your Studio, having some early adopters/supporters join your boat and keep rowing together. And it is amazing I must say. We always tend to do all the development for a year or more without "opening" the Studio doors to the community. Of course we do a lot of reviews and discussions with Publishers, fellow developers, press, friends, etc. but nothing compares to have someone that already payed for the game. He is not saying that he will buy the game if you launch it, he already bought it and in some cases with a plus for some special rewards, so that is truly amazing for all the small indie developers like us. Although it is not everything happiness of course, it requires a lot of work, it is very, very stressful but in my opinion it is worth it. I learned so many lessons I don´t even know where to begin, but I think I would do it again. I think people sometimes tell you they want to see in-game footage, but they prefer to watch rendered videos showing an idea. I saw lots of very successful Kickstarter campagins showing off amazing rendered videos, and then when the game is finally released usually with an important delayed people is not happy. But on the other hand when you show rough in-game footage like we did, they demand more polished art and things, that you usually don´t do at the beginning of a project. It is a very difficult balance I guess, but yet very interesting experience. At the end it is people that will decide wether they like your product or not, so you better know it in advance and also know in what direction you should put your effort. 

RPGWatch: That's all for now so thank you for answering my questions. Do you have anything you would like to add before we finish?

Martin: Thanks to you for your time. I know you have been following us since the KS campaign so I really appreciate that. I just want to thank all our Backers and all our Early Access community that are really helping us finish this game. We know there are a lot of people that don´t buy early access and just wait to the full release and we respect that too, but we invite all the other people that want to give us feedback and support the early access development to join us.