QUByte Game Studios are paying homage to old school strategy gameplay with their upcoming release Recruits. Recruits puts players on the front lines of the battlefield to accomplish your missions through any means necessary. Fast paced and packed with explosions, Recruits offers a wide variety of features that allow you, and your friends to take command of the action and lead your men to victory. We managed to grab QUByte Studios for a quick Q & A.
Krusty: Can you give us a brief rundown of your position and history of QUByte Studios?
Marcel Bernardi: Well, it is a long story since we have started! Basically, we know each other (the studios founders) in a graduate studies in game programming and production a few years ago. After the first six months, we started to think about how would be a good idea to work with game development. Cabral, one of our colleagues, became obsessed with that and, we guess, that was the main fuel to thrust us forward. So, when we finished our studies, after a few months Cabral rented a small place and we started working with game porting for a partner in United States. Was a good time to learn and, after a while, we began to developing our own games. I have to handle Project Managing, 3D, 2D Art, Animations, Basic Game Functionalities, “bathroom wash”, “doorman” and so on LOL.
Krusty: You have decided to stick with an old school top down style instead of going for a 3D style. What were your reasons behind this?
Marcel Bernardi: We just love this kind of gameplay and it is very close to the style of a QUByte’s game that we were planning to do (still in our roadmap, so stay tuned). At the same time, we look for the game and found that it was at early access on Steam and lot of players worry about lack of updates. So we just think: “Why not contacting those guys and continues this awesome project?”. So, we contacted guys from Commotion Games and we have set up an agreement to finish, improve and launch the game for several platforms, including Xbox One.
TheAshCohen09: Was there any previous games that inspired you and what can we expect in the way of gameplay?
Marcel Bernardi: I’ve to be honest, at early stage of our company we tried to make a game inspired on Desert Strike, SimCopter, Cannon Fodder, etc... called Rescue Team; the result was not very good. So now, with Recruits, we pretend to make a strategic war game based on those old references.
Subz87: How many missions will there be and are you planning additional mission via DLC?
Marcel Bernardi: We are planning it, because the actual stage of Recruits is just a glimpse of Commotion’s original ideas, and that is awesome, because we plan to add some original ideas on our own, and make not just single play and co-op missions, but a very deep campaign as well.
caws 09: Do the ranks of your platoon get replenished after some die? If not, is there a limit to what you can do in the campaign?
Marcel Bernardi: Ranking will be lost if player let his or her soldier die, because we want player feels heavy burden of lose someone in battlefield. They are not only pieces that you send away to remove obstacles, they are important heroes on the mission of saving good people from the bad people (even if they do not know exactly about the real intention of some dudes). If you lost a really good and trained soldier, the consequences of this, is very bad, you, as a commander, will have to change your strategy and train new heroes for your missions.
caws 09: What were the 3 biggest challenges you faced when making the game unique?
Marcel Bernardi: Only 3?! Lol, actually we are still facing…
1. I think the progression system will be very fun to play, many guns; strategies will be possible depending on your performance of previous battles.
2. The control is very important thing to us, we’re trying so many new things to make the controls very natural and useful to control all squad.
3. The campaign story. Besides Recruits visually resembles on Vietnam war, we also are trying to insert some new world conflicts into it, so player can fell that his actions will not always have predictable consequences.
Emotionalworm: Is there co-op online and offline if so how many human players can join in and is it jump in/jump out?
Marcel Bernardi: Maximum of four players online and offline mode, about the jump in and out during gameplay, we are testing the online features to decide it.
Emotionalworm: When will this be available to buy and how much will it cost?
Marcel Bernardi: The new PC version will be available early 2016 and Xbox One later on 2016, the cost will be announced soon.
Emotionalworm: What weapons and what customisation is available?
Marcel Bernardi : There will be many kinds of weapons available, from pistols, rifles, RPG’s, Flamethrowers and aerial support. We want to add some sniper, sabotage and advanced rescue missions as well, so you can expect many explosions as well.
gingerneo: Are you looking to make use of the newly announce Xbox Preview Program?
Marcel Bernardi: We are always talking with Microsoft, but we cannot confirm it, yet.
gingerneo: How have you found the transition from keyboard and mouse, to console controller, as you have focussed on PC and mobile markets thus far?
Marcel Bernardi: The transition itself was not very difficult, because we already had in mind what we wanted, but we are also trying many new things to make the gameplay very natural and fun on controlling the squad, the beta stage will be fundamental to see if the players will approve these things, we count on you all.
Recruits is being released in 2016 via Microsoft's ID@Xbox programme.