Let’s Talk about Strange Attractors 2

 I would like to thank Eric Walker, CEO and Project Manager, for taking the time to sit down with AbleGamers and discuss their new game Strange Attractors 2.  Let's get to it!

Steven Spohn:  First and foremost, congratulations on the success of the original Strange Attractors.  How much similarity is there between the sequel and the original?  In addition, given the huge success of the original, do you feel there is more pressure to produce a game that is equally as groundbreaking and fun?

SS:  What was the inspiration for the Strange Attractors series? Was there a market that someone saw for this type of game or was it more personal in respect to someone on the original team being inspired by someone who could use a game like this?

Eric: The inspiration came from a game design competition hosted by Retro-Remakes and One Switch.uk.org. They put a call out for games, made in one month, which could be controlled entirely with only the spacebar. I thought it was an interesting challenge, and we went from there. We weren't really designing the game specifically for people with limited mobility; rather we designed a fun game that met the requirements spelled out in the competition. Because of that, Strange Attractors 1 reached a much wider audience than we ever imagined.

SS:  Would you say that the unique challenge of this type of game is the driving force behind the making of Strange Attractors 2, or were there ideas after the first game that led to the sequel?

Eric: The success of Strange Attractors 1 caught us a little off guard. We spent a lot of time in the years leading up to SA1 working on learning how to make games and taking on bigger projects than we could handle. Having spent a little less than a month on SA1 and watching it spread across the globe, we really wanted to do something that would better represent our collective skills. SA2 seemed like it would be a good medium for that.

SS:  What tricks did you learn from the first game that you are going to avoid or add-in to the sequel?

Eric: I would say the biggest thing is having a well built level editor. In the first iterations of Strange Attractors 1 all of the levels were randomly generated, but things got boring pretty quickly. I hacked together an editor that allowed us to place objects by hand, but it was very crude. In Strange Attractors 2 the level editor is, to me, one of the most impressive things about it. Its incredibly robust and has allowed us to give the game a lot more depth than even we had originally envisioned.

SS:  It is obvious from the amount of feedback that you request during the beta of SA2 that the Ominous development team cares a lot about the gamer community.  How much of the feedback from them is incorporated in the game? Can you think of any specific items that were added or removed as a direct result from the feedback you received?

Eric: We incorporate a lot of what we get back. Sometime people will suggest things that we had always intended to add, and it's great to know we are all on the same collective page. Other times we'll get some feedback and wonder how in the world we didn't think of it before. Even stuff we don't use gets seriously considered. One that gets thrown out there a lot is to have the exit gates pull you in, but we decided that since the gameplay is all about navigation, we want to make sure that the player is in control of that as much as possible.

SS:   While we are on the subject of communities, would you say that the disabled community is the biggest target audience for this type of game, or do you find that this game has a broad appeal?

Eric: As I mentioned earlier, the game has a much wider appeal than just the disabled community. We never really set out to make a game that was for any specific group of people, we just wanted to make a game that was as fun and interesting as possible.

SS:  Is Strange Attractors a brand of game that has room for continual sequels? Are there any plans already in the works for additional sequels after this one?

Eric: I think I would like to revisit the brand at least once more, but I don't know if that will be our next project.

SS:  This game is already extremely disabled friendly, however, some additions such as color scheme alteration and game speed adjustment would be very helpful for some of our readers, are there any plans to incorporate even more helpful features such as these in the future ?

Eric: Not at this time. There are plenty of things we could do to that effect, and I think a lot of the game is set up to handle those enhancements pretty easily, but there really is only so much time we can spend on the game in general. We already have a huge list of improvements lined up for a potential SA3. We are hoping to release the game to the public soon, and it's taking all of our effort to prepare it for that. If we make any post release updates those options are definitely a possibility.

SS:  Do you see one-button games becoming more viable in today's market?  Are these types of games something that we can continue to look forward to from Ominous Development?

Eric: To some extent I think they will. There was quite a bit of interest in Strange Attractors for mobile phones due to its simple interface. Its hard to say for certain what Ominous Development will do in the future. We have tons of ideas, and hopefully soon we will be able to explore some more of them.

SS:  I know I speak for our readers when I say we are looking forward to the finished product of Strange Attractors 2!  Is there anything you would like to say to our readers? 

Eric: We are really pushing for an August release, keep checking here or at www.ominousdev.com for news and updates. Also, I would love to hear from you. Once the game is out, please don't be shy about sending us feedback. I don't know how updates fit into our plans, but as an indie game developer, just knowing that people are playing our games helps to keep us experimenting with stuff like this.

Thanks to Eric Walker, CEO and Project Manager of Ominous Development, it is always encouraging to see the game development industry putting out games for people that sometimes don't have very many opportunities to play exciting games such as yours!