ExL Studios Blog

In addition to this interview, this game has been reviewed by ExL Studios. It can be viewed here.

ExLS: Thank you for taking time out of your day to speak with us about
your game, Revenge of the Evil Aliens. What is the name you go by in
the community?

I published Revenge of the Evil Aliens under my own name: Harald
Maassen. My nickname for just about anything else online is CoamIthra. [My website
is http://evilaliens.lamaars.nl]

ExLS: Can you tell us about your company, or the company you are employed at?

Well Evil Aliens was purely a solo project, although loads of people
helped. I’m currently employed by Codeglue, a Dutch game development
studio.

Funny story, Codeglue actually hired me thanks to Evil Aliens. They
contacted me saying that they saw my game and that they were making an
XNA game as well and if I’d like to come check it out. So I did and I
guess they liked what they saw because I’m still working there :)

That game turned out to be Rocket Riot (www.rocketriot.com) – which
we’ve actually just released this week on XBLA. Everybody go check it
out! :)

ExLS: We have already heard good things about Rocket Riot, but haven’t had the
chance to play it yet. We’ll try it soon! When did you realize that you wanted to
create games?

Since I was a kid, really. On the playground I’d devise intricate
Legend of Zelda dungeons for the other kids to navigate. I’d also
carry a graph paper binder around that had a platform game I’d force
all my friends to play.

ExLS: Those were the days….Who contributed to your game and what were the roles?

Nearly all the assets in the game have been donated for free by both
personal friends and internet strangers, which is pretty awesome. It’s
very cool when you see someone’s art online and you contact them to
ask if you can use it in a game and they go “yeah sure, go ahead”. My
colleagues from Codeglue have also donated various bits and pieces of
art.

I also owe a lot to Peter Brannan who composed the main soundtrack of
the game. I think the quality of the music is very high and best of
all he offered to do it all for free!

Finally there’s the playtesters on the XNA forum, some of which stood
by the game for multiple iterations giving advice and feedback. Those
guys really helped shape the final form of the game, and reported many
issues that I had grown so used to that I didn’t even notice them
anymore.

Actually, I should put a Credits section up on the website to thank
all these great people for making this possible!

ExLS: Can you tell us about the Evil Alien universe? Why has the
conflict started, when, etc. & where did the inspiration for the story originate?

To be honest I’m doing this like the writers from LOST – making it all
up as I go along ;)

I think the thing that sets this game apart from most other Community
Games is the story. But not so much the plot (because it’s rubbish)
but more the idea of progression. A lot of shooters are just like
“here’s an arena and some dudes will try to shoot you” and there’s no
context for that. There’s also no real goal apart from getting the
highest score. That’s very old school, that’s how arcade games played
in the old days. Then games got levels and a story and you could
actually beat them. But now a lot of games are back at the old model
again.

Personally I prefer that sense of progression where you get further
and further until you actually beat the game. Highscore based games
don’t do that for me, I’ll always feel like I lost in the end. It’s
just not satisfying.

A little bit of story also provides context and cohesion for your game
which allows for immersion. It also lets me set up this arc where you
start in space and it’s pretty mellow, then you go to Mars which is a
little bit more dangerous and then finally you have the climactic
battle in the middle of enemy territory.

ExLS: Executed good, but the story could use some more work. Where did inspiration
for the game play come from?

The game owes quite a lot to Gradius and its kind. I pretty much stole
the checkpoint mechanic and adaptive difficulty from that game.

The twin-stick mechanic, which is pretty common these days, originated
thanks to First Person Shooters. The first version of the game was for
PC, and those games had trained me in using keyboard for movement and
mouse for aiming, so transposing those controls into a topdown shooter
came naturally. Then for the Xbox version switching from mouse aim to
firing in the direction of the second joystick was a no-brainer.

The powerup mechanic came from a desire to attach a reward to scoring
combos. I wanted flashy combos to scroll over the screen when you hit
enemies in quick succession, like many arcade games do. When I put the
combo system into the game I found myself trying to score high combos,
so I wanted to reward that in some way. So I had the powerups give a
special bonus if the player scored a high enough combo, and that has
evolved into the system where you “level up” your weapons which is
used in the final version.

Also many of the Challenges are homages to classic (or not so classic)
games such as Paratroopers, Asteroids, Crazy Game and of course the
earlier Evil Aliens installments.

ExLS: How has the game play evolved since Evil Aliens?

You mean since the black and white vector-based first game? Actually
it’s not that different – both have dodging and shooting and a similar
powerup system. The biggest gameplay addition comes from the
aforementioned system where you can level up your weapons. Of course
the many new enemy types all add their own twist to the gameplay, but
basically the game’s about dodging and shooting.

ExLS: Revenge of the Evil Aliens features three campaign missions,
seven challenges, and ten awardments. Each of the missions and
challenges feature four difficulty levels. This may not
seem like a lot to people, but the polish is evident. Did you take a
polish over content approach?

Yes, definitely. Each mission consists of a bunch of waves, and each
wave is unique. There is actually very little repeating of enemies
between waves. The first and second level, for instance, contain a lot
of UFOs, but they all behave slightly differently from each other.
While any given wave may only last for 40 seconds in the game, for me
it feels like a level on its own. I’ve spent a lot of time
programming, playing and tweaking each wave in isolation.

A game that I really admire is Call of Duty 4. That game’s single
player mode is notoriously short but it’s extremely dense. It’s packed
with action and variation from beginning to end. That’s sort of the
model I was going for (only on a much, much smaller scale).

ExLS: Call of Duty 4 was indeed able to do a lot in a small story. It really
allowed the players to connect emotionally within the missions (I will not spoil
anything for those that have yet to play it).The four-player multiplayer is a
part of Revenge of the Evil Aliens, but is only local. What was the design choice
behind this?

Basically, properly programming online multiplayer is much harder than
local multiplayer.

ExLS: Where did the idea to “link ships” come from? It’s vaguely
reminiscent of the Xbox Live Arcade title “Aegis Wing.”

To be honest I don’t really remember. I think I wanted a challenge
specifically for multiplayer mode, and somehow came up with this idea
where the players were forced to work together. Then I wound up
incorporating it into the main game instead.

ExLS: It works nice! How did you decide to set the pricing for Revenge of the
Evil Aliens?

It was a choice between 200 and 400 points, as 800 would pit me
against XBLA titles and those are way out of my league. Luckily I’m in
a position where this is purely a hobby so I don’t really need to make
any money with it, so I chose for the lowest price point. Of course I
was also hoping that that would make it a “steal” and increase its
popularity. In retrospect I wonder if giving it a 400 points price tag
would have increased perceived value and how that would have affected
sales (and reviews).

ExLS: 200 Microsoft Points is a steal for it and we have reviewed it (link here).
What kind of investment did you put into the creation of your game?

I’ve worked on this game for about two years, but as a hobby. So
definitely not full time and in bursts. The PC version was done in
about 4 months I believe, and then I started working on it again in
December when the XNA team announced the Community Games channel. I
planned to simply port it to Xbox but wound up spending another 6
months improving and polishing the game.

ExLS: The six months payed off! Do you have any regrets? For example, do you
wish you had released it sooner/later or added more/less content?

Not really, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I mean there’s
lot’s of features that could have been added, but perfection is
attained not when there’s nothing left to add but when there’s nothing
left to take away :)

ExLS: That is a nice quote.If you could make one more update for the game,
what would you change?

I’d love to add a versus mode. Coop is fine but sometimes you just
want to demonstrate your superior skills to your buddies.

ExLS: Maybe online versus mode? Do you plan on creating another indie
game, or a sequel?

Yes! :)

ExLS: What would you like to see Microsoft fix about Indie Games
(uploading, pricing, etc)

Definitely visibility. The new rating system should help, but
basically I wish Xbox would look more like Amazon. So when you browse
for games you see what people say about them, which other games are
similar, how they are rated, etc. I wish my game would pop up as a
suggestion to someone who plays a lot of Geometry Wars. My conversion
rate is fairly good, so people that play the trial seem to like the
game, but I’m only getting around a hundred trial downloads a day. I
fear that once the game leaves the What’s New tab, that number will
quickly drop to 0.

With a good system, people will also have an easier time finding the
other great Community Games. Many of them are sadly hidden. And if
people have an easier time finding the good stuff, they’ll be more
willing to visit the Community Games tab in the future, which benefits
everybody.

ExLS: Microsoft is adding User Ratings within the next 4-6 months to help with
this. What games (besides Revenge of the Evil Aliens) do you play?

My current obsession is Street Fighter 4. Apart from that Rock
Band/Guitar Hero are great games that I play whenever I get the
chance. And Rocket Riot of course ;)

ExLS: Of course! If you were given an unlimited budget (money and time), what
game would you create and why?

An MMORPG of course! I’d probably need the unlimited budget for that too!

I used to play those text based internet games where you mine
asteroids and buy space ships and you could attack other players and
things like that. That was sort of like an MMO. The whole thing was
really a big competition and after a while one group would dominate,
be declared the winner, and the game would reset. I think that would
work perfectly in an MMORPG. If you have a resetting world that opens
so many design possibilities – your world can be much more dynamic
because when things get screwed up too badly it will reset. For
instance, you could have a global conflict of players versus some
demonic invaders, and the players could actually win or lose. You
could also partially solve the problem of power escalation, be able to
do unique monsters/events, and have much more meaningful pvp.

ExLS: Sounds interesting! Too bad we can’t give you an unlimited budget!
If you could meet any other game developer (indie games or not),
who would it be and why?

Hmmm, good question. I can’t really think of anyone I’d specifically
like to meet. What I would love to do is talk to someone from Valve or
Blizzard. Both companies seem to really nourish individual talent and
creativity while producing top notch triple A titles and I’d love to
know the recipe to their secret sauce :)

ExLS: Us too. Bioware is also a creative company that produces amazing games.
Finally, is there anything you would like to add?

“IGN can suck it!” [IGN placed Revenge of the Evil Aliens in the "Cold Soup" list.]

ExLS: Thank you for your time and the amazing game, Harald! Revenge of
the Evil Aliens is one of the best space shooters available on the
Xbox Live Community (Indie) Games Marketplace.

Thanks a lot for the praise, getting this sort of positive feedback is
the best sort of reward I could hope for with my game :)