 Linus Tech Tips coverage of PAX 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital, Intel, and SteelSeries. Hey guys, we're here at Galaxy at the Indie Megabooth just checking out their game, and I had to stop by because it looks so much fun. This looks like Asteroids, but waaaaay later with all the advancements that it should have had. What can you tell me about this game? So this is a culmination of years of shooter kind of experience and shooter inspiration, I guess, put together. I mean, it obviously looks like a classic 16-bit shooter game, but it's actually under the hood, it's much more like a modern shooter. It's much more like something like Far Cry 3 where you've got, you know, very dedicated AI, very dedicated physics. The explosions and stuff all have actually physics bombs. They'll send guys off flying. The AI, we've teamed up with a company called Syntient. They're a new software company. They're making middleware for AI, for really high-end AI. And so we've got that plugged into the game where this is more like, I mean, it really is something similar to like Far Cry 3 in 2D. These guys have vision cones. They can hear you. They're out on random patrols looking for you. If they hear something fishy, they'll go into an investigation mode. If they locate you, they'll call for backup. I mean, they're very good at like pinning their fire down on you, getting you in a tri-level position and like taking you down. The weaker guys will stay out. They let the bigger guys come in after you. It's not a shooting game where you just pop them a couple times and they go down. I mean, some of the bigger guys, it's like a real drawn-out heavy-duty combat. So I love modern combat stuff. Like, I love Halo. I love Far Cry 3. And we really wanted to get that feeling of just like this intense combat experience, perfect outer space dogfighting into this game. It looks like you're looking through the lens of a classic 16-bit, you know, spaceship shooter. But it's very much not a shmup. It's not a twin-stick shooter. It's an action-adventure game. It's very combat-focused. And that's great. And dropping names for AI like Far Cry 3 is big. But if I hadn't seen the gameplay so far, I would kind of look at you in an interesting way. But I've seen it. I've seen what you're talking about. You're definitely completely right. Some interesting things that I just saw a few seconds ago was actually he was hiding behind a rock, and the AI was not able to find him because he wasn't shooting, for one, so he couldn't track down his shots, and he wasn't using his boost. So they couldn't hear his boost. That's really interesting. You don't usually see AI elements like that in a game like this. So it's awesome that you called that out. What other mechanics, core mechanics, do you find in this game? We kind of compare it a lot to ice hockey, where you're very aggressively moving around, but you need to be as good moving backwards as you are forwards. So we've got forward thrusters, side thrusters, back thrusters. You've got a very finite level of control over the ship. So you're boosting around. Shooting backwards is a big thing. You fly up on a guy, land into him. You can jump over him for a second out of the gameplay plane, land on the other side, still facing him, and lay into him as you're boosting backwards. And then you lock on him with your missiles and let him have it. The combat is just very intense. It's super engaging. And it's organic and it's evolving all the time. So every combat experience is different and it's always engaging. One thing that I've noticed with the Indie Megaboost so far is a lot of the games here just make you feel like a badass while you're playing them. And being able to flip over people and jump all over a place and lock on missiles and dance around and dodge around a boss and hide behind rocks and all this kind of stuff is just so cool because you're very active into the game. It's a game that has a story, but while you're really, really action-based the entire time anyways. And talking about a game that has a story, what is the setting for this game? So the setting is Deep Space. You're part of the human alliance, Earth Federation. I gotta come up with a cool name, which I haven't done yet. But you're in Deep Space and there's a terrible ambush by the enemy Imperials. And the fleet is basically devastated. And you are one of the last fighters. You're kind of a green pilot. You don't have much experience. The guy who owned the ship that you're in was actually killed on the deck when they got hit. So he jumped into one of the last remaining fighters, got out. You can see the beginning of the intro. He sort of... There's a big battle there. He kind of barely gets his way out of it and gets knocked out. Then goes flying off into Deep Space. He's picked up later by one of the last remaining sort of mega-craft. And he's the last fighter. So she's like, get back here, you know? And so you get back to the ship and you have to kind of start, you know, exploring the galaxy, mining for resources, powering back up your mother's ship, and being able to jump further and further as you're repairing your ship. You know, you're very outgunned. You're very outmanned. So it's this sort of, you know, going out on these missions, doing some recon, finding supplies, bringing them back to the ship, powering it up, and then being able to move on to further levels. Yeah, like you were talking about, mining for resources, finding all these supplies, all this kind of stuff. Another thing I noticed is you can blow up the rocks and you can blow up shipwrecks to loot things. What kind of stuff is someone expecting to find in these objects? Well, these ships are the wreckage of, you know, giant starfighters that have been destroyed in these battles. So there's all kinds of supplies on board. There's health packs. There's, you know, fuel upgrades. There's missile upgrades. There's all kinds of stuff to upgrade your ship and move on. You're looking for the warp crystals, which are really powerful for your engines to get back online. So you guys can warp further and further, trying to get home through deeply occupied enemy space. It's, you know, I think it's something like Borderlands 2, where you're upgrading your weapons, you're upgrading your abilities. You know, Metroid is a huge inspiration for this, obviously. So that's sort of, you know, just this genuine long ramp up of just getting better and getting new abilities, and powering up, and feeling like a badass the whole time. A great reference that you just made, Borderlands 2, the loot-hungry person and so many gamers I've noticed will enjoy this game because while you're dodging around, while you're actively fighting, while you're trying to lock on missiles, while you're doing all that stuff, you're always blowing up rocks and blowing up shipwrecks and all this kind of stuff, and also getting all these little objects, like you're talking about the warp core thing that you were just talking about. That's great. Now, as we can see in the background, there's giant enemies, and earlier we saw one of the reviewers playing, and there was what seemed like a boss chasing him around, and that took a long time, but once he got stuck in a corner and was like, okay, this is it, everyone saw him lock on missiles and just blow everything away. Is there more like boss-style enemies in this game? Yes, there's going to be some very large enemies to take down here. You may need to take on with a friend, we're going to be working on the network multiplayer, what that looks like yet. We haven't really done any testing, but we've got some big ideas. We're still, like I said, we're about a year out still, so we've got a lot of work to do, but we intend to have the tiny enemies all the way up to massive scale stuff, like really dynamic epic space drama. That's great, and to see that you're almost a year out, and I know it's not the biggest demo ever, but it's very polished as far as I've seen, so that's great. I'm really excited to see where you guys can take this in a year. I know you guys are all about innovation, so I'm expecting fully to see a few extra things. I know you said you haven't even named part of the game yet, which is great, because in a year from now that'll be named and there'll be other stuff in the game. Very excited. Is there anything else you want to add on? I mean, I just hope people can come by the booth this weekend and check it out. If not, you know, we'll be launching on PS4 and on Steam. We have high hopes for the game. We think, I mean, the response has been phenomenal this weekend. Everyone loves it, and we're just having a fantastic time. This has been a great weekend, so thanks for coming down. And thank you for showing me the game. If you want to see any of our content from the IndieMega booth or any of our content from PAX, be sure to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips.