By Mike Uy, Creative Director
The team here at Free Range Games has always wanted to get back to the studio’s roots in action sports. Before Free Range Games, our founders and team members worked on Tony Hawk and other skateboarding games, as well as BMX, Wakeboarding, Snowboarding, and even Razor Scooter games. In the early years of Free Range Games we made some action sports mobile games, back when mobile games were the “it” thing to make. But we always wanted to make a huge, social, controller-focused skateboarding game. And we knew we didn’t want to make what we’ve all made before, we wanted to do something different and more expansive.
At the core of our design philosophy we believe that skate culture is inherently inclusive, supportive, collaborative, spontaneous, and creative. It creates a community that for many kids is the first place they ever feel they belong. We wanted to build that as an online universe. We trust that if we do, the community will build something greater than we can conceive ourselves, just as it has done historically with a piece of wood strapped to four wheels. That simple vehicle became film, music, fashion, sport, ethos, and lifestyle. A medium for creativity, expression, and friendship.
As such, we didn’t want to define or constrain the gameplay experience for players with fixed maps and exclusively linear progression paths, or by replicating real life skating either in terms of physics, look and feel, or environments. So we created a platform that starts with basic building blocks and realistic skating and parks, but allows players and builders to opt into as much video-gamey, fantastical fun as they want. We felt that giving the Wrekless universe the dreamy, surreal look and feel it has frees players up from the bounds of realism to the extent they wish to engage that in the game.
To be clear, players can (and we as devs will by example) build levels that look and feel real and which are meant to be skated like traditional beige, shadowy skate games.Players can also build technicolor neon and chrome levels with physics-defying boosters, portals, lava, ice, or bouncy materials. These levels can include Minigames like Racing, Scavenger Hunts or Trick competitions. The gameplay in these levels might range in the way they’re built for play from platforming challenges to exploration to PvP combat to pure skating skill tests. Parks can have giant tentacles in the distance or glowing equalizers or disco balls in the sky. The important thing is that we are giving the players ALL THE TOOLS that we are using to build our own content along with, hopefully, more than enough options for them to build not just more but better things with it than we did.
Likewise, the core of the skating and controls are realistic and familiar, using dual stick controls many players have learned from recent skate game franchises, but with more assistance and forgiveness so it’s easier to learn like old school skate games. Then we give players the option to earn and use the Boost mechanic to ignore friction, jump higher (including double jumps), slow their fall and strafe in air like a platform game hero, spin twice as fast during grabs, or skate on walls as if gravity were sideways. In the hands of a skilled player, incredible feats are possible given time and enough tries much like skating in real life, but freed from the bounds of reality as was always the promise of video games.
Similarly, we wanted players in an online social universe to be able to express their online identities without having to mimic the world outside (though that is an option). Players can customize their hair, skin, face, clothes, accessories, shoes, skateboards, wheels, trucks, and grip tape. And save their favorite outfits for quick changes. But that wasn’t enough. We were always enamored with pop culture movies, games, and shows that weren’t afraid to bend occasionally into fantasy with special FX and superhuman feats, so we tagged up the game like a comic book with customizable, colorable FX that highlight your player’s actions, stringing of Combos, and use of Boost powers.
Above all, we wanted to also give players options as to how they experience the game. Whether they just want to build, or skate, or hang out, or just use the drone cameras to watch other players and make videos (or any combination thereof), we designed the online experience to accommodate each players’ preferred method(s) of playing. You can level up and progress to unlock and earn everything in the game through various paths: active or passive, social or solo, time-sensitive or meditative and meandering. As long as you are participating in and/or contributing to the game and its community in some fashion, you can play the game your way, and we will reward you for it.
Make no mistake: this is a VIDEO GAME, not a simulation. It is an online universe built by both us and the players, not a linear narrative or something you can complete. We hope the community uses the tools we give them to make video game experiences for each other (and us!) that we never imagined. In an ideal world, the Wrekless platform leads us and players together to build and develop types of gameplay we haven’t even considered yet both in-game with the content creation tools and in future updates to them. It’s going to take a joint, iterative effort with our community to create something more fun and tailored to the players’ needs and dreams than could be envisioned, let alone built, by a monolithic, big-budget franchise trying to satisfy more executives and sponsors than our game has developers.
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