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Sol Survivor was a top-six finalist in the 2009 Dream.Build.Play challenge. We chatted with the team at Cadenza Interactive about their experience competing in Dream.Build.Play, and the making of their game, Sol Survivor.
How would you describe Sol Survivor for anyone who hasn’t seen or played it yet?
Sol Survivor is a fast-paced turret defense game that will have you engaged the whole time you play it. After playing a lot of tower defense games with “fast forward” options and time spent waiting for the game to become challenging, we wanted to create a game that kept players on their toes.
What made you want to make Sol Survivor?
We have a very creative and very ambitious group of friends. Working in the games industry is something we’d all like to do in some way, and the industry is set up very nicely for small teams these days. We settled on tower defense because there were a lot of things we wanted to see in tower defense games or mods that weren’t easily available. What you see in Sol Survivor is the game we wanted to play at LAN parties when we wanted tower defense.
What games influenced or inspired Sol Survivor?
We took a lot of inspiration from Warcraft 3 tower defense mods, as well as the myriad of flash tower defense games on the internet.
Is this the first game you’ve made? If not, can you tell us more about the other things you’ve worked on?
Sol Survivor is the first game that the team has made. Our programmers have code experience professionally, but not in a video game context. Everything that came together for Sol Survivor came together out of interest and self-motivation.
What games are you playing now (other than your game!)?
Borderlands has been a big winner of late. Left 4 Dead 2 is also about to take over our weekends once we’re out of crunch-time for our PC development for Sol Survivor. We also have the typical complement of casual World of Warcraft geeks among us. As far as indies, Beat Hazard has been really great fun and the PC ambient strategy game Eufloria ate up more than a few hours.
Where did you hear about Dream.Build.Play, and what made you decide to enter?
As a team we follow industry news pretty actively, so Dream.Build.Play was on our radar once we decided on the XNA Framework.
Why did you decide to participate in Dream.Build.Play?
Any kind of recognition from the Dream.Build.Play challenge was always going to help raise our profile a bit as a small company. The cash prizes are a nice bonus, but with the competition getting better each year, we knew just being recognized was a big deal.
Is this your first time competing in Dream.Build.Play?
Yes, Sol Survivor is our first entry into DBP.
How long did it take to develop your game?
We took almost exactly one year from the time we started work to the day we attended Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) for the game’s public Xbox debut.
How was the experience of competing in DBP?
It was gratifying to say the least. As a team, we got to feel a bit more legitimate as we got the news that we’d hit the top six games for the year. Seeing all of the games that were submitted alongside your own is a great experience, too. It helps you to realize that there is a community of developers out there making games for all the right reasons, at various levels of experience, but all with an excess of passion.
Did you Playtest your game through XNA Creators Club Online (CCO)? Did it help?
We did do a brief week-long Playtest. In the future, we will likely make more extensive use of this feature.
Have you helped to Playtest and Peer Review other games?
Yeah. There are a lot of titles that we Playtest that are going to further legitimize the Xbox Indie Games platform. Hopefully some of the higher quality titles that are coming up through review can draw attention from players who aren’t involved in the indie community and are just looking for a good game.
How was your experience with Peer Review?
Peer Review is nerve racking because of the thoroughness of the community. Having reviewed games ourselves, we know how small the things are that are grounds for an automatic “fail” vote. That said, the high standard of Peer Review is necessary, and if we were releasing on Xbox LIVE Arcade, the standard we’d have to hold ourselves up to would be even higher.
Would you participate in Dream.Build.Play again?
We will likely participate in Dream.Build.Play in the immediate future, yes.
How was your experience using XNA Game Studio to make your game?
XNA Game Studio using C# is a big boost because of how quickly ideas can be prototyped and tested. That makes it easier for ideas to go from paper to screen and lets us test things for fun-factor much earlier on in development. XNA Game Studio also lets developers get involved in the console market without a large initial investment. The cost of joining XNA Creators Club Online is pretty reasonable and with [a Premium] membership and some know-how, you can get code on an Xbox without a devkit. That’s pretty remarkable considering the history of console games.
What other tools/programs did you use to help you make your game?
We created our own engine from scratch and built our own artist tool. The in-house tool allows artists and designers to work with map design, pathing, balance, and a number of other content-related factors that allow non-code work to be done by designers, not programmers. We also used common modeling/texturing software like Maya and Photoshop.
How many people are on your team, and what are their roles?
Our team is comprised of three full-time members and seven part-time members. Our three full-time guys are two programmers and a digital artist. They are in charge of the code behind the game as well as all of the models you see as you play. Our seven part-time members are responsible for level design and balance, creep design, concept art, in-game 2D art assets, music, and community management to varying degrees based on the individual.
Can you walk us through a usual day for you and your team?
On a weekly basis we had two meetings, one in person on Saturday afternoons and one on a voice server Wednesday evenings for a mid-week update. These really grounded the part-time guys who were a lot less in a routine in terms of time invested in the game. The full-time guys had a routine based on the SCRUM concept. All three of the full-timers knew what they had to do to make sure nobody was waiting on them before they could get something done. In-house SCRUM meetings were held daily to re-assess goals for completion of tasks and then all three guys usually broke out into eight to 10 hour work days.
Any plans to release more games for XBLIG?
It is certainly possible that another XBLIG title will come from Cadenza.
What’s next for you?
Cadenza is working full-tilt on the PC version of Sol Survivor as we speak. For the first two months of 2010, we’ve begun prototyping project number two. There are a number of ideas, most of them pretty radically different from Sol Survivor but no less exciting for the team. We’ll choose the strongest idea of our prototyping phase and go from there.
Check out Sol Survivor today and download from Xbox LIVE Marketplace.
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