Drox Operative Interview

RPGFan has interviewed Soldak Entertainment’s Steven Peeler on his latest, the sci-fi 4x/action-rpg hybrid Drox Operative, focusing on his career, his design process and the features he’s most proud in the title. Here’s a snip from the article:

RPGFan: Describe your design process for coming up with a Soldak game.

Steven Peeler: These days I come up with a unifying theme and write down as many ideas as possible that would fit this theme (brainstorming, research from the internet, and playing similar games). Then I organize and expand these ideas into a simple design document. After this relatively short process, I start making the game. While making the game, we flesh out the ideas more, throw out the bad ideas, and come up with lots of brand new ideas. Many great ideas pop up after the “design” phase, because lots of things aren’t obvious until you are actually playing the game.

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RPGFan: What is your favorite feature in Drox Operative?

Steven Peeler: My favorite feature is still the dynamic galaxy stuff, even though we’ve done similar stuff in two previous games. I still think it’s really fun to be able to have an actual impact on the game world through your actions or inactions. For example, in Drox Operative you can pay to spread propaganda on an enemy planet. This propaganda can lead to unrest, then riots, then rebellion, and then possibly even a civil war. If a civil war goes on long enough or spreads to enough of a race’s planets, their empire will eventually split in two separate factions. Of course, an Operative can also stabilize situations like this. If a planet is having riot problems and an Operative can locate and deliver the necessary equipment, then the riots can be quelled before things get out of hand.