Shadowrun Returns Blog Update

Hopefully, all the news of new Kickstarter RPG projects hasn’t made you forget all about Shadowrun Returns, one of the most promising of the upcoming titles. Mitch Gitelman, the game’s producer, has penned a blog entry on how the game’s development is progressing, giving some insight into the first “Run ‘n’ Gun” gameplay demo they built and other tidbits.

Our first big milestone was our gameplay prototype. It was called (Run ‘˜n’ Gun,) and the goal was to test our development tools and create a firm foundation to build the rest of our gameplay upon. We built a secret lab environment, populated it with Lone Star guards and played a team of shadowrunners trying to steal some tissue samples. Run ‘˜n’ Gun exercised our combat interface, artificial intelligence, animation system, and editor. Everyone contributed.

Since then it’s been iteration, iteration, iteration with everyone playing the game first thing in the morning and noting the things that needed to change. Based on the team’s feedback, we redesigned our first-draft combat interface, and the second-draft works much smoother. We’re going to play with it for a few weeks and keep a running list of the team’s feedback before making further revisions.

We’ve also revised and debugged our base combat AI so they choose the right weapons (watch out for the grenades), use cover appropriately, reload, use medkits, attack aggressively or become cowardly, and respond to gunshots or calls for help. It’s taken awhile but they’re fun to fight with just guns, fists, and swords. Once NPCs start using tech and magic, things are going to really get crazy.