Space Hulk was a beloved board game released in 1989 made by Games Workshop set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. This is the same universe that Relic Entertainment’s Dawn of War series for the PC and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine for consoles and PC. It starred hulking Space Marines fighting it out with Genesplicers in the titular Space Hulks, which are enormous slow-moving ships in space.
Now, independent developer Full Control is bringing the game to tablets and PCs in all its turn based glory. We spoke with Thomas Hentschel Lund, CEO of Full Control, over email about difficulty being a selling point, why Valve’s Greenlight is broken and how Space Hulk almost became a first-person shooter.
Gamenguide.com: Why bring back this particular property?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: It’s one of the crown jewels of the specialist games by Games Workshop that really has not been done in its true form ever. The 3rd edition limited release of the board game in 2009 showed that there is still a huge interest in the game, and its has long been a favourite of mine to play.
On the more production side of it all, it is also a nice size for a team of our studio. We can make a super pretty, fun to play game without needing 100s of artists on the team. So its a match in heaven.
Gamenguide.com: How do you plan to interest the people who know the Warhammer franchise primarily through Relic’s Dawn of War and Space Marine games?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: I think players of those 2 games are even distinct different crowds with the common love of 40k as a common denominator. The DoW players will hopefully love our game because it features units totally up close with a tactical and strategy aspect. While there is a difference in real-time vs. turn-based as well as squad sizes, a great strategy game is a great strategy game.
For the Space Marine crowd, the visuals we have are on par with that game. And that will hopefully grow some attention. But the gameplay experience is very different, so if the Space Marine player played the game for the 3rd person shooter mechanic only, then they might think twice.
At the end of the day we are trying to actually cater more to the core board game / miniature game crowd. It has been decades since they have had a computer game that actually uses the general board game mechanics of being turn-based and bring that into a computer game again.
Gamenguide.com: The demo at GDC looked quite hard. Is difficulty a selling point for this game?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: Difficulty is definitely a selling point for Space Hulk. Not only our game, but also the old Electronic Arts game and the board game itself. You are entering enemy territory and you are the underdog - even in Terminator armor.
Space Hulk is not a casual entertainment game where you mindlessly hit the shoot button and expect to slaughter millions of Genestealers. It is a challenging and rewarding game of tactical movement inside Hulks with enemies around every corner ready to tear you open.
The reward comes in being able to pump your fist in the air and go "YEAH" after beating a level.
Gamenguide.com: How do you re-create the feel of playing a board game on a tablet?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: Almost all of the board games in the Games Workshop lineup are at their core turn-based games. So that is the basis to get the board game feeling in.
Once we have the core mechanics running with the ruleset from the board game, we start taking a look at where we can optimize the game into a video game. This means fluid gameplay, speeding it up, removing and reworking rules that are only there to help you play a physical board game - and last but not least a lot of work on the visual side to make the game come alive and feel authentic as a video game.
So in many ways its the reverse process of taking the board game and making it feel less-board game.
Gamenguide.com: Give us a sense of how the multiplayer will work. Can players be on the same side? Which factions can they choose from?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: We will have lots of different multiplayer options that combine with each other.
You will be able to sit together with a friend and share the same device (PC or tablet) to play versus or co-op. And you can over network play the same options - versus and co-op.
These games can also be played across devices, so a Linux guys can play someone on an iPad.
We are additionally experimenting with co-op being more than 2 players, but that’s a feature we still need to work a little on before deciding if it works or not.
Gamenguide.com: Did you look to other board games that made the transition to iOS for inspiration, like Carcassonne or Ticket To Ride? If so, which ones and what did you like about them in particular?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: We play a lot of other board games both in physical form and their iOS versions. And the common theme across them all is really a good UI combined with removal of the tedious bookkeeping. Let the computer do the boring stuff and give the player a good experience!
There are lots of examples where someone has tried to do a 1:1 copy of the games, and it simply feels like many of them fall flat. A new medium to play on simply requires a different way to interact with the game to realise its potential. Audio is one of those tools that one has to use.
Gamenguide.com: How will the level editor work? What goes into getting it to work cross-platform?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: The level editor will mimic building the board game - it is working with sections of the map, so you drag in for example the "5-tile corridor", rotate it and click it into the mount point of a room.
That part is very intuitive, and its possible to build rather complex levels in minutes.
Additionally we have a logic part where you can add functionality to the level you are building. This part is still under heavy development, so how it will end up working is still in the air.
To start off with, we are only doing a PC version of the editor. There are too many things that work against the control scheme on a tablet. But if there is demand, we might make a less feature rich version later for tablets.
What’s important is that the created levels will all be available on all platforms for downloads.
Gamenguide.com: You’ve been saying the game will release this Fall. Can you narrow that down?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: Fall 2013 :-)
Gamenguide.com: You wrote during your Reddit Now Ask Me Anything that “We are not making an EA shooter or even a FPS.” What is an EA shooter? Did you ever think of making the game a first-person shooter?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: EA as in Electronic Arts. They made some Space Hulk real time tactical shooter games in the 90's. We definitely have been thinking about us wanting to go down that route, but we stuck with the path we believe most in - and that is to make a turn-based Space Hulk inspired by the actual board game. No one had made that yet, and it was time to go back to the roots of the original Space Hulk.
Gamenguide.com: You mentioned getting feedback from modders early in the development process. What kind of feedback have they given you so far? Any that you’ve had to discard?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: That comment was primarily for the Jagged Alliance: Flashback Kickstarter questions in the AMA. For Space Hulk we know exactly what we want to do and how it is going to be moddable - via a controlled editor. But we are definitely going to do some alpha/beta testing on the editor together with some external people.
Gamenguide.com: Was there ever any thought of making Space Hulk a free-to-play game? How much will Space Hulk be?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: No. Space Hulk was never thought of as a free-to-play game. We want to make a premium game with premium quality with a premium brand. For this game, we simply want to be able to give players the pure experience without adding time sinks and mandatory in-app purchases.
The cost of the game is not yet finalized, so cannot give you the number there.
Gamenguide.com: You've called Valve’s Greenlight system “broken.” What’s broken about it and how do you think it could be fixed?
Thomas Hentschel Lund: Its broken in many ways in my opinion. Its a hit driven list for one, where well known names and brands will float to the top. So great nuggets from smaller studios will most likely never have a chance.
Also over time you will have more and more and more games joining the fray, and the chance of discovery will be slimmer. And the number of votes to rise to the top most likely also increase.
Its basically a popularity contest and not a quality contest.
How to fix - thats a good question. I actually see the gatekeeping Steam usually does for quality content as a good thing. If there were hundreds of thousands of games in Steam with 95% being crap, we would not have a chance to get quality content out to users. As good games would drown in the masses.
But I have also been on the other side of the fence. Wanting to get on Steam and getting a no. So I know that feeling all too well. But in hindsight I can also see why, and its driven us to make more quality games.
