There are many who share the opinion that certain genres within the video game industry have begun to stagnate over the years. Michael Hoyos, founder of game development studio, Space Rhino Games, hopes to challenge the Tower Defense (TD) genre with the release of Breach TD.
A gamer and developer himself, Hoyos observed certain recurring trends within the game development community that made him unhappy, and inspired him to create Space Rhino Games. In a recent interview Hoyos explains, “We feel many game companies these days never really listen to their players.” Listening to players and the gaming community is something that is very important to Hoyos, who made his company mission statement, “To become one of the most recognized player-centric videogame companies in the world.”
Hoyos also elaborated on the conclusion that developers had dropped the ball with innovation, choosing to follow popular trends to produce, “Carbon copies of other games.” Hoyos passionately declared, “Right now, games lack guts!” and went on to describe what it takes in regard to gaming innovation, “The guts to try and make something different while satisfying trends to one’s advantage, but without sacrificing the search for new, dynamic, and novel features and mechanics.”
Keen on delivering a product built with community involvement and innovation in mind, Hoyos selected the Tower Defense genre for his studio’s first release. “For years, Tower Defense is the strategy sub-genre that has been mostly stagnant. Absolutely nothing has changed, this gives us a lot of room to play around and innovate,” said Hoyos.
Breach TD certainly promises to be something different, but still wholly recognizable as a Tower Defense, or rather, Defense game. Hoyos hopes to achieve the innovation he feels is lacking with the broader game development community by creating a “fusion” of TD, MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), and Real Time Strategy (RTS).
Implanting a card game element into the design as well, Hoyos announced a Kickstarter campaign for the game in the hopes of engaging the community that he feels deserves a greater voice in game creation.
The game promises to be initially released for the IOS and Android markets, with Steam support coming soon. Hoyos also explained his choice of developing the game for mobile devices by saying, ”We want to create a cross-platform, synchronous, multiplayer strategy experience for mobile,” and added, “We haven’t seen many multiplayer strategy games on mobile, and the ones that fit the bill only provide asynchronous PvP, meaning, players never fight each other at the same time.”
With innovative designers like Hoyas who also possess the desire to speak to gamers directly-and are not inclined to follow the “norm,” the possibilities for unique, and specialized gaming genre, appear to be on the horizon.
Jesse has been writing video game related articles and interviewing industry professionals for almost 3 years and strives to become a professional nerd.
