Indie Calendar - LA Cops

We're suckers for a good detective story here at Gamereactor, and so when LA Cops popped up on our radar earlier in the year, we took note and marked it down as one to watch.

Come the end of the year, when we were working out what titles to feature in the Indie Calendar, this is certainly one of the games we were keen to have involved. As a result we got in touch with publisher Team 17 who in turn put us in contact with Oliver Clarke, director at Modern Dream. First things first, we asked him to tell us a bit about the game.

"LA Cops is a top down shooter set to a theme of 70s cops in LA," Clarke explained. "It has an isometric viewpoint and the game itself is rendering in a vibrant stylistic full 3D. LA Cops is a hardcore game and as such it's challenging, compelling and rewards the most skillful and determined players. There are a selection of levels to play with through tied together with a story that shows how good cops can do bad things, bad cops can do good things and everything in between. There are six cops to choose from, each of which can be upgraded with XP earned through playing the game. There are also a range of deadly weapons to choose such as pistols, uzis and even a grenade launcher that produce a ridiculous number of gibs. Expect lots of action, humour, 70s brashness and an extremely rock soundtrack from LA Cops."

Obviously with such a defined visual and thematic style, there was some clear inspirations behind the concept. We asked what had driven them to make the game, and explain the roots of the concept.

"LA Cops draws ideas from many places. It was inspired by the Beastie Boys Sabotage video, top down shooters like Hotline Miami, Syndicate and Cannon Fodder and the PC classic Interstate 76. Pop art from the 60s and 70s inspired the look of the game including paintings by David Hockney and Edward Ruscha who painted A Bigger Splash and Standard respectively."

Clarke continued: "With LA Cops we wanted to make a challenging game that's made for the hardcore gamer. This game is meant to appeal to those that are playing hardcore experiences such as FPSs and are looking for something a bit different and yet complimentary to their tastes. At its heart, we just want to make a game that is fun, funny and contains totally over the top gun toting action."

The game's in Early Access at the moment. We wondered how the development process has gone thus far: "Development of LA Cops started this January and it has been an incredible journey. We feel we've grown as people and game makers as we've travelled along this road towards releasing LA Cops. The best part has been meeting so many interesting people from the games industry. It's been our first year getting out there and it's amazing to meet the people that make this industry so vibrant and actually make it work."

"We're still loving working on it and, importantly, playing it! We're also getting a lot of love and support on many fronts and it's like we're reaching the finishing line of a yearlong marathon with the crowd cheering us on! We've had some great feedback from players through Early Access. We owe them big time. It has made the game experience 100% more fun."

Finally, we asked Clarke to outline the studio's hopes and aspirations looking ahead to 2015: "First and foremost we want to release LA Cops to the players and make sure we give them a great experience. Then we want to keep going with the game and keep adding more to it. There's so much we can do with the tech we've developed and we're really only scratching the surface with our first commercial release. Our biggest hope for 2015 is to keep doing what we're doing but bigger, better and far more ambitiously. We're always hungry for a challenge and want to level up our game making skills exponentially over the next few years."

As we've mentioned, LA Cops is currently available via Steam Early Access (at the time of writing it's currently 25% off). It's also heading to Xbox One and PS4. Check out the trailer below to see the game in action.