We caught up with 50% of Vlambeer, Rami Ismail, and talked to the indie developer about the launch of Luftrausers and the Early Access release of Nuclear Throne.
With regards to Luftrausers, Rami explained to us why the launch of the sepia-toned shooter was held up for several months, as the studio waited for the game to launch on PlayStation before bringing it to other platforms.
"We had promised to release that game on all platforms at once, so we were going to keep our promise. So we were just sitting on a build. So it's been really rough making that game. You sort of get worried right?!"
"You have this game that's eight months old in your own mind," he continued, "because you've played it for two and a half years, and you're about to release that. So we were really nervous actually. And after the game launched it earned back everything we'd spent on it in two and a half days, which is completely overwhelming."
We also spent some time discussing the unique development process behind their Early Access title, Nuclear Throne, and found out more about the game's quirky soundtrack and what's still to come from the roguelike-like shooter.
"We're halfway through the amount of content we want to have. We're halfway through the levels. One of the largest mechanics for the game is not actually in the game yet; it's the idea of looping, where people, after they beat the game, get to go back to the start of the game and then continue from there with different difficulty, with different things that happen, and that's actually a really big part of what the game's about for us, it's the idea of sort of not a single run of a roguelike, but more of a buildup. There's a lot of mechanics in the game that actually break the idea of a roguelike in interesting ways, and we really want to play with that."
He continued: "So there's a lot of stuff left there, mechanically. There's a lot of stuff there in terms of content. We're halfway through the amount of levels we want to have. There's all the secrets and stuff like that that we want to add. So that means there's still a lot of music and stuff. There's a bunch of things that we haven't talked about that we really, really want to do."
"There's so much to do, and we're really happy to have the community there with us because, especially the Wiki and the let's play videos that a bunch of the people do, they're so motivating, they give such a sense of direction and achievement, even while we're creating the game. This is the game that we're having the most fun working on, of all the games we've ever worked on, and that's quite a big deal."
Luftrausers has been out in the wild for just over a month now (you can read our review here), while the studio continues to tinker with Nuclear Throne (here is our preview). Attached below you can also see our recent Livestream, where we played both games.