Cubed has a an interview up today with Marek Okon, the game designer/art director for Eastern European game developer Nibris. Nibris, to date, has a lot of great artwork and screenshots on their web site, but very little in the way of gameplay. That said, there’s promise here, as they are busy developing several innovative looking titles for both the DS and the Wii; including Raid of the River (DS) and Sadness (Wii), the former being the “story mode shooter” and the latter being a black and white horror… something. As one of the new “indie” developers out there for the Wii, I’m pulling for them, for now.
An excerpt about putting a detailed story in with a shooter title, something that really hasn’t been done before:
C3: Regarding Raid Over The River, what made you decide to create such an elaborate storyline for a scrolling shoot ’em up, a genre that traditionally doesn’t place a huge emphasis on story?
MO: I remember the times when FPS games didn’t have any plot, and we must agree that adding a storyline to those was a good job! But seriously – most of the modern shooters are extremely hard games focusing only on scoring more points and trying to survive in the rain of the enemies’ bullets. And we want our game to be all that – but also to have something for more common players. Story mode at “easy” level will be a challenging, yet not frustrating, experience. There will be a lot of action, a few plot twists and spectacular air battles – for everyone who wants to play it. On the other hand if you don’t care about the story much – you can play arcade mode at “extreme” level ”“ it’s all about scoring points and scraping enemy bullets without any interruptions whatsoever.
Story modes in shooters… will it work?