Taking a look at Indivisible
In the past, I’ve shared the joy of games from my house to the GeekGirlCon community. One game I’ve mentioned is Skullgirls, by Lab Zero games. At Anime Expo this past summer, Lab Zero announced a new action/RPG game called Indivisible.
Indivisible announcement trailer.
Their Indiegogo campaign started in early October to help fund part of game production, with a fixed goal of $1.5 million. They extended the campaign until this Saturday, December 5.
Lab Zero CEO/Producer Peter Bartholow was kind enough to answer a few questions about the upcoming game.
Indivisible banner. Image source: Indivisible Indiegogo page
Q: What brought your group together to start Lab Zero?
A: We all met at a studio called Reverge Labs, the original developers of Skullgirls. Our publisher, Autumn Games, ran out of money due to a protracted legal entanglement with Konami over another game, and so we were laid off.
I loved working with the team, so I formed Lab Zero to keep us together. We got the game away from Reverge [..] and crowdfunded 5 DLC characters in March of 2013.
Q: Tell me a little bit about Skullgirls, Indivisible, and how the games differ.
A: Skullgirls is a fighting game, originally inspired by Marvel vs. Capcom 2. It has the most frames of 2D animation of any fighting game, all lovingly drawn in a high resolution, and an awesome soundtrack from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night composer Michiru Yamane.
Skullgirls has 14 characters, only two of which are men. The creative director, Alex Ahad, wanted to make a fighting game with the usual gender ratio reversed, and created a cast of well-realized female characters. People tend to focus on the looks of some of the characters, but we strove not to be exploitative and to write stories that showcased both the physical and emotional strength of these characters.
Indivisible is Lab Zero’s second game, an action-y RPG inspired by the PSone/PSP classic Valkyrie Profile, and by Super Metroid. It’s an interesting combo of genres, and one that I think is working out very well—while RPG combat is an important and fun part of the game, we wanted to put a strong focus on exploration.
The story’s core is inspired by Southeast Asian culture and mythology, but it’s a starting point for a grand adventure that spans a vast fantasy world inspired by our own. The main character is young woman named Ajna who discovers she has the power to absorb certain people into her being and manifest them to help her in battle. As she fuses with these “Incarnations” she’ll also gain new weapons and abilities to help her explore the environments.
We didn’t initially set out to do this, but as we developed the story, its themes, and the game’s roster of playable characters, we found that we wanted to make a really diverse cast. And while the characters’ skin colors are generating a lot of excitement, we plan to extend this diversity beyond race.
Indivisible’s characters. Image source: Indivisible Indiegogo page
Indivisible’s battle system does draw on our fighting game experience, [and both it and Skullgirls] have a strong focus on character and story, amazing 2D animation and great soundtracks, but that’s pretty much where any similarities end.
Q: What are some of the challenges you face as game developers, and specifically developing Indivisible?
A: Well, this is a rough industry, so probably the hardest part is keeping money coming in so we can pay people to do what they do. The industry is absolutely terrified right now—budgets are going up, expectations are higher than ever, and no one knows what will sell.
About Indivisible, probably the biggest challenge was figuring out a pipeline to build levels. Since Skullgirls was a fighting game, its environments are pretty much just large boxes with pretty stuff inside, so we had to come up with a way to build larger and more dynamic environments in a very short amount of time. […] Our proprietary engine makes prototyping gameplay really fast, but the need to create large levels is a new challenge for us as a studio.
So we created our playable prototype in just over three months, but a lot of that time was spent working on the environments. And they’re still not where we want them yet, either, so that’s one of the first things we’re going to work on improving.
But art concerns aside, we have a development pipeline in place now from making the playable prototype. It’s still not as efficient as we’d like, so […] one of the first things we’re going to do is build some tools to make level creation faster.
Q: What does Indivisible’s title mean?
A: It’s hard to get too into this without spoiling a major aspect of the story, but there’s a lot wrapped up in the name of the game.
For many people, when they think of the word “Indivisible,” they specifically think about the American Pledge of Allegiance, and this isn’t by mistake. One of the central themes of Indivisible is that a variety of viewpoints coming together are better than a monolithic one, and a fair amount of the game’s diversity comes out of that ideal.
And we totally didn’t realize it when we came up with it, but if you combine the game title with our studio name you get a groan-worthy math joke.
Q: What about Valkyrie Profile’s style inspired you to make Indivisible?
A: Valkyrie Profile is a platformer / RPG, with a very fun, fast-paced battle system. In that game’s battles, your party effectively functions like a single, customizable fighting game character—each character is assigned to a face button, and tapping that button causes them to attack. The strategy comes from how you chain your attacks together. It’s pretty much our favorite RPG battle system ever, and one that played to our studio’s strengths.
Outside of those basics, Valkyrie Profile had a lot of weird stuff, like a time limit on how long you can play, party member sacrifices, and a truly arcane method of getting the “good” ending. So we wanted to make a game that played similarly, but without those sorts of restrictions so players can enjoy the game and the battle system on their own terms.
Combat in Indivisible. Image source: Indivisible Indiegogo page
Q: Why did you choose Indiegogo as a funding source?
A: We originally came up with Indivisible for another publisher, who eventually passed on it. But we felt really strongly about the game, and continued to shop it around to publishers because the full budget was more than we’d be able to reasonably raise on our own.
505 Games was interested, but they sort of fall somewhere between a publisher and distributor, and require their developers to have a financial commitment themselves.
Since we don’t have proceeds from our last game or investor money to fall back on, we chose to crowdfund our portion of the game.
We chose Indiegogo because we had great success with them on our Skullgirls campaign, and our Skullgirls backers are familiar with the platform.
Q: The fundraising goal of $1.5m was not reached by the initial deadline, so you extended the fundraiser. Did this make you nervous? What are your hopes and expectations?
A: I mean, we never thought this would be easy, but we didn’t expect for it to be this hard, either. We were definitely nervous and more than a little distraught when the campaign launch didn’t go as well as we’d expected.
But more recently we’ve been really inspired by how our fans came together to get us enough funding to extend the campaign another 20 days. Given how busy the crowdfunding scene is these days, it’s really hard for even established studios like ours to stand out and get media coverage, so it’s great that Indiegogo has this option if your campaign gets off to a slow start.
Q: At GeekGirlCon, we love to celebrate our various geekdoms. What geeky things do you do outside of game development?
A: Aside from gaming, I’m a big animation fan. I watch a lot of cartoons, anime, etc. Right now, Steven Universe is probably my favorite, but I feel like we really are living in a golden age of animation right now. People are taking chances, and it’s great to see so much great animated entertainment that appeals to both kids and adults. And I’m fortunate to work at a 2D animation-focused studio so we can try to bring that kind of artistry and ideals to video games.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to share with the GeekGirlCon community?
A: Well, obviously we’d love it if everyone played the Indivisible playable prototype, which is now available for Windows, Mac, Linux and, in a first, the PlayStation 4. We have links to all of them on our Indiegogo campaign page.
Shameless plugs aside, sleep is good. Please get sleep, and preferably much more than I am these days.
I’m excited to say that since this interview, the Indivisible fundraiser has reached its goal! If you’re interested in backing the project or helping Lab Zero reach their stretch goals, there are still 2 days left—so go and check it out!
