IGN blog update: What's new in Geometry Wars: Galaxies

The GeometryWars blog over at IGN has some new information regarding the Wii and DS game Geometry Wars: Galaxies. -

"What’s New in Geometry Wars: Galaxies?
Craig Howard
Game Manager
Bizarre Creations

There are really two big additions in Geometry Wars: Galaxies. The first is a selection of multiplayer game modes, which we’ll talk about in future updates. The second is the Single player campaign. The latter gave us a healthy challenge from a design perspective!

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is a pure next-generation arcade game that obviously shares some design values with the classics of the Arcade era.

Those classic games such as Defender have a very closed and focused world, and it was these constraints that allowed you to learn and truly understand your environment and enemies. This is essential as it allows the players to develop their tactics quickly. This is a key element for the player as they gain a feeling of progression and achievement. With repeated play they gain further experience of the enemies traits and behaviours, so the strategies are developed further which in turn gives the player more progression... and most importantly a higher score!

With Geometry Wars: Galaxies we wanted to keep a focussed design, but also expand the scope of the game. When considering the above arcade principles it was apparent that we would need to not overload the player with the too much content too quickly. So we decided to compartmentalise the game so that a player could learn skills and tactics and then move on to other gameplay scenarios and feel comfortable in progressing further. This gave us the level structure of the game (Solar grids).

We then considered the elements that should change or evolve over the course of the level structure. Thanks to the games’ arcade purity it was quite obvious to us that the enemies and environments would be the key elements to evolve over this structured progression. So with the help of the guys at Kuju a formidable cast of enemies and environmental effectors have been developed.

Once you throw all of these into the equation and start carefully mixing them up you get some very interesting emergent gameplay. This was the nucleus when creation the game types in the Galaxies campaign mode. The great thing about this method of design is that it allows us to quickly prototype gameplay so we can play it and see if it feels true to Geometry Wars. If it doesn’t feel right it goes into the virtual trashcan.

Due to the extra gameplay depth that is now within the single player campaign we wanted the player to be able to develop more advanced strategies. Geometry Wars: Galaxies is a twitch game, so cluttering the players ship with superfluous functionality may lead to a soft kill as you change states or mess around with more complex controls. So we created the Drone.

The Drone in Geometry Wars: Galaxies acts as the personification of your progression within the game. The drone is able to be nurtured to learn new skills so you can expand upon your play strategies. The teamwork between you and the drone creates some really exciting new ways of playing the game.

There is one thing which ties the whole game together, and that’s the Geoms. These are the currency for the game. Kill an enemy and they drop Geoms. The player and the drone can harvest these to gain higher scores, progress through the game and develop the Drone’s abilities. These act as the consistent variable that binds together the wide variety of gameplay and strategies that make up the Geometry Wars: Galaxies experience.

So hope you enjoyed the mind dump of the thoughts and processes that were encountered when coming up with the game concept. The guys at Kuju have really gone full steam ahead and continued refining and polishing the game and it’s all coming together now and it’s a really exciting time


Playing the latest DS version
Ben Ward
Web & Community Lead
Bizarre Creations

It’s always great fun at Bizarre when we receive a new build of GWG from the guys down at Kuju. Today I’ve been playing the DS version, so thought I’d jot down some notes on the new features that we’ve seen go into the game over the last couple of weeks.

It’s the little things which make a game. There are now splash screens, a new front end music track, and a work in progress GUI in the build now. The gameplay itself can take place on either the top of bottom screen (flipped in the options menu), and the controls can be fully customised. At the moment this means that movement and shooting can be set to either D-pad, buttons, touchscreen, or any combination of these. If you set both to touchscreen you can play the entire game using one hand. It’s pretty cool, and hopefully this level of customisation will make it past the test departments and into the final game!

The full Retro Evolved game mode is now selectable, and it plays exactly how you’d expect. Obviously a few things have had to take a downgrade to squeeze the game onto the NDS, but there are still an impressive amount of enemies onscreen at any one time. All of the particle effects are present and correct, even down to the little sparks pinging off the grid walls when you miss your target.

In fact, when we were prototyping the platforms at Bizarre we didn’t know if it would be possible to put the little score numbers (the numbers which pop up when you destroy a bad guy or increase your multiplier) onto the tiny DS screen. We thought the screen would just be too small to make it look good. Happily, Kuju have proven us wrong and these particular visual prompts are present, correct, and looking ace.

Of course, one of the core parts of GWG is the Galaxies game mode. This is now starting to take shape, with both the galaxy map and first solar system map in the latest build. The first levels really throw the gamer into the new game modes straight away, which is awesome because it’s important to see right off the bat that Galaxies is much more than just Retro Evolved with a new skin. Here are the first few modes:

Surround – The grid is a circle shape, with enemies spawning around the outside. This forces the player’s ship to the middle of the screen, fighting on all fronts.

Neo Classic – Retro Evolved style gameplay, but in a variety of different shaped grids and including the new enemies. The level I played featured an upside-down pyramid shape; things get very hectic if you venture toward the bottom of the level, but there are also less fronts to defend on.

Enemy Storm – Another new game mode, this time spawning giant versions of the traditional Geometry Wars enemies all around you. Each giant shape takes much more hits than a normal shape to destroy, and when it is destroyed it splits into two. Shooting the smaller ones splits them up further, until they spawn a wave of enemies. This game mode forces you to choose your shots wisely instead of mindlessly blasting. Splitting too many giant shapes can quickly surround your little ship.

You’ve also got your drone team mate in the Galaxies game modes. He’ll be upgradable, so you’ll want to take care of your drone as it’ll take a heavy load off your back during some of the tougher levels. At the moment the drone is at its most basic as it buzzes around the grid shooting at enemies. We will talk in more detail about the drone and its upgrades at a later date.

So that’s what us folk at Bizarre Creations have been playing recently. Keep reading this blog for more Geometry Wars Galaxies news over the next few weeks!