By Raj Joshi, 17-BIT Studio Director
As we’ve built Galak-Z, we realized a funny thing – we kept building onto one main level rather than adding new levels. Typically, we'd be building new levels left and right to express new gameplay concepts, but with Galak-Z, we were focused on how each new enemy, trap, plant, and weapon fit into the mix, so we kept smushing them together in one big level. It was glorious, and it was known as ‘the cave’.
Why did the same environment stay fun for so long? What really matters in Galak-Z is the interactions between all the moving parts. Combat with intelligent squads, getting attacked by a hostile environment, weighing the risks of a deadly magma pool versus the sheer style of knocking some hapless enemy into it... As long as we kept switching it around, it kept being interesting. And the endless fights helped us learn how the environment should work. In the same way that water erodes rock, seeking the path of least resistance, we bumped and nudged the curves of our walls until we started to understand what made a room feel real good to move around and fight in.
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That hand-worn level became the guidebook for our level generator which now helps to replicate the work we'd been using intuition and experimentation to craft. We have a library of rooms (several lifted from ‘the cave’) hand-designed to feel good to fly around in. The rooms are filled with potential spawn points for the traps and enemies. We do it by hand to guarantee the objects are placed in interesting and organic ways; you want that self-defense turret to have a good angle on any intruders, right? The rooms are then selected, randomized, and connected to form a dungeon. Launch out from your mothership, and you'll find yourself entering a new and dangerous space cave on each mission.
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FOREBEARS
We've been inspired as we build up our random rogue-y systems by many of the 'new wave' of roguelikes. In particular, we'd like to give a shout out to Spelunky and Don't Starve.
Spelunky works so well as a handheld game, and we can’t put it down. Spelunky’s superpower is the extremely rich interactions between every last object in the game. When you're collecting rocks to dislodge spiders to set off arrow traps, you're pulling on a deep well of knowledge gained purely by watching the rules of the game grind against each other, and expressing it in a natural way. Every miserable, hilarious, catastrophic death doubles as a big chalkboard lesson in HOW THE GAME WORKS. Spelunky is also great at giving satisfying play sessions of anywhere from three minutes to three hours. The union of the roguelike structure and the pick-up-and-play nature of a handheld resonated with us. It makes us even more excited to get Galak-Z on the go.
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Don't Starve’s survival aesthetic has had a big impact, too. We love the way it encourages you to set long-term goals for each play session: "I'll work towards building my science station this game", then distracts you with unexpected troubles. The progression, in which you learn more and more about the tech tree and find new pieces to add to your mix, has inspired our thinking about our own utility belt of abilities, upgrades, and powerups for the Galak-Z fighter plane.
ON THE NEXT EPISODE…
We’re still building our ultimate space anime fantasy. We’ll keep the combat tight, the missions intense, and the villains dastardly. So, keep your engines hot as we push ever closer to our launch of Galak-Z for the PS4 and Vita later this year. Until next time, Space Ace.
Day 17 | 17-BIT
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
17-bit have great games !!
and i'm hoping to see more awesome games from them
I love these space dual stick shooter, something about them that's just SO freaking addicting!
I tried 17bit's previous work, Skulls of the Shogun, and I loved it! so I will get this for sure
cool
The art style is great! This is on my to play list!