After years at AAA games, several developers in Montreal decided to go it alone and founded Ratloop Games Canada, specializing in playability experiences. Of all Ratloop development philosophies, playability is the highest priority and most important. This is also the attitude that the team adopted when they set out to develop The Gate of Lenence. In this first-person shooter, players must complete a goal, kill an opponent, or prevent other teams from doing the same. The innovation is that the game is turn-based, and players must carefully choose how to play each round. The team's ingenious blend of different game genres has earned the game widespread acclaim, with PC Gamer calling it "the dark horse of the shooter of 2021."
This kind of blending between genres is relatively rare, but game director James Anderson told us that the Ratloop team is adventurous and willing to try areas that other studios haven't touched. About four years ago, this small indie studio started with just 6 people, but has grown into a team of 15 people who work together with the same passion to implement innovative game mechanics.
We spoke with Anderson about the intricate design of The Gate of Lenence and how Ratloop Games Canada strikes a good balance between first-person action games and turn-based strategy games.
How did the team come up with the idea of combining an arena first-person shooter with a turn-based time loop strategy game?
James Anderson, Game Director, Ratloop Games Canada: Actually, we originally designed only the "turn-based" aspect of the game. We conceived some cool interactive maneuvers and skills for agents, such as having one bullet shoot another out of thin air, or throwing yourself into a sniper's trajectory to protect your teammates — like the style of Kevin Costner's films. When it comes to how these events work in real games, we have to think about it from a turn-based perspective. For example, to strategically stop a bullet, it is necessary to know in time that the bullet will shoot from point A to point B at some point. In discussing such scenarios, we keep asking ourselves "then what?" and we want to know how to fight back next. We quickly realized that if we took turns and modified the situation that occurred each time, there would be many levels involved in dealing with cause and effect (causality). We wanted to see how deep the causal strategy would go if more agents were added to the scene. The next step is to find some of the answers by designing a prototype for the gameplay. So, naturally, we created the core loop of "turn-based first-person shooters." We can't yet determine all the specific rules and we don't know what the end result will be, but after a month of prototyping, we have preliminary answers and a fully playable prototype version that clearly shows the new way the first-person shooter gameplay is designed. It's so exciting!
Are there any works that influenced The Gate of Raynens?
Anderson: We've designed very appealing basic mechanics for the core parts of the game, so we also wanted to keep all the traditional mechanics in first-person shooters, giving players a strong sense of familiarity with weapons, skills, and game modes, giving them a ready-to-play control scheme.
With this in mind, and the 25-second game time limit per round, we looked to classic arena shooters like Unreal Tournament and Quake to find ways to be effective and proven in the arena shooter space.
We've also taken inspiration from recent shooters, such as Apex Heroes and Overwatch, which have pioneered a very popular genre of games that we must not ignore. These games really bring heroes and characters to the foreground, so we had to make sure our special tools were equipped with these outstanding elements to make sure they met the players' expectations.
Image courtesy of Ratloop Games Canada
Different characters and skills will produce various combinations, how can the team balance the character lineup and ensure that each character can show value in the game strategy?
Anderson: When designing agents and their skills, and prototyping them, it's crucial to make sure there's no significant overlap in functions. Each agent needs to act or inflict damage in a unique way that is different from other characters. Essentially, we want to make sure that every agent brings something new. As maps and game modes become more abundant, in many cases, specific agents may play a larger role in specific scenes. Once the agents are identified, all that's left to do is do a lot of trials, tweaks, and iterations. I don't think the power of time can be ignored. Finding an effective balance takes time and cannot be rushed. It is necessary to understand the game, master the agents, and experience them in various matches to truly feel the delicate balance. All of this boils down to the mantra "impartiality," which, in our view, helps to distinguish The Gate of Lenence from other similar works.
When an effective time loop is determined, the balance between skill, shooting, and strategy feels great. When did you realize that there are some unique features in The Gate of Raynens?
Anderson: Because functional prototypes were the first assets we created in a project, we knew at the very beginning that we had designed something special. Even without considering the various agents, skills, and game modes, the basic strategies derived from the prototype core loop are very powerful and ever-changing. The more we played, the more ideas came up with for various actions and strategies. The game itself is turn-based, so there's a strong feedback sound that constantly appears: it feels like you're playing against each other. We were delighted to hear this feedback, which shows that the game has significant depth and long-term replay value. I think when we started looking at games as first-person chess matches, we realized the full potential of Gate of Lenence.
After all these skills, weapons, and systems in effect, how long did it take you to find the right combination of time in the loops and objectives to create a tense feel for each game?
Anderson: It takes a lot of iteration to get the right results. We had to experiment with the size of the map, the speed at which agents moved, and the length of the time loop. As you can imagine, these three variables are closely intertwined. Do we want to increase the size of the map and move faster, or do we want to spend more time slowly moving in a smaller map? We ultimately decided to prioritize the fun of running through the game. We want to run, jump, glide, bounce around with agents and have fun. If even basic positional movement is fun, the rest of the game will most likely enhance that fun, right? Once this constraint is locked, we can try larger or smaller maps and different cycle times, respectively. We finally realized that 25 seconds is enough time to execute a fairly complex plan or strategy, and the wait time isn't too long when execution is complete or the plan fails. To this day, we're still exploring, tweaking, and iterating over these types of systems to improve their experience and fluency.
Can you talk about which method you took to create a map that would perform well in a 25-second time loop?
Anderson: Given the interplay between weapons, skills, and time loops, we're not going to offer complex path options to avoid putting an extra burden on players and leaving them overwhelmed during the game. We tried to make sure that the path options were simple, with only a few targets per map, so from the moment the map was generated, the player could quickly decide whether to go to target A, B, or C, and each target had a clear direction. By analogy, the board has 8 × 8 squares. If more path options are suddenly added, such as 12 × 12 squares, then calculating all the potential steps will bring a psychological burden, making the situation several times more complicated and making it difficult for the average player to cope with. We need to make sure our map is visible from above, because the drone view renders the map as a "chessboard" and the agent as a "pawn." To best support our strategic gameplay, our maps had to provide players with a clear view of their targets and agents re-entering the loop, and to determine what clear but critical path choices could be taken.
In addition, The Gate of Lenence also offers a ghost mode where players can continue to play after death, setting up actions for future characters to kill their own people. How challenging is it to implement this pattern when all other aspects of the strategy are in progress?
Anderson: For us, ghost mode is the essence of The Gate of Lennons. Before we implemented this mode, if the player was killed in the early stages of the time loop, they would have to wait for the time loop to end, which would create frustration. In addition, if the player manages to prevent his own death in the following rounds, the agent he has just saved will not continue to play a role in the game, because the player has no additional information record after the death in the previous round. Ghost Mode lets the game know what actions the Rescued agents took throughout the 25-second cycle. This requires us to convert the normal actions of living players into a "ghost" version (all weapons and skills) so that they cannot harm or interfere with living players. All of this is accompanied by a variety of appropriate feedback and experiences for players who play as ghosts.
Why is Unreal Engine suitable for The Gate of Lennons?
Anderson: Arena shooters have been the foundation of Unreal Engine development from the start. Character motion systems, network reproduction, collisions, launchers, stability and performance... All of these aspects are more mature and powerful than most other engines. It offers everything you need to make a great shooter, and it works right out of the box. We're also very grateful to Epic for providing such an excellent cross-platform implementation that an independent team like ours was able to launch online games simultaneously on six different platforms. Unreal Engine is a great technology that provides small teams with a toolkit that is typically only geared toward AAA teams and budgets.
The style of "The Gate of Lenence" is very unique. Can you talk about your art workflow?
Anderson: We created a variety of scenarios for agents that will also create diversity in the game experience as the player cycles through the list of maps in a game. All the scenes are on an alien planet and are different from each other, but we used a standard set of artificial outposts in each level, which formed a nice connection line that linked them together. Plot-wisely, the "human technology" found in each map is the equipment that humans bring with them when they build outposts in various scenes. The familiar outpost provides players with clearly artificially crafted items that can be used in the game, while also connecting the entire game universe. It is worth mentioning that we have also customized a set of small sets for each scene. These unique sets or vegetation can only be found in that scene, providing a guarantee of critical uniqueness to some extent and supporting the background legends of the place.
When designing the agent, we were inspired by chess pieces, the key pieces are visually different from each other and can be easily identified by the outline alone. Each turn is 25 seconds long, which is especially important to ensure that players can quickly distinguish agents on the field. This is also reflected in the unique weapons and skills of each agent. We want to make sure that all agents are equally important and which agent to choose will depend on the player's perception of the current situation.
Can you talk about how the game's photo mode is implemented?
Anderson: Photo mode is an extension of the game's reconnaissance drones, and it makes sense to appear in The Gate of Lennons. Since we use a turn-based system, when it is the opponent's turn to play, the player can control the reconnaissance drone to observe the battlefield and plan follow-up actions. Through this perspective, players can get up close and personal with agents and take action during gameplay. After that, it became natural to allow the player to pause the game, zoom the camera, and add a screenshot button in this mode. With this mode, we can add some more options (such as depth of field and black edges) to achieve a more cinematic picture effect.
How has the community's feedback been so far?
Anderson: The response from critics and the community has been very good, and we've received a lot of reviews from players who appreciate the innovations we've made and the new experiences we've brought to the FPS game genre. We've also seen tremendous progress in players' meta-strategy development. It seems that there will be new developments every week, and this trend is really crazy. The fight back against last week's top gameplay was figured out this week, and it got everyone scratching their heads. We also have a high-level group of players who host weekly tournaments that are breathtaking. We're looking forward to seeing the game and players improve over time.