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All Walls Must Fall - Berlin-set tech noir tactics from ex-Yager devs, now on KS

Mod abuse:

Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inbetweengames/all-walls-must-fall-a-tech-noir-tactics-game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEUCG_aX-wg

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ALLWALLSMUSTFALL_CLUB.gif


http://www.allwallsmustfall.com/

So, after the news that Dead Island 2 was cancelled, some Yager (Spec Ops The Line, Dreadnought, Yager) developers (Jan David Hassel did technical art and was a game designer on The Line, Rafal Fedro did visual FX and UI on The Line, and Isaac Ashdown was senior programmer) formed inbetweengames. Before All Walls Must Fall, they did a couple of gamejam game, The Mammoth: A Cave Painting (September 2015, Ludum Dare 33) and OSHIYA! PUSH! (December 2015, Ludum Dare 34).

Early Access in Fall 2016.

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Pictured, from left to right: Rafal Fedro, Isaac Ashdown, Jan David Hassel

In early summer 2015, we were 4 developers still employed at YAGER in Berlin, where we were working on Dead Island 2. About two months before Ludum Dare 33, we got the news that Dead Island 2 would be cancelled. It didn't take us long to realize that most of us would wind up being made redundant from YAGER as a result. So we decided to jam for Ludum Dare 33 to cope with the situation somehow and made The Mammoth: A Cave Painting.

After years working in the AAA mines and seeing our work cancelled on the altar of money we figured it was time for us to try something different. So we decided to take a leap of faith and form our own indie team to make the kind of games we would not get the chance to make otherwise. We also just announced our first commercial game All Walls Must Fall - A Tech-Noir Tactics Game​

22 seconds of gameplay from their Twitter, which is basically the first GIF here.

Blog:

When we started inbetweengames after leaving YAGER and going indie, we decided that we wanted to make a game that we could stand behind as both a game and a piece of art. After about six months of pre-production, concepting and prototyping, we’re super excited to share with you what we’ve been working on.​

Press Release:

All Walls Must Fall is a tech-noir spy thriller set in Berlin 2089 where the Cold War never ended. A game in the isometric action tactics genre, you command secret agents using time travel, social stealth and combat. Prevent nuclear annihilation. Bring down the Wall. Love, kill, and remix reality to explore the meaning of freedom in a parable reflecting upon current global issues in the mirror of a fantastic future past.

Berlin, November 2089 - For 150 years of Cold War both sides have used temporal technology to counter each other's every move. But this deadly love is finally coming to an end as a rogue nuclear strike has both sides sending agents back in time to find out who did it and how to prevent it before everything turns to ash forever. Over the course of a journey that jumps and loops through a single night in the city, players will unravel the conspiracy keeping East and West locked in struggle and oppression. As lines between factions become blurred, choices become difficult. Which side to play? Who to side with? When both time and free will are an illusion - who can you really trust? Will your actions tear down the wall, bring stability, or perpetuate a cycle of war and terror? In the end all walls must fall.

Features:-

  • Isometric action tactics game for download on PC and Mac
  • Procedurally generated levels and campaign that plays different every time
  • Developed by a team of former AAA professionals using Unreal Engine 4
  • Sci-Fi noir Berlin as a divided city in which the Cold War never ended
  • A parable that reflects on free will, moral ambiguity and the meaning of freedom
  • Mixed 2D/3D art style of a propaganda poster brought to life
  • Mind-bending time manipulation abilities
  • Pausable real-time tactics with actions on the beat of the music
  • Synaesthetic nightclub environments and audio
  • A simulation sandbox featuring crowd simulation and destructible objects
  • A focus on player agency and expression fostering different play styles including combat, hacking and social stealth using specialized secret agent characters
  • An inclusive representation of the people of Berlin including their diverse cultural, sexual and gender identities

Inspirations:

So what’s your new game then? All Walls Must Fall. What is that about?

David: All Walls Must Fall is a tech-noir spy thriller set in Berlin 2089 where the Cold War never ended. It’s also an isometric action tactics game, in which you command secret agents using time travel, social stealth and combat.
Isaac: It’s a love letter to Berlin, cyberpunk and sci-fi! I’ve always thought Berlin was an underused setting in video games. There’s been a few games set here, but I’ve never really felt they captured the city too well – or at least, the city that we live in today. You might think setting a game in the future also has that problem, but we actually want the place to feel somewhat plausibly contemporary despite the sci-fi angle.
David: It is also going back to classic games that came with the 90s PC wave like Syndicate, XCOM, Fallout, Planescape, and too many others to name them all here. For me personally that was the time when I decided that I really wanted to make video games. But by the time I arrived there games had moved on. The graphical arms race was and still is in full swing with all the consequences of what makes up AAA games today. So with us going indie we are jumping off that bandwagon, that is currently headed to VR and even more photorealism, and go back to the roots of where it all started for us.

What are your main inspirations for All Walls Must Fall?

Isaac: Well saying “XCOM meets Braid” is definitely the easiest way to pitch the gameplay concept. Though of course those aren’t the only inspirations, or the only games that have tactical combat or time-travel mechanics. Initially we came up with mechanics relating to how the music and the gameplay work together first, and after we had all that working we realised we’d basically made a mechanic out of time travel. Then we rolled with it.
David: Besides video games the city of Berlin itself is a huge inspiration for us. We make a point of seeking out things that we have access to here and research them thoroughly so we can recreate an impression of them in the game. Like the current club culture which really started with the wall coming down and historic sites and museums covering the time period of when the city was divided. Noir movies and especially tech-noir movies and sci-fi stories are also something that we look at a lot.​

Development is two months in right now:

So how far along are you with the project?

David: We are a couple of months in so we have a gameplay prototype that includes procedural level generation, combat and some social mechanics. It basically is one mission of the game that plays a little different each time you play it and already has multiple outcomes. But it also very much still looks like an early prototype. Besides that we made one example dancefloor showing more how we imagine the game to look like in the end. This is the one we’re currently showing to give people a better impression of what we’re aiming for.
Isaac: We spent quite a bit of time last year working on some pretty out-there stuff regarding prototypes for what wound up being our core set of tactical time-manipulation mechanics. We broke down a few conceptual walls along the way and think we have found a way to wrap it all into a coherent package. Since then we’ve spent quite a bit of time nailing down the design for the whole thing and now we’re back into the most exciting part: working full-time on development!​

When is more being shown? Booth at A MAZE Berlin games festival (April 20-23, 2016).

When are you going to show more gameplay?

Isaac: It is still early days, and in many ways parts of the game are still being prototyped. But the reason we want to announce now is so we can really get going with this whole open development thing. Until now, I’ve always worked for other people with their silly NDAs and so on so you have to keep what you’re doing for most of your working life a secret. But I love showing off! I’m really looking forward to talking about what I’m working on every week, probably more than is healthy.
David: Yeah, we’ll be working on getting those aspects we only have in rough prototype state presentable and then ask people for feedback as well. So expect more gameplay being shared on Twitter and Facebook pretty much every week from now on.

Cool. When can I see more of All Walls Must Fall?

Isaac: Straight away! We’re spending the rest of this week at the Berlin Games Week where we have a little booth at the A MAZE festival, but after that we’re back into full-time development and I will be showing what I’m working on as often as I can!
David: Yeah going forward we’ll be sharing updates on whatever we’re currently working on so you should get a pretty good impression of how things are going if you follow us on Twitter or Facebook.​

Early Access is more about feedback than funding development, looking for funding from Medienboard:

When is All Walls Must Fall coming out?

Isaac: We’re aiming for an Early Access release in the Fall of this year, and aim to have the game finished in 2017 for a final release.
David: Cross your fingers and press your thumbs! We’re still pretty early but yeah those are our current plans. Let’s hope it works out.

Are you going to make a Kickstarter at some point?

Isaac: It’s not currently planned: we’re hoping to secure funding from the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, and we should know if we got that within a couple of months. If that doesn’t work out, we shall see.
David: Yeah I think if we would do a Kickstarter at some point it would be important to us to give something to people as quickly as possible so they can actually play it and give us feedback.

What about Early Access?

David: We’re really looking forward to it! The prospect of giving out an essential unfinished game to people to play with sounds really scary but also exciting. We’ve been working in these closed off spaces of AAA development for such a long time that interacting and getting feedback from a bigger group of players really early in the game’s development is really appealing to us.
Isaac: Perhaps some people aren’t really into buying Early Access games, and that’s totally fine. When you’re selling a product to the public, it has to be a state where it’s something that people are actually excited about and want to play. You shouldn’t be selling just the promises you’re making. The real successes are games that were fun from day one of them being on sale. That’s our goal for our Early Access release. And I really think you need to be able to make those promises with confidence: you need to be sure that even if you can’t fund more development from those early sales, you already have in the bank what you need to deliver on them. We want to use Early Access as a way of getting feedback on the game while it’s in development, rather than a way of funding that development. For us, this is one of the reasons behind going indie: it’s something you don’t get when working behind a restrictive NDA. There’s also the community that you can build, getting people who are really passionate about the game involved early. I think if you do it right, everybody wins.​

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DocSeuss

Member
Saw this pop up on twitter and thought "this better be messofanego's doing..."

I'd like to see a full trailer. I think it's a mistake a lot of devs make. Games are meant to be seen in action. What I have seen of it looks interesting. Conceptually, this is intriguing enough to stay high on my radar for a while.
 
Have there been any other games set in Berlin? Seems like the first videogame to be purely set there, while other games have had levels there like CoD and apparently NOLF 1 (I haven't played it yet).
 

patapuf

Member
Have there been any other games set in Berlin? Seems like the first videogame to be purely set there, while other games have had levels there like CoD and apparently NOLF 1 (I haven't played it yet).

Shadowrun: Dragon Fall, if that counts.

Was a fairly decent usage of that setting as well.
 

SinSilla

Member
Have there been any other games set in Berlin? Seems like the first videogame to be purely set there, while other games have had levels there like CoD and apparently NOLF 1 (I haven't played it yet).

There was a game announced quite a while back which I just remembered and looked up.

It's called U55-End of the Line and was supposed to be a horrorthemed game based in Berlins Subway System. Its greenlit on Steam but failed their kickstarter. It seems to be relatively dead in the water.
 

moozoom

Member
This looks interesting and quite LGBT friendly - They put a gameplay video on twitter where you try to enter the nightclub and one of the options was to flirt with the bouncer (main character is a big burly bearded cybernetic dude.)

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https://twitter.com/AWMFGame/status/811262249297907712

I'm super short on cash these days, but if one of my clients miraculously decides to pay me - I'll gladly send some € to this project.
 

Fisty

Member
Man what the hell was Deep Silver doing to it's devs? Everybody ran screaming from them, seems like.

Anyway, this game looks fantastic. Will keep an eye on it
 
Welp, this was one of those things that i didn't know i was missing in my life and now desperately crave.

Need more isometric tech-noir stuff, really. Satellite Reign was nearly 2 years ago gawddammit.
 

eyesiah

inbetweengames
So confused, which tier gives you the game? It just seems to talk about early access keys?

:/

We won't take away your keys! If you get a steam early access key, then when the game leaves early access, you'll still have a steam key! Steam will automagically update the game for you to the final version once it's ready.

Isaac
inbetweengames
 

eyesiah

inbetweengames
I asked the developers whether there will be other options further down the road.

We'll be launching the Closed Alpha on itch.io in May. That's at the next tier up, that also includes the Soundtrack. We're looking into GOG for sure, and will announce if we wind up getting on there!

Isaac
inbetweengames
 

eyesiah

inbetweengames
This looks interesting and quite LGBT friendly - They put a gameplay video on twitter where you try to enter the nightclub and one of the options was to flirt with the bouncer (main character is a big burly bearded cybernetic dude.)

And that option won and all! Very happy about that :D

Kai is great, am looking forward to getting our t-shirt order in so I can wear him too:

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Isaac
inbetweengames
 
We won't take away your keys! If you get a steam early access key, then when the game leaves early access, you'll still have a steam key! Steam will automagically update the game for you to the final version once it's ready.

Isaac
inbetweengames

Cheers, I just didn't see any info about that on the page.

Backed at the 13 Euro level.
 
Clarified some things with the devs, might be of some interest here
- Currently, all the missions do indeed take place in procedural generated nightclubs. We also have one narrative segment that takes place elsewhere, and that's something we want to get more of in the game as a way of showing of different parts of the city. The missions will almost certainly stay only in clubs, but who's to say those clubs can't be in other locations than buildings?

- The mission gameplay is centered around 3 main tools that the player has: combat, dialogues or "social stealth", and hacking to effect the environment. We want to make sure you have different ways of getting through various situations within each mission.

- The game's not episodic in the traditional sense, so everyone who gets access to the game will get the whole thing, whatever that winds up being. Right now in the game, we have the first act, and we'll be announcing stretch goals for the other ones during the campaign. If those aren't met, we'll be doing an Early Access period to try and raise additional funds and continue developing the game to add the other two acts. To be honest, we'll be sure to get something in for the other acts, so it's really a question of if that winds up being more of the same with just extra narrative, or if we get the chance to make each act really distinct and special.
 
XCOM doesn't seem like the best comparison for this.

Syndicate + SuperHOT + Crypt of the Necrodancer seems more apt and descriptive
 
Funded!

all_walls_must_fall_by_digi_matrix-db3t8nu.gif

Because of your help, we’ve reached our initial funding goal in just 5 days! We’ll be launching the Closed Alpha of the first act of the game on itch.io, for all three platforms - Windows, Mac and Linux - in May as planned!

We’re also on Steam Greenlight so if you have a Steam Account please go there and vote for us so we can bring the game to Steam to all of you:

VOTE ON GREENLIGHT IN YOUR BROWSER!
or
OPEN DIRECTLY IN YOUR STEAM CLIENT!

We have a lot of really awesome stuff lined up for stretch goals which we will announce later on Monday so stay tuned for the next upcoming update!

Thank you all so much for your support,
Almut, David, Isaac and Rafal
Inbetweengames​

Stretch Goals update
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If we reach this new major stretch goal and raise a total of EUR 75 000 on Kickstarter, we’ll be able to include all of West Berlin and Alev as part of the Closed Alpha. That will allow us to iterate on it with you all and really nail the new abilities and the setting with your feedback.

Should we not reach this pretty far goal, we will still continue as far ahead as we can with the support of our Kickstarter backers and then seek additional funding sources through Early Access and potentially other external partners.​

Soundtrack single "Calm Before The Gunfire" by Jukio Kallio (Nuclear Throne, Luftrausers, Bleed 2)
 
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