North Bay can generate its own mystery, with places like the Canadian Forces Base (CFB) and its SAGE system.
For Avery Ross, as a kid, he and his friends had come up with all sorts of stories as to what could be up there. Harkening back to the gaming days of DOOM, Ross, a local programmer, hopes to capture the nostalgic feel of the classic shooter games, while also incorporating some modern designs, with his top-down twin-stick shooter titled Pandoran.
Together, Ross and a long-time friend have been working with some artists to program and visualize the game.
“A long-time friend of mine, Cory Andrews, takes on the primary programming tasks,” he said. “We’ve been working on the game since mid-October and the journey has been a challenging yet enjoyable one. I turned the game into a full-time project in December, and it’s been speeding along ever since.”
And together, they’ve been exploring the myths Ross built when he was younger, creating the story of Pandoran.
“In the story, this location is treated with a kind of militaristic surrealism similar to that of Area 51 in the United States,” he said. “The plot revolves around four Canadian super-soldiers dubbed ‘Arrow Team’ as they enter the underground Pandoran facility to recover an unknown biological asset considered invaluable to defending the country during an impending third World War.
“Little do they know, the asset is actually a violent, sentient race of man-made organisms called the Epimetheans which had previously rendered the facility inoperable, which leads to the sealing of a large portion of the wing—the Pandoran sector.”
He said in a game taking place mostly underground, they wanted to bring more interpersonal interactions into such a dark world and so scrapped the idea of having only one protagonist and opted for a team with dynamic abilities, personalities, and backstories, to make the world feel less daunting and empty to players.
“Through experiencing the events of the game through the four main characters,” Ross said, “each with traits that prove to be both troubling and necessary to their survival, we learn more about this location and the lore associated with it.”
Like any good character arc, each character is based on an ideology or state of mind, from a valiant honour-bound war hero to a cynical, yet versatile enforcer. Each character will bring their own thoughts to the situation in this intense shooter, giving players a reprieve from the gauntlets of enemies.
In an age of story-driven games and budgets thrown at having the greatest graphics, Ross aims to shoot for an intense, always-on bullet-hell atmosphere, similar to 2016’s DOOM game. This kind of gameplay promotes attacking instead of retreating, forcing players to push forward, even while on the brink of death in-game.
“This dynamic was largely inspired by the way DOOM (2016) handled its health system with the player being punished for retreating rather than rewarded with additional health,” he said. “As per twin-stick custom, the player doesn’t pick up additional weapons but rather collects power-ups or ‘drives’ to improve their primary weapon. This keeps the game simple and accessible while true to the formula it was based on.”
Although the game is inspired by retro games, Ross said they have introduced more modern mechanics, like secondary, usually explosive ammunition and character abilities that allow for quick retreats and gory recoveries. But again, Ross drew inspiration heavily from games like DOOM, and Half-Life, taking on similar aesthetics and colour palates to retro sci-fi militaristic atmosphere—one he’s always liked.
“Doom was my go-to game as a kid even up until now,” Ross said. “The game didn't pander to most modern design conventions of today, such as regenerating health or an obtrusive narrative that took the player away from the action. It incorporated a story, as most games should, but it was purely optional in how you approached it (if at all) or interpreted it. It concealed itself within the game manual, title cards, atmosphere and through online speculation, and never took control away from the player.
“That's something that we are trying to achieve in Pandoran, while incorporating modern technologies to allow the story to be in-depth yet unnecessary to the "run-and-gun" player demographic. The player will retain control through most if not all narrative elements, often being communicated to through characters in the environment or radio chatter.”
Behind the screens, Ross said Pandoran has been a challenge, but fun nonetheless, developing the game using the Godot Engine, allowing them to launch the game on Windows, Mac, and Linux from day one, while also opening the door for a possible Android port, depending on the performance of the game.
“The challenges of building a game really depend on how involved you are in the project,” Ross said. “Being a programmer and project manager, it's been particularly difficult keeping up on what everyone else needs or is contributing while I stitch together the code and maintain things like our social media accounts and seek sources of funding. It's also been pretty challenging learning new technologies I wanted to incorporate into the game (working with SDL2 for gamepad support was something cool I dived into for the first time, for example) but it's always rewarding to see it functioning afterward.”
But of all the challenges, Ross said managing supports for the game development.
“We have been approached by numerous people who usually want something from us (money for publicity, opening our project to third parties, etc) and it's been tricky explaining to these individuals that we're just a small group of friends working on a passion project and don't have any capital to toss their way just yet,” he said. “I have had some wonderful backers on GoFundMe, but besides that, we all pretty much work for free.”
With a perception that North Bay isn’t necessarily a gaming program city, Ross said that challenge hasn’t deterred him and his team, but he wanted to change the perception that projects like this weren’t worth it.
“I have met so many great people who think the game is really cool, or want to make games of their own,” he said. “I see no reason why we shouldn't embrace that! I would love to work with like-minded people to make our project, and others, a reality.”
For more information on Pandoran, check out the development updates on Twitter.
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