Moon Tycoon Preview

AT: How long does one particular mission last?

BW: That varies greatly from the complexity of the mission and the skills of the player. It could be as short as five minutes to to several hours. The first few missions will go by quickly as you solve simple scenarios designed to help you understand the gameplay and introduce you to the characters and environment. Pretty soon things will become more elaborate as plot twists are introduced and unique events begin to occur. Later missions will challenge the player with multiple objectives, project deadlines, disasters and other factors that really take some planning and skills to overcome. Missions like these may take several hours to complete. In Standard mode, the game can last as long as you want. Replay value is key, and there are enough surprises to make the game dynamic and challenging each time you start a new colony. As far as the gaming experience is concerned, you can really lose yourself in this game!

AT: Will there be any flying units?

BW: Yes. It's hard to imagine a space colony without space ships buzzing around! Lunar Landers and Shuttles from earth are regular visitors to the colony. As your colony grows you can build additional space ships, flying cars and jetpack astronauts. There's always so much going on, wherever you look you're pretty much guaranteed to see a dramatic landing, or an astronaut floating in front of another Earth-rise.

AT: How far into space does the camera go (can it move around Earth for instance)?

BW: The play area is targeted to stay on the Moon, so you can't fly off into space or go to the Earth, but you get complete camera control in your colony. You can rest the camera right on the lunar surface and look up at your city if you want. You can move it in between buildings and turn your head to look in any direction. You can elevate it high above the surface into the Moon's orbit and look down over your entire colony. There's even a special orbiting satellite that from which you can watch your colony.

AT: When conflicts, arise of any kind, how will the player be able to defend his colony?

BW: Moon Tycoon stays true to the Sim genre as it is more oriented around peaceful building, but every now and then players will have to strap on their boots for a round of heavy butt-kicking. Players can build military installations and other types of offensive or defensive facilities to help deal with invaders or terrorists. Along that avenue, there are a range of other disasters players will have to contend with, and specialty buildings that will help with each type of crisis. Defense and disasters are most effectively handled by strategically grouping these kinds of buildings together.

AT: Are we going to observe alien invasions and similar features?

BW: As we all know, the existence of aliens is debatable, even in video games! :) If there were aliens in this game, they would most certainly be heavily involved in the storyline and it would lead to challenging adventures beyond the lunar surface... We could allude to a plot twist about aliens and what kinds of things might happen if we began mixing their advanced technology with ours, but we don't want to spoil the game by revealing the entire story! However, we can say that this is one area where players are not going to be disappointed.

AT: Can the moon's entire surface be inhabited? If not can the player make it inhabitable in any way?

BW: As in all good Sim games, players can mold and shape the surface terrain as needed to better accommodate the expansion and design of their colonies. These options include raising and lowering the terrain, and clearing away unwanted buildings or debris. This will allow for all of the surface area to be habitable.

AT: What kind of missions are we going to experience in the beta version?

BW: The Beta version allows players to try out a good portion of the game. First, there's the Tutorial mode, which will introduce players to the basic dynamics of the game. Next is Standard mode, which lets you get some "freestyle" action, and basically just do whatever you want for as long as you can play. Last, we give away the first of three full Campaigns. This begins with the player establishing the first lunar colony, and leads into building a productive network of colonies in the quest to solve the Earth's energy crisis.

AT: The beta version of Moon Tycoon has detailed textures and a zooming camera and yet the demo has small system demands?

BW: Yup. As discussed above, this has always been a major priority. Sim fans are accustomed to low system demands for their favorite games and Moon Tycoon is no different. It was designed with all gamers in mind, not just the ones with the super machines! Since the early days of the 3D-Engine development, we were making sure that the game would run on the most common configurations, regardless of system limitations. The 3D-Engine will take every advantage of high end 3D hardware and it's customizable so you can play the game smoothly on any typical Pentium system. Compatibility was a huge concern and we didn't want to place demands that would bar players from enjoying it on lower-end systems.

Needless to say, the demand of the task was alarming. It's much easier for 3D engines in games where you are inside closed environments (like many first person shooters). Closed environments place lesser demands on computers, because the engine can use a wall to block the player's view and take a break from heavy processing. Moon Tycoon is much more advanced. You can zoom right up to a building and stare straight into its windows, and a moment later turn your head to see your colony spreading out over the entire lunar terrain and all of outer-space. We had a difficult task in achieving that freedom, which means our programmers didn't get to sleep at night. In fact, 2 of the original programmers died from internal brain hemorrhaging (just kidding!) Seriously, that should give some idea of how advanced it really is.

AT: Any more games in developing stage?

BW: We always have a few things cooking. Some are for PC / CD-Rom, others are going to be free on the net. There's a 3D adventure game in the vein of Tomb Raider / Resident Evil called "Third Shift" in the final stages of development before beta testing, and another game called "Space Center" in the early stages. The spectrum runs from family oriented themes, starting with a puzzle game called "Gridblock," to a really funny martial arts spoof game called "Yuk Fu." On the other end of the spectrum we are developing some games that are definitely not intended for the Nuns to play on Sunday! "Breed" and "The Plague" are going to give you nightmares for months!

In closing, we'd like to say that our style of "open game development" reflects our "virtual game company" business model. We welcome the players into the development of our games with our "open-beta" phases and encourage everyone to visit www.moontycoon.com, fill out the on-line comments form, and give us their feedback - for better or worse. We're dedicated to gaming and the fun of the players, and we read every comment in detail, looking for ways to improve the game. In fact, Moon Tycoon has evolved in many positive ways due to player feedback, so we want to say thanks to the players who have given their comments. The players appreciate the fact that we're pay attention to their suggestions while the game still has a chance to incorporate their ideas. Listening to what the players want helps us make the best possible game, so to everyone out there, come join us!