Summary
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is something far worse than war. There is: a level that is basically a huge, spinning lock full of tentacles, with your Space Marine or Sister of Battle protagonist naturally serving as the key. Auroch Digital’s new FPS Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 launches next week, and I’ve been chatting to the game’s principal designer Matt Bone about some of the more “creative” environments in store. It’s a sturdy rule of thumb that all the best ideas in gamedev are the ones that make your colleagues want to fill your trousers with sea urchins. Bone certainly appears to have achieved this with the map comfortingly known as Vicious Circles. Watch on YouTube “One of the things we wanted to do with Boltgun 2 is add more variety,” he told me over email. “Part of that is more diverse and exotic biomes, and another part is introducing novel mechanics. The level ‘Vicious Circles’ is a great example of this, and definitely one of the more challenging levels to make. The informal name the team uses for the level is ‘Puzzle Box’, as it’s made up of a series of connected, rotating ‘ring’ sections, as well as a giant, slowly spinning cog that acts as the finale of the level. The player moves one of the rings at different points in the levels, unlocking different areas so that they can progress (or explore for secrets). “These moving sections are covered in enemies and pickups, which is part of the reason coders will never forgive me for this level,” Bone went on. “Getting enemies to reliably navigate and fight the player on moving, interconnected platforms is a bit of a headache, as you can imagine. And spinning a gigantic cog covered in hundreds of meshes is quite the performance challenge.” Not content with alienating the coders, Bone has also managed to earn the eternal enmity of the art team. The Vicious Circles level is set in a spaceship belonging to Boltgun 2’s primary antagonist Vashtorr, a demigod who – as is often the pastime of Chaos denizens – really enjoys building machines out of body parts and vice versa. “We really leaned into this ‘fleshmetal’ aspect for the environment, which looks incredible and appropriately disturbing,” Bone went on. “But the reason artists now also hate me is that all of this intricate level art has to work in multiple configurations, not just one. A wriggling fleshy tendril may look perfect in the original level layout, but has to then avoid clipping through walls in the level’s various rotations.” “Whilst it was certainly a challenge, I absolutely think it was worth it,” he concluded, with the resolute good cheer of a man reconciled to his own damnation. “Hopefully it’ll be a memorable level for players!” Speaking as one such feckless player, I feel no sympathy for Auroch Digital’s rank-and-file. I’ve just been reading the papers, and according to some columnist or other, you’ve all been ‘corrupting the children’ - being forced to make a massive Merry-go-Round out of gall bladders is no more than you deserve. Also, I really like videogame levels that are ginormous machines, such as the Clockwork Mansion in Dishonored 2, or Anoat City (kind of) in Star Wars: Dark Forces, or Into The Abyss from Titanfall 2. Any other favourite or especially loathed examples to share? Read more about Boltgun 2 on Steam. Here is what Caelyn thought of the first: “A fast and joyously entertaining rampage through a spot-on recreation of the Warhammer 40,000 setting, Boltgun is the FPS that 40k fans have dreamed of since the first time they inexpertly splodged too-thick paint all over a Space Marine. Pacing issues can’t prevent it from being a bloody good time.”