Tactical, thought provoking and elegantly crafted strategy games are hard to come by these days, especially in today’s industry of recrementitious influx of games that plays exactly the same and the dull overstaying annual upgrade of FPS titles. I always liked Chess for it’s simplicity in design and the limitless amount of approaches to tactics but most importantly, I like the freedom to experiment with unique strategies and adapt to a variety of challenges. 

I’ve sometimes marvelled at how indie developers have the unlimited potential to explore and experiment with creating innovative games of any design, genre and context compared to how AAA publishers and game companies which tend to stick to the same route of reiterative predefined formulae. Games after games after games after games after games of the same prescription, shooting the same bad guys after every sequel without any new innovative features to gameplay. It almost feels like culture stagnation if it weren’t for indie developers in the games industry.

I’ve got the opportunity to have a quick chat with Paul Taylor, one of the founders for Mode 7 who created Frozen Synapse- which won the Audience Award for the Independent Games Festival (IGF) and also one of my favorite turn-based tactical combat strategy games.

The Interview

Nicholas: Thank you for taking the time off your busy schedule Paul Taylor, I just want to say I am a huge fan of your game Frozen Synapse as well as your music nervous_testpilot.

Paul: Thanks very much!

Nicholas: Can you give us a bit of a history lesson on how Mode 7 was formed and what inspired you into becoming a game developer and musician?

Paul: Sure – Mode 7 was originally founded by Ian Hardingham with the idea of creating a game based on the Torque Engine that he studied at university.  We were initially a volunteer team of friends working on a crazy sword-fighting game.  After that, most of the team went their separate ways but Ian and I continued and tried to build up Mode 7.

I’ve always written music ever since I was about 13 or 14, and I got to know Ian just after that so he was always interested in my music.  I realised that I would probably do better combining my music with Ian’s game design ability and drive to do big projects, so that’s the path I took.  I’m very glad I did!

Nicholas: How did you met Ian Hardingham and how does it feel to claim the Audience Award for the Independent Games Festival?

Paul: I first met him at school.  I was at a friend’s house and Ian was there; he had to go home fairly quickly but then we played modem Quake and I killed him with the axe!

The IGF was an incredible experience.  I got to sit at a table with some legendary game designers like Ed Logg and Mark Cerny.  Going up on stage to collect the award was one of the most memorable experiences of my career so far: it felt incredible that the community had voted for us and it was a total high.

_{That’s what I call a first-person experience}

Nicholas: I just want to say that I am highly relieved and satisfied to be able to redeem my purchase of the Red expansion for Frozen Synapse from the PC version and get to play it on my iPad when it is ready. Was it a difficult process to enable the cross-compability functionality?

Paul: Yeah it was a fair bit of work and needed quite a lot of testing.  Red isn’t available to buy on iPad yet but it will be really soon.

Nicholas: Frozen Synapse is an award winning turn-based action-strategy tactics game with a very high attention to detail for how the combat plays. It’s like Chess on steroids. What drove Mode 7 into creating such a deep intelligently complex game?

Paul: As I mentioned, Ian was inspired by Laser Squad: Nemesis.  He wanted to make a cerebral, tactical turn-based game that would be highly competitive.  Meaningful competition and mechanics are very important to Ian: he wants there to be very little fluff between the player’s intention and their actions in the game, so that’s why it’s so pared-down.

Nicholas: What was it like for the team to redesign the entire interface for Frozen Synapse to fit touch screen tablets like the iPad? 

Paul: It was an immense challenge.  As soon as you lose things like a mouse pointer and mouse-over, things get very difficult with a complex interface.  We had to find the right balance of on-screen buttons with more traditional tablet-like behaviours like pinch-to-zoom.  Ultimately I think we managed to do a good job but it was a steep learning curve.

_{Decisions decisions…}

Nicholas: The word now is that you guys are working on your newest title Frozen Endzone, Does Mode 7 still have plans for additional content and future expansions for Frozen Synapse? 

Paul: We have talked about it a bit but there aren’t any current plans.  Frozen Synapse: Tactics from Double 11 on Vita and PS3 will be a complete overhaul of the game, so it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with.

_{Plenty of takedowns, slow-mos and a little bit of WUB WUB}

Nicholas: Frozen Endzone is a futuristic sports tactics game. Is it fair to compare Endzone with another turn-based sports strategy game like Blood Bowl in terms of mechanics and gameplay? Can you tell us more on regarding the project?

Paul: Frozen Endzone is going to be a lot more intuitive than Blood Bowl; it’s almost the opposite approach to a similar aesthetic.  In Endzone, you won’t be rolling dice, you’ll be evaluating terrain and unit positions a lot more as well as your opponent’s decisions.

We want to make a video soon which will explain the gameplay, but suffice it to say that a lot of the game is about thinking several turns ahead and trying to set up chains of players who can pass, catch and block effectively.

Nicholas: From my understanding, you guys at Mode 7 now have a few more head counts than previous to work on Frozen Endzone. How creatively involved are you and Ian on this project? 

Paul: Ian is doing all of the design and the majority of the programming.  I will be doing audio, music, writing, a small amount of art direction and some of the UI design as well. 

Nicholas: Have you guys considered setting up Frozen Endzone on the Kickstarter platform or any other websites that involves crowd funding? 

Paul: We very much didn’t want to do that as we felt that it would be best to work on something tangible first.  We will be doing a paid pre-order beta (similar to Frozen Synapse), so that’ll give people a chance to get the game early, but we saw a lot of people going for Kickstarter and realised that we just wanted to make a game on our own terms.

_{Everything looks so sleek and futuristic-esque!}

Nicholas: Where do you see yourself in 5 years time within the games industry? Do you believe by then the technology for tablets and handheld devices will be substantial enough to run games like Frozen Endzone?

Paul: Frozen Endzone should hopefully run on existing tablets, so this won’t be a problem! In five years, we want to have finished a couple more successful games and keep our team size pretty much as it is now.  We don’t have huge expansion plans: the most important thing to us is preserving the ability to work on high-quality stuff and devote our full attention to it.

Nicholas: Thank you so much for having this chat with us Paul Taylor, I wish Mode 7 the very best with Frozen Endzone and your future endeavours. Not to mention, you gave my iPad a purpose again. I shall now play Frozen Synapse religiously in the toilet until the end of time.

Paul: Thanks very much indeed!

You can buy Frozen Synapse from their official website here as well as the iPad version here.

Also check out their upcoming game Frozen Endzone. 

Don’t forget to support Frozen Endzone on Steam Greenlight if you’re a Steam user!