Indie studio Gunpowder Games boasts developers who’ve worked on some of the biggest multiplayer games in the business, across a range of genres – including Overwatch, League of Legends, Destiny, Company of Heroes, and more. What was it about the studio’s debut game, Maelstrom, that could bring together such a wealth of experience and talent?
“As a team we kind of seeded the idea of a few simple but out of the box questions that everyone could wrap their heads around,” CEO Blaine Smith explains. “We spitballed concepts by asking questions like: ‘What if Dwarves and Orcs made battleships? What if land was scarce and all these fantasy races had to survive by living on the open ocean?’
“We took the answers and ideas we arrived at from this brainstorming. There were ideas about how every faction would be different, the kind of gameplay this would result in, and the look, tone, and design of the world. Then we threw in some of the old Sid Meier’s Pirates! combat gameplay to the mix along with a modern progression system, and we were off to set sail on development!”
The team’s experience should indicate where Maelstrom differs from the spate of naval combat games we’ve been enjoying ever since Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag showed how much fun it could be to let rip a punishing broadside – games like Sea of Thieves, Blackwake, Man o’ War: Corsair and, at some point in the future, Skull and Bones.
Maelstrom takes a more zoomed-out view, more comparable to “a third-person vehicle arena combat game – think Twisted Metal,” Smith says. “There is no running around on deck in first-person. The crew you assign to your ship are there to offer buffs and abilities to the ship rather than being individual entities.
“The pace of play is quite fast for a naval ship game. This was a big focus for us. So while the water and cannon physics do feel ‘realistic’, we have worked hard to ensure they are skewed towards a unique snappy shooter/arcade feel.”
Most of the games that these developers have worked on previously are underpinned by a fictional universe with its own lore. Exploring that universe isn’t really the focus of any of them, but the backstory it provides is a point of interest for their communities, and helps to ground and contextualise any new characters or events. Understandably, this remains an ambition for Gunpowder Games: “we’ve always wanted to grow the game and reveal more of the world over time,” Smith says. “We’ve sprinkled bits of background and story lore in the world with the captains. Players should feel attached to the factions and captains, so adding in lore brings the world to life.”
However, “being an independent studio, we’ve had to make tough choices when it comes to scope. Up until recently, we only had the capacity to focus on multiplayer,” Smith says – and a full single-player campaign remains a stretch goal. “We’re happy to announce now, however, that we have a brand new PvE co-op mode in active development. This will be
available soon for PC, so keep an eye out!”
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Gunpowder Games chose Unreal Engine 4 to make Maelstrom. As a new and relatively small studio, Smith says “there were numerous reasons to work with Unreal Engine 4. Firstly, the development ramp is easy, and it’s a robust support system with tons of tutorials. Another huge benefit is that it’s a very established, flexible, and sturdy engine – it makes
games look amazing almost from the get-go.”
On that note, Smith also praises the Unreal Engine asset store, “which can help quickly and affordably fill in the blanks on textures and other smaller visual elements.” As a smaller developer, the time saved by buying assets on the store “and customising them to suit our needs” must’ve been huge. “There were also tons of shader tutorials, as well as thorough tech documentation for our engineers to nerd out over.”
Smith also mentions that the Maelstrom devs received an Epic MegaGrant – in other words, a cash injection from Epic itself – “to aid with the cost of development.” The infrastructure of support around Unreal Engine – whether these grants, or in terms of the asset store, documentation and tutorials, or community support from other devs – is one of its most consistently praised features in this series.
But what were the biggest problems such support went towards solving? “Anything water related ended up being very difficult to get right,” Smith says, “which, as you can imagine, is an issue in a naval combat game. The result was that we ended up having to do four or five reboots on the water system. Having ships move up and down on the water, the visuals – you name it, we went in and reworked it.”
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Water is famously one of the hardest things to digitally animate, but it posed a couple of design headaches as well as technical ones. “The physics involved with the waves and currents – combined with ships’ momentum, wind, etc – all meant we had to work hard getting the balance of having a realistic and intuitive feel whilst still being fun to control and play. But we’re pleased with the end result – for now!”
In cracking this particular nut, Smith emphasises the importance of iterative development. “Being able to get in and play the idea of the game quickly was a massive help for the team in terms of iterative design,” he says. “Our main gameplay and design challenges were much easier to face based on having super reliable tools from the UE4 engine. We were able to prototype ideas and visuals very fast and get a solid understanding of what was working or not based purely on the engine.”
Gunpowder Games is far from alone in working this way – most devs profiled for this series set out a similar iterative process of building something, testing it, and tweaking it as being the most reliable way they’ve found to arrive at something that works, and praise Unreal Engine’s particular compatibility with such methods.
You can see why they were necessary in this instance. While Maelstrom takes inspiration from several well-established genres, its mixture of them is unique. Naval combat, and its considerations of wind speed and direction, and angling your ship for the perfect broadside, is one. Water-based maps, arenas, with their particular physics, geographic quirks, and hazards are another. A combination of PvE monsters to hunt and other human players to fight in the same environment are a third. And there’s the potential for yet more modes of play as the game continues to explore the special world Gunpowder Games has created. It’s a potent mixture, but one which stood every chance of going wrong if not for careful testing and iteration.
“Maelstrom is a strategic action game at its core,” Smith says. “The whole team drew on our past knowledge, skills and experience working in the games industry to improve the design of Maelstrom. It’s a culmination of each member of the teams’ years of experience and desire to forge an accessible and addictive naval action game.”
Maelstrom is free-to-play on Steam right now, having released from Early Access in September last year. Unreal Engine 4 is now free, and Unreal Engine 5 has just been announced.
In this sponsored series, we’re looking at how game developers are taking advantage of Unreal Engine 4 to create a new generation of PC games. With thanks to Epic Games and Gunpowder Games.