Jonathan Chey, the Irrational co-founder with credits that go all the way back to the original Thief, has been thinking about BioShock again—where he served as the director of development. BioShock might be deep in his past, but at his studio Blue Manchu he’s continued to explore one of PC Gamer’s favourite genres: the glorious immersive sim.
Specifically, he’s been thinking about how to make something “radically different” from the many imsims he’s been involved with, and to answer the question: “But why is that interesting?”
“BioShock obviously provides lots of different ways to play, and one of the things that always struck me was we had this plasmid system,” he says. “It’s essentially a psychic powers magic system where you can shoot fire or bees or whatever. And when you progressed through the game, you would collect different plasmids, and you could either build one up to be very powerful, or you could get a whole suite of different things.”
The plasmid system is probably still one of the first things you think of when your mind conjures up images of BioShock, after all the water and the huge, lumbering Big Daddy. That scene in the original, when you get your first power and the crackling electricity engulfs your hands, still seems as clear as day when I think back on it. But Chey’s been questioning the entire system.
“I always sat there and thought, ‘I don’t care about how many different plasmids I have, because there’s always one that I like using, and I just don’t use the other ones,'” he says. “It’s a 15-20 hour game. Once I’ve got to the end, and discovered that I just used electro shock all the time, and I never used any of the other ones after I tried them out, I’m kind of like, ‘What was the point of all the [other powers]?’ I’m not going to replay the whole game.”
Blue Manchu’s new imsim, Godzone 6, is in part a response to this problem—or at least it posits a solution. It is unabashedly an imsim, but one that takes a lot from roguelikes and deckbuilders.
“I think the roguelike formula really helps with that, because it compresses the replay cycle,” Chey says. “But the other thing I think is necessary to solve that problem, if you want people to explore different parts of this possibility space, is to randomise what they’re getting and to give them choice about what they’re going to do—but constrained choice. We think about Godzone 6 like a roguelike deckbuilder, like Slay the Spire, where you get a palette of things. And you don’t always see what you want.”
To give you some idea of the level of variety on offer, in our Godzone 6 preview Chey showed Jeremy a run as a snakeman, which slithers across the ground and can get into little gaps that other Godzone 6 mutants wouldn’t be able to.
Chey explains: “So it’s not just, what kind of gun am I going to build, but am I going to build a gun at all? You could be a hacker instead, or a stealth character, or essentially a magic spellcaster. Or you could be a character that runs computer programs, or is tiny and goes into little spaces that other characters can’t. Or you’re a giant or a flying character.”
The issue of sticking to your favourite ability, or the strategies that you already know work, isn’t a problem exclusive to BioShock, of course. Dishonored 2 is one of my all-time faves, but when I think back on my couple of playthroughs, I didn’t get out of my comfort zone as much as I maybe should have.
I typically relied on a small number of tested powers and strategies, grew comfortable with them, and used them all the way through. If I only had time to play through it once, the number would be even smaller. These powers still allowed me to do all sorts of strange things—to experiment—but so many other possibilities went ignored.
A game like Slay the Spire, though? I’m constantly experimenting. I have no choice! I’ve been mucking around with Slay the Spire 2 recently, and there’s no comfort zone. Sure, I’m able to try and plan ahead, and yes I can develop strategies that I’m able to deploy in most runs, but I’m also adapting those strategies on the fly all the time as I encounter new cards and trickier opponents. And ultimately I have to play the hands I’m dealt.
This sounds like a perfect fit for imsims, where experimentation really makes them sing. Godzone 6 doesn’t have a release date yet, but this definitely sounds like one to keep an eye on.
