Roto Forcedeveloper Anton Klinger has now been making small-scale games for ten years, but one of them,Pixel Soldier,unexpectedly turned into a years-long project. The game was developed for aGame Boyjam in 2016. The aim was to build a game in ten days, but that was just the start for what later becameRoto Force.
Programmer turned Accidently Awesome’s solo developer, Anton Klinger, built the game with a specific movement schematic.The inspiration he drew forRoto Forceinitially came mostly from the 90s run-and-gun,Alien Soldier. However, after years of development, it turned into a completely different beast. Game Rant spoke to Klinger aboutRoto Force’s development and ‘dash and fire’ gameplay mechanics in particular.
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Developing Dashing for Roto Force
Klinger loved howAlien Soldierplayed, and the way it incorporated dashing. Alien Soldier tied aspects oftraditional platformerMega Man, much of the pedigree of run-and-gun classicContra, and even the aesthetics of arcade shooter seriesR-Typetogether. However, it was a few very specific gimmicks that Klinger was drawn towards.Alien Soldieroffered an interesting multipurpose dash mechanic that made it faster-paced. In addition, he liked the way the character could walk on walls and ceilings, depending on the stage.
While Klingerdidn’t designRoto Forceto be an arcade game, he wanted to include those aspects in his game. GBJAM 5 rules didn’t regulate controls, only that the game would be Game Boy-themed and have appropriate color restrictions. Nevertheless, Klinger wanted to push himself more with the control scheme.
So dashing is pretty defensive, and to win bosses fast, you’ll have to dash as little as possible because time spent dashing is time spent not shooting.
The movement would be standard four directional buttons, and the shooting button was a must. Instead of jumping, though, Klinger gave the game a dash. This allowed the character to quickly move from one surface to another. He decided that while this might be the preferred method of dodging enemy bullets, only walking would allow simultaneous shooting. The jam entry was submitted, and the crowd went on to rate their favorites.Pixel Soldierended up placing 12th on Overall Gameplay in a field of nearly 400 contestants, hooking Klinger to the project for a lot longer.
Weapons And Balancing in Roto Force
The game wasn’t finished, and Klinger wanted more out of the mechanics he had developed. The next stage in the development would be improving the weapons, making the dash more dynamic, and adding bullet patterns. Initially, the game had only one weapon;the machine gunthat is still today the first weapon introduced toRoto Forceplayers. However, Klinger would quickly notice that adding weapons was more than necessary: it was fun.
Weapons would evolve from a static firing dynamic to include unique gun properties. They could, for example, fire in bursts in the beginning and improve accuracy later, have homing abilities, or have the trajectory of a boomerang. This would also allow Klinger to make it important to know when to stop firing the weapons. Properties and behavior of weapons would change depending on how long the player would spray. This could mean that short bursts would be more efficient or that releasing the button was necessary to unleash a charge.
Klinger’s workload increased further, as weapons needed to be balanced now. Though, one thing stayed constant. Each weapon would reach the center of the stage, ensuring they would be always viable to some degree. In addition, he wanted to verify that there was at least one stage or opponent where each of the variousweapons would be better than any other. The simple Game Boy-inspired control scheme was going to stay, too, which meant that there was no room for switching weapons. New weapons were instead unlocked by completing stages, and switching would happen between the action-packed levels by hitting the appropriate bubbles with the improved dash.
Rotation Made It Roto Force
By early 2022, Klinger was ready to turn perhaps the biggest page in the game’s history. It was time then to change the name,Roto Force, which properly reflected the game’s main hook: the rotation of the screen. Other names were considered, butRotowas a unifying aspect among them. The updated gameplay madeRoto Forcemore visually impressive, and seemingly more fast-paced. Instead of the character running, and dashing, along the edges of the map, the map would turn to keep the player at the bottom of the screen.
We had a few different versions of the name, Roto Rush being one of them. The Roto part stuck, we just hadn’t at first decided which name to pick until eventually settling on Roto Force.
Thedash had been improvedupon, as well. Instead of dashing straight to the opposite wall, or at 45-degree angles to the other two, the player could aim the dash with the mouse. Choosing the landing spot was made easier by adding a bullet time effect. The effect would slow down the game, eventually to a halt. This allowed players to breathe and think during exhilarating gameplay.
By the time Game Rant spoke to Klinger earlier this week,Roto Forcehad improved every aspect of its gameplay many times over. The game wasn’t quite the simple run-and-gun it once was, and the rotating of the screen had given it an identity of its own. It might have derived a few things from platformers and others from shooters, but it had become something unique.
Roto Forcewill be available for Mobile and PC in 2022.
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