Russian Subway Dogs – Making a Game about the Mutts of the Moscow Metro

Russian… Subway… What?

Our recreation Russian Subway Dogs is out as we speak on Xbox One! It’s a single display arcade recreation impressed by the actual-life stray canine of the Moscow Metro. I’m going to share how we ended up creating a recreation with such an uncommon theme, and the novel method we took so as to add depth, humor and selection to its basic rating chasing gameplay.

The seeds of the thought began round a decade in the past once I learn an article on-line about a handful of strays that had realized to navigate Moscow’s maze-like subway system. If you’re not conversant in these intelligent canines, they actually do make a day by day commute to downtown Moscow, scavenge for meals from passing pedestrians, after which return residence to the quiet suburbs every night time to sleep. One of these canine was so beloved they even constructed a memorial statue in his honor!

While studying up on these strays I additionally found the unimaginable structure of the metropolis’s subway stations. These aren’t simply easy tiled hallways in flat colours. Styles vary from a church-like station, full with stained glass home windows, to a tremendous fashionable Mondrian-inspired design of intersecting traces and rectangles.  

The canine have been cute and intelligent, and the Soviet-era subway stations have been grand and palatial (critically look them up). I knew we needed to make this recreation!

Eat ‘em up Gameplay

So, cute animals? Check! Beautiful backgrounds? Check! But how does it play?

As the titular Subway Dog you run backwards and forwards alongside every subway platform attempting to maintain your self fed. A stamina bar acts as a mixture starvation and life meter, always draining whilst you scramble for meals to refill it. Trains pull as much as the station, usually unloading commuters consuming and ingesting a selection of tasty snacks and drinks so that you can steal. A fast bark behind them is all it takes to have them tossing up their meals so that you can snatch from the air.

Of course, you’ll have some competitors, as these trains additionally herald rival strays and a ridiculous array of subway wildlife. Everything from subway pigeons, to subway bears can be after your meals, dropping you factors and potential stamina in the event that they snag any snacks.

You filter this competitors with the support of some very unstable vodka. Carried by random passengers, these bottles of booze create a fiery explosion after they hit the floor. Time your mighty barks good and you may bounce the bottles round in the air. This is a essential ability, since vodka explosions will cook dinner wildlife and toast meals, creating extra filling and better scoring meals! 

Juggling multipliers and air catching combos permits expert gamers to show a minor meal, price a few dozen factors, into a fancy feast, price hundreds. It’s excessive danger / excessive reward as a result of if a rival canine grabs a priceless meal these factors can be subtracted out of your rating, netting adverse factors. Ouch!

Systemic Simulation is Our Secret Sauce!

This primary eat’em up gameplay kinds the basis for Russian Subway Dogs‘ actually distinctive addition to the arcade style: systemic simulation. This goes by different fancy names like “multiplicative design”, “chemistry engines” or simply plain “emergent gameplay” however what it boils all the way down to is that each one the components in the recreation work together with each different half in a manner that feels one thing like the actual world, or a minimum of a enjoyable cartoon logic model of the actual world.

In Russian Subway Dogs which means any hearth supply will cook dinner meals and soften snow. Snow cools cooked meals or can freeze a flopping fish creating a block of ice that may be despatched skittering throughout the stage. The similar energy-up that permits you to bark hearth may be eaten by a rival canine, giving it firebarks as a substitute, and of course, these hearth barks additionally cook dinner meals! You may feed bears earlier than cooking them, fattening them as much as produce greater high quality meats or feed them chocolate (poisonous to canine) producing toxic meat. Almost every little thing in the recreation has a number of makes use of and interactions!

The result’s there are tons of secret methods to find and exploit. Every combine of meals, individuals and wildlife on the platform holds its personal strategic prospects and fascinating cut up-second selections to make.

We Brought Guests!

Russian Subway Dogs contains two completely different play modes:

Endless is a fashionable tackle the basic rating chasing expertise. Compete for the high spot on the on-line leaderboard, whereas surviving so long as you possibly can. It borrows some fashionable procedural methods and auto balancing to maintain each session recent, distinctive and difficult.

Campaign has you touring from station to station with hand crafted challenges and over 100 distinctive sub-missions out of your feline buddy, The Proletaricat, akin to beating a degree whereas sticking to a vegetarian food plan, or cooking a “Bear-B-Q”.

Throughout Campaign you’ll unlock over a dozen playable critters together with a number of out of your favourite indie video games akin to Rad Shiba and Nacho from VA-11 Hall-A, Horror from Nuclear Throne, Uay Chivo from Guacamelee! and extra.

Whether you’re a canine lover, a cat lover or a… whatever-Nidhogg-is lover, I hope you’ll seize a subway cross and take a experience with us!

Russian Subway Dogs

Spooky Squid Games Inc.

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

$14.99

$13.49

A quick-paced arcade recreation impressed by the actual-life stray canine of the Moscow metro. Take your orders from the Proletaricat whereas stealing meals, juggling vodka, cooking bears, and extra! Features each a prolonged marketing campaign and decide-up-and-play arcade mode.

A brand new recreation from Spooky Squid Games, creators of the cult basic platforming slash ‘em up They Bleed Pixels.