The Making of Frozen Synapse: Red
(by Paul Taylor, Mode7Games)
Frozen Synapse is a simultaneous-turn-based strategy game for PC, Mac and Linux. It came out around this time last year and has done really well for us as a company, picking up several awards and a lot of praise.
We always knew that it would be a good idea to release some DLC in order to bring more content to fans who were asking for it but it was definitely a struggle to come up with the right format for this.
DLC or Expansion Pack?
As old-school PC gamers, we used to love the box-product mentality of the "expansion pack" - a big load of diverse (sometimes fairly wacky) content which transformed the base game. The modern DLC drip-feed approach can work really well in certain games, and there's obviously nothing wrong with it fundamentally, but FS was always about delivering a huge payload of stuff in one go.
We originally started with the idea of a small-ish bundle: perhaps some challenge missions and a new multiplayer game mode, but as we started working on this we realised that the first DLC we released would get a lot of attention. We wanted it to be something we were really proud of, so we tried to push ourselves.
Working Together
The headline feature of Frozen Synapse: Red is co-op play: two players can take on the AI in any of the campaign missions. This was the subject of long internal debate, as FS is very much a one-on-one competitive game and this was a big departure from that paradigm. It would take a lot of work to even try it, so we had to be certain it would be fun for more than a few minutes.
Ian Hardingham, our lead designer, put a lot of work into co-op and its supporting feature-set. Things like pinging the map, allowing you to play through the missions, being able to see the story in a sensible way and sharing plans with your partner were all important facets. After a bit of a struggle, we ended up with something that was brilliant fun: mission accomplished.
I Predict a Riot
We also knew we wanted to add a new unit. Ian had been incubating the idea of the riot shield for a long time and managed to come up with a brilliant implementation that both changes gameplay but didn't require a huge amount of balancing. It is also very much in the spirit of Frozen Synapse: it absolutely has to be used in conjunction with the other units, but in the right situation it can be a game changer.
Back to Markov Geist
Any good expansion pack should have a new single player campaign, so myself and our Level Designer Robin Cox worked on a series of missions that would bring the player back into the story. Set on an alternate timeline - a handy narrative device which just let me do whatever the hell I wanted with the characters - the story lets the player change events from the original single player campaign and get into some interesting situations.
I felt that the original narrative was a bit long-winded, so for this I tried to keep it punchier and just get the player into the action faster. There is the same dramatic stuff and background narrative for those who are more interested in such things, but ultimately I feel like it's a streamlined experience.
Making Tracks
There are six new pieces of music in Frozen Synapse: Red and these required a lot of work. Two of them ("The Fix" and "Complexity") had already been done in time for the Humble Indie Bundle, so I had a starting point.
"The Fix" was my attempt to integrate some more abrasive dubstep sounds into the soundtrack. I was reacting to comments about the original tracks having a heavy dubstep influence (which they didn't really!) and decided to do something which explored that. "Complexity" was much more in the vein of the original score, using bombastic orchestral stabs alongside my usual electronica production.
The track I'm probably most proud of in FS: Red is probably "Parting Shots". I actually started this as a personal project to return to the electronica style I employed on my debut album Module; I wanted to take that sort of aesthetic and modernise it. However, as things went along I realised it would make great "closing credits" music so I added a few more references to the Frozen Synapse sound.
Ultimately, I have found writing music for this game to be a real privilege: it's something I have always wanted to do and the response I've got has been consistently amazing.
A Glorious Miscellany
All of us used this opportunity to play around with some of our assumptions about Frozen Synapse. Ian created "Upload", a multiplayer mode which uses the riot shield, as a way to try out a more strictly goal-based form of competitive play. Robin invented the "Reverse VIP", a brilliant single player mission type which casts you in the role of assassin.
We added the (completely ridiculous) Red Mode: an option which simply makes the background red! As soon as I saw it I knew it would get a great fan reaction, and the first screenshot of it I released has the most "likes" of anything on our Facebook page to date!
One very important decision was our choice to make it possible to share any online DLC feature with a non-DLC owner. So, for example, if you have Red and you want to play co-op with your friend who doesn't own it, you can. The thinking behind this was to give the best possible experience to those who did decide to purchase, rather than worrying about forcing the entire playerbase to adopt it. That kind of brute force approach can lead to bad blood and split communities; that's definitely not what we want Mode 7 to stand for.
We discovered that relaxing, focussing on making good things that we were proud of, and trying to have fun was the best way to make DLC. We struggled most when we were trying to make compromises and restrict ourselves too much. Overall, working on Red was pretty challenging, especially when the natural tendency of any creative person is to shelve old projects and move on to the next new and exciting thing.
However, the initial response alone has made it worth it: people are coming back to the game and talking about it once more. They're introducing their friends to it through co-op and getting excited about the music all over again. Although obviously we hope it's a commercial success, that enthusiasm is the best kind of reward!
Now we're pressing on with both the iPad version of FS and a completely new title, to be announced soon. It's a really exciting time for Mode 7 and we're looking forward to seeing what the future has in store.
You can check out frozen synapse red at the mode7games website.
We always knew that it would be a good idea to release some DLC in order to bring more content to fans who were asking for it but it was definitely a struggle to come up with the right format for this.
DLC or Expansion Pack?
As old-school PC gamers, we used to love the box-product mentality of the "expansion pack" - a big load of diverse (sometimes fairly wacky) content which transformed the base game. The modern DLC drip-feed approach can work really well in certain games, and there's obviously nothing wrong with it fundamentally, but FS was always about delivering a huge payload of stuff in one go.
We originally started with the idea of a small-ish bundle: perhaps some challenge missions and a new multiplayer game mode, but as we started working on this we realised that the first DLC we released would get a lot of attention. We wanted it to be something we were really proud of, so we tried to push ourselves.
Working Together
The headline feature of Frozen Synapse: Red is co-op play: two players can take on the AI in any of the campaign missions. This was the subject of long internal debate, as FS is very much a one-on-one competitive game and this was a big departure from that paradigm. It would take a lot of work to even try it, so we had to be certain it would be fun for more than a few minutes.
Ian Hardingham, our lead designer, put a lot of work into co-op and its supporting feature-set. Things like pinging the map, allowing you to play through the missions, being able to see the story in a sensible way and sharing plans with your partner were all important facets. After a bit of a struggle, we ended up with something that was brilliant fun: mission accomplished.
I Predict a Riot
We also knew we wanted to add a new unit. Ian had been incubating the idea of the riot shield for a long time and managed to come up with a brilliant implementation that both changes gameplay but didn't require a huge amount of balancing. It is also very much in the spirit of Frozen Synapse: it absolutely has to be used in conjunction with the other units, but in the right situation it can be a game changer.
Back to Markov Geist
Any good expansion pack should have a new single player campaign, so myself and our Level Designer Robin Cox worked on a series of missions that would bring the player back into the story. Set on an alternate timeline - a handy narrative device which just let me do whatever the hell I wanted with the characters - the story lets the player change events from the original single player campaign and get into some interesting situations.
I felt that the original narrative was a bit long-winded, so for this I tried to keep it punchier and just get the player into the action faster. There is the same dramatic stuff and background narrative for those who are more interested in such things, but ultimately I feel like it's a streamlined experience.
Making Tracks
There are six new pieces of music in Frozen Synapse: Red and these required a lot of work. Two of them ("The Fix" and "Complexity") had already been done in time for the Humble Indie Bundle, so I had a starting point.
"The Fix" was my attempt to integrate some more abrasive dubstep sounds into the soundtrack. I was reacting to comments about the original tracks having a heavy dubstep influence (which they didn't really!) and decided to do something which explored that. "Complexity" was much more in the vein of the original score, using bombastic orchestral stabs alongside my usual electronica production.
The track I'm probably most proud of in FS: Red is probably "Parting Shots". I actually started this as a personal project to return to the electronica style I employed on my debut album Module; I wanted to take that sort of aesthetic and modernise it. However, as things went along I realised it would make great "closing credits" music so I added a few more references to the Frozen Synapse sound.
Ultimately, I have found writing music for this game to be a real privilege: it's something I have always wanted to do and the response I've got has been consistently amazing.
A Glorious Miscellany
All of us used this opportunity to play around with some of our assumptions about Frozen Synapse. Ian created "Upload", a multiplayer mode which uses the riot shield, as a way to try out a more strictly goal-based form of competitive play. Robin invented the "Reverse VIP", a brilliant single player mission type which casts you in the role of assassin.
We added the (completely ridiculous) Red Mode: an option which simply makes the background red! As soon as I saw it I knew it would get a great fan reaction, and the first screenshot of it I released has the most "likes" of anything on our Facebook page to date!
One very important decision was our choice to make it possible to share any online DLC feature with a non-DLC owner. So, for example, if you have Red and you want to play co-op with your friend who doesn't own it, you can. The thinking behind this was to give the best possible experience to those who did decide to purchase, rather than worrying about forcing the entire playerbase to adopt it. That kind of brute force approach can lead to bad blood and split communities; that's definitely not what we want Mode 7 to stand for.
We discovered that relaxing, focussing on making good things that we were proud of, and trying to have fun was the best way to make DLC. We struggled most when we were trying to make compromises and restrict ourselves too much. Overall, working on Red was pretty challenging, especially when the natural tendency of any creative person is to shelve old projects and move on to the next new and exciting thing.
However, the initial response alone has made it worth it: people are coming back to the game and talking about it once more. They're introducing their friends to it through co-op and getting excited about the music all over again. Although obviously we hope it's a commercial success, that enthusiasm is the best kind of reward!
Now we're pressing on with both the iPad version of FS and a completely new title, to be announced soon. It's a really exciting time for Mode 7 and we're looking forward to seeing what the future has in store.
You can check out frozen synapse red at the mode7games website.
