Crash Commando Coming Soon to PSN!

Hi all! This is Olof Gustafsson and Magnus Isaksson from EPOS Game Studios writing our first entry on the Blog, and we are going to introduce you all to Crash Commando for PS3, available soon on PlayStation Network! It is a side-scrolling shooter that we think can and will satisfy any urge of frag-fests during Xmas and the cold months thereafter — killing friends and strangers in comic violence on PSN.

As this is the first game from us as a company — we know most of you have never heard about EPOS at all before. EPOS Game Studios is a small studio located in Sweden with a 5-man production team — with main occupations being split up between 2 programmers, 2 artists and a sound guy.

The idea
The initial idea for Crash Commando was inspired by a lot of different titles over the last two decades. One game that springs to mind is JETPAC on the old Commodore VIC-20. The challenge was to create a fun game that clearly flirts with the retro genre, giving the players the opportunity to play in teams or against each other in real-time, incorporating the depth of a modern game while maintaining the retro core values.

Features at a glance:

• Frantic, adrenaline-pumping gameplay with exaggerated, slapstick violence!
• Fight on the ground and in the air, using jetpacks or in vehicles!
• Choose between several varying weapons, super weapons and stationary weapon systems!
• 8 maps!
• 1-12 players online play!
• Team-based and deathmatch game modes!
• Single-player vs bots game modes!
• Trophies!
• Online ranking boards!
• Player Profile with persistent stats and Duty Records!
• Voice support!

Crash Commando is primarily a multiplayer game, but it also provides a single-player component that will give you many hours of satisfaction playing the two single-player modes, which will also get you ready for online battles. In Boot Camp you can engage in 16 preset missions, and in Custom Game you can create custom games and play against easy, medium and hard bots. The game also supports host migration in the multiplayer modes, which means that a game created will continue running as long as there are any players left in the game, even if the game creator leaves.

We’ll be back next week with details on specific game modes and some great strategy tips! In the meantime, here’s a quick background on us:

Olof: “Like many others, I started playing video games during the eighties and after a few years of constant gaming I, together with three other guys, founded a games company called DICE. We kicked off with our first title, Pinball Dreams, which was well received by fellow gamers around the world and a game that I very much enjoyed playing myself. After about 15 years, DICE had become quite a giant and I felt I wanted to get back to the roots of game development. Therefore Staffan Langin, another DICE founder, and I teamed up and started EPOS. My role in the production of Crash Commando has been to compose all music and create the SFX, as well as functioning as CEO. I also came up with the original game idea, but the game was thereafter detailed by our eminent game designer Jan Almqvist.”

Magnus: “I used to work at DICE as well and after several years making games there, the productions grew bigger and bigger and somehow during that process the focus shifted off the actual games into addressing administrative and structural problems common in large-scale productions. So I quickly got really interested in the challenge that Olof and Staffan was presenting of taking part in starting up this new smaller studio forming a small tight development team where the focus of all involved was back into making fun games. My role in the production of Crash Commando has been as project-lead and lead programmer.”