Ahoy all,

I’m thinking about a semi-regular set of articles on games that’d be interesting to clone, or would be good inspiration for Free (Libre) Software Games.

I’m calling it “Games and Clones”, for now..

So, for the first (test) installment…

Space Hulk : Vengeance of the Blood Angels
PSX – 1996 – Electronic Arts (Licensed by Games Workshop)

Inspired by the classic boardgame, this is a rather… tactical First Person Shooter. A bit clunky, but, fairly decent.
You play as a Blood Angels Space Marine in Tactical Dreadnaught Armour (aka “Terminator Armour”) You have control over the entire squad, but you’ll only be directly controlling one Marine at a time.

The setting is a dark-future/gothic-future setting. The game is played within a “Space Hulk” (A derelict star ship, drifting in space). The atmosphere is dark, and claustrophobic, the corridors are somewhat narrow (and there are few open spaces, there are some however.), and the Terminator armour is slow and ponderous. You’re not fast, lets put it that way.

You’re up against vicious, monsterous aliens, fast, and deadly. You do have an “auspex” (a sort of radar-scanner that picks up nearby aliens), but the auspex is only enough to show a vague idea of where they are. Surprises do happen.

Its tactical, but, I don’t personally think its tactical side is really worth keeping in a game inspired by it, I’d think the game could have much more impact if the player was the only member of the squad.

A mission-based system could be nice, but, randomly generated areas might be better, possibly. (it could be generated from room-tiles/corridor tiles, etc, maybe?)

But, the best way to keep it interesting, is to have the right atmosphere, it should be dark, creepy, and claustrophobic.

It’d be nice to somehow be able to choose equipment before the levels, as well as maybe pick some extra stuff up, along the way.

Anyways.. that’s my ramble, for now.

What do people think of this test article, and, the ideas therein?

(I’d be interested in working on a game like I just mentioned, if anyone else is interested on working on it, too?)

4 Responses to “Games and Clones — Space Hulk : Vengeance of the Blood Angels?”

  1. 12:06 pm, 24 October, 2007 р.
    ghoulsblade says:

    interesting, i played the board game a couple of times, and have heard of the computergame, but never played it.

    the atmosphere sure is nice, but with that kinda game i think round-based would be better if you wanted a clone of the boardgame. (i imagine it troublesome with realtime)

    i prefer new games, or at least mixes of multiple games to pure clones, also they are troublesome with trademarks.

  2. 3:33 am, 25 October, 2007 р.
    Kaelis Ebonrai says:

    Well, I was meaning the (later) computergame, for the PSX, which was a fps, basically. so, it was a bit different from the boardgame, but, from the same setting.

    As for pure clones, I agree, mixes of various stuff, and changes are better to do.

    I’ve had some ideas for pure-clones, but, I tend to try to alter these things, from the original cloned-game.

  3. 11:56 am, 31 October, 2007 р.
    Steve says:

    I think I’ve already written a 2D top-down version of the game you’re describing! :) It’s still in it’s early stages though.

    Its at:

    http://ng.game-host.org/TremHulkPage.cls

  4. 2:59 pm, 13 August, 2008 р.
    The Journals of Kaelis Ebonrai » Blog Archive » The Life of an Adventurer - Games and Clones Mk II says:

    [...] time to revisit an old article: [ Games and Clones ]. Not content to leave this blog untouched, I’ve decided I should probably post more [...]

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