Don’t call Metrico a puzzle platformer. “We hate the term,” says Digital Dreams’ lead designer, Geert ‘Gene’ Nellen, through clenched teeth. “There are a lot of puzzle platformers. We try to avoid [the term] – but you’ve said it and now it’s too late.”
Metrico is a Vita-exclusive ‘action puzzler’, then. The quiet highlight of Sony’s independent games booth at Gamescom 2013, in Metrico every step must be measured and considered against the environment. How you move affects the shape of the world: bar charts rise and fall based on your movements across the X axis, peaks and troughs form as you climb the Y axis, and the world is reshaped based on your movements.
Quickly, the game introduces new rules. Perhaps moving right appears to raise a platform by a single percentage point with each step, but the platform quickly grows too high to reach. So how can the player move right without affecting the statistics?
“I feel some puzzle platformers are a bit gimmicky,” says Nellen. “They’re cool, but we have the feeling that Metrico’s mechanics are just a little bit different than [those in] other games. I don’t like us to be put in a box and I hope it stands out that way… and also aesthetically. People associate [data representation] with Excel sheets, PowerPoint presentations and boring stuff, but they can be beautiful, so why not make a game with infographics?”
If Metrico’s look – shown in beta form on the facing page – is one way it stands out, then the other defining features go beyond the game. Metrico was backed by Sony with an initial sum that allowed Nellen, tech director Thijmen Bink and level designer Roy van de Mortel to
form Digital Dreams in Utrecht, The Netherlands and spend the past year working on Metrico full time. When the game is released, Sony will recoup those costs from the initial sales until the moment the game enters profit. “[After that] we get everything except the platform holder’s cut,” says Nellen.
Sony’s deal guarantees exclusivity, which guarantees Digital Dreams’ ability to exploit its home platform to the full. While many of Vita’s indie blockbusters originated on PC and mobile platforms, Metrico is built for Vita and does things only Vita can allow it to do. “We want people to think about everything they’re doing that they normally don’t think about; and also what they’re doing with the device,” says Nellen. “Thinking [literally] outside of the box is the most important thing about the game. Like in Metal Gear Solid, where you had to change the port when you were fighting Psycho Mantis, or Zelda, when you had to fold the DS to get the stamp to the other side. I just really like that.”
Without Sony’s support there would be no Metrico. Nellen and van de Mortel hail from the Utrecht School Of Arts, and Bink joined later after responding to an advertisement. The team shares the Dutch Game Garden building with Vlambeer, Headcandy, Abbey Games and Ronimo Games, putting them at the centre of the Dutch indie scene. “All those guys are good friends and we just walk to each other’s offices and say, ‘Play this and just check it out’,” says Nellen.
While Microsoft was the first to view Digital Dreams’ prototype, Sony won the team over. “We were introduced [to Microsoft] very early and they said, ‘It’s really cool’, but then everything got really slow, and Sony was faster,” says Nellen. “They had a lot of faith in us and we want to repay that,” adds Bink. “But not just that. They’re helping us with so many small things… especially at the start with Vita, we had some trouble with getting the right engine, we had to experiment
a lot. They pointed us in directions, gave us lines to follow. We couldn’t ask for better support in that way.”
“We’re here, for starters,” says Nellen, extending his arms to denote their presence at Gamescom. “[Sony has] helped us so much with getting the game on the show floor, and obviously we didn’t have any money to get a stand here. They’re just there when we need them, and in the case of Gamescom they mailed us five minutes before we were about to ask them if we could get a spot and said, ‘We’re looking at who wants to be on the floor – are you interested?’”
The announcement of Sony’s Vita TV console may be of little benefit to Digital Dreams, which is using every feature of Vita from its motion sensors to its touch panel, but Vita’s uncertain future isn’t daunting to them. “The most interesting thing to me is that people who have a Vita are really devoted to it,” says Bink. “There’s an average of 12 installed games on a Vita, which is very high. And we don’t have a budget like Guerrilla has with Killzone: Mercenary. They’re going to have a hard time making their money back, but if we sell 10,000 copies we’re in the clear, and Sony’s backing us so even that’s not an issue. If we sell one-tenth of what Killzone’s selling, we’ll be extremely happy and stinking rich.”
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Source http://www.edge-online.com/features/how-infographic-obsessed-indie-puzzler-metrico-found-a-home-on-playstation-vita/
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