Since late 2008, John Kooistra has been masterminding an intergalactic war—inside your iPhone. The reds and blues have been engaged in a deadly struggle, as evidenced in twist-based shooter Blue Defense and its more involved sequel Blue Attack.
Red Conquest is John’s most advanced and innovative game yet, a complex, exciting RTS that takes full advantage of Apple’s hardware. Cult of Mac interviewed John about how he got into iPhone games development and how the latest game in the red/blue saga came to be.
Cult of Mac: What first interested you about iPhone/iPod gaming? Had you done any other games before your iPhone stuff?
John: The form factor interested me—the accelerometer, tied to the orientation of the screen was just cool. You can see it now in those augmented reality apps coming out these days, but when I first thought about it, I thought: “bullets can go… up…”, and thus Blue Defense was born! It’s a simple idea, but when you realize the implications of actually rotating the screen along with your play field, it’s just a different experience than on other gaming platforms. That difference, that simple accelerometer with a screen attached, inspired me.
Before the iPhone, I hadn’t really done anything commercial. Back in my highschool days, I made games, but even through university I never really put the extra effort into polishing them up for commercial release. So I’ve made a ton of games, but nothing anyone else has played! They’re all pretty much glorified tech demos, though—I wondered if I could do something, then I tried it, and got it working to an almost-playable state… and lost interest.
With the iPhone, I gave myself a sort of ultimatum: I quit my old job, waited out the non-compete clause in my contract, got the iPhone, and just sat down with the dev kit. The pressure was: “You don’t have a job, and now you’re paying $80 per month for a smartphone. You’d better start making money off of this thing, boy!”
So I did! It’s been sheer determination and a fair amount of luck that’s gotten me this far.
From a development standpoint, how do you find iPhone/iPod as a gaming platform? What are the benefits and challenges?
As a platform, it’s great. As long as you target the lowest hardware, and always debug on it, the rest of the newer hardware works without a hitch! The same can’t be said of, say, Android, or Blackberry. We’re interested in expanding to those platforms, but the market segmentation is a major drawback to those platforms, and thus a benefit of the iPhone.
I’ve also always liked programming for older hardware, with limited features—it’s a challenge, but when you program for iPhone, you have to either forget or work around concepts like pixel shaders and other advanced graphics techniques.
As a gaming platform, it could have a little bit better battery life… but other than that, it’s perfect for me! I always have my iPhone on me, and I can play big or small games, or just kill time while waiting in line. It’s great!
What’s Red Conquest all about? How would you describe the game?
Red Conquest, at its core, was my search for a definitive mobile RTS experience. Most of the other RTS games are ports, or at least they take way too many concepts from their desktop RTS brothers. When I started Red Conquest, I wanted the UI to reflect that it’s a mobile, multitouch experience—so I dialed down the number of units, and reimagined how I thought an RTS UI should look for the iPhone.
As for the story, Red Conquest is all about Gideon! His character is ultra-mysterious in episode 1, but by the end of episode 2 you’ll start to understand who he is, and his motivations. Over the four episodes of Red Conquest that have yet to come out, the entire Red/Blue war will unfold, and we’ll all get to see why it all started—and how tragic the whole situation has become.
What was your inspiration behind Red Conquest?
Honestly, I’ve just always wanted to put together an RTS project! I’ve also wanted to make a game with a real plot and story to it, and so far I’ve only ever made arcade-style shooters.
We laid the groundwork for the red/blue conflict in Blue Attack and Blue Defense, but the story, the characters, and the overall progression of the war was a product of several late-night brainstorming sessions with my buddies. We fleshed out the entire universe, and especially for Gideon—the central figure of episode 1—we detailed entire lives. Hopefully that inspiration, and that detail will come through in episodes 2 through 4, and you’ll all be as intrigued as I am with the universe we’re creating!
What’s the response been like to the game?
Reviewers, in general, have mixed feelings—but people who buy it and play it out of love for RTS games absolutely love it! I had a guy contact me, just because he thought I was buying 5/5 reviews in the App Store. I explained to him at length that I would not, and have never purchased review scores—but when you look at it in another light, that’s a really awesome compliment! If there are so many 5/5 reviews, and not all that many 3s or 4s, then I’ve done my job well—so well that it looks suspicious to people.
What are your plans for the future regarding iPhone/iPod gaming?
Well, for starters we’re going to be releasing episodes 2, 3, and 4 on a regular schedule—and episode 2, coming in March, will also have an online multiplayer update!
Aside from that, we’ve got two prototypes being worked on the back burner—we’ll announce those as necessary—and I’ve got my own ideas burning in the back of my head, that have no code written for them yet. We’ve got tons of games planned and ready to go into production, but it’s hard to figure out what to do next!
For more information about Red Conquest, see the Cat in a Box Games website. Red Conquest is available on the App Store for $3.99.
