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Interview With Survivalcraft Developer (Minecraft Clone)-Exclusive Pics

November 15, 2011 2 Comments

We discovered Survivalcraft , a Minecraft clone by Candy Rufus Games, a few days ago. It has already been submitted to the Windows Phone Marketplace, which means we will get a taste of the game soon enough but until then we have an interview with the developer to tide you over. He was also kind enough to give us a couple of exclusive screenshots of the game. Enjoy!

1. How long has Survivalcraft been in development?

I started working on Survivalcraft in August this year. I had a lot of preexisting code from my old projects, so it was not developed completely from scratch. I know that this may seem like a very short time to develop a game, and it is. I am a bit amazed myself 🙂 But it is also true that I put a lot of nights into it, and I haven’t had any life this autumn really. It was a lot of fun figuring out the inner workings of a block engine and adapting it to a relatively slow CPU and (sadly) shaderless environment of Windows Phone.

2. How close does it resemble the original game?

I guess you mean Minecraft. At the moment, visually quite a lot, but feature-wise not very much. Back in September or so I was experimenting with various styles to differentiate the looks from Minecraft. Unfortunately it all looked rubbish. You know what I mean,like some of the hi-resolution texture packs you can download for Minecraft. Basically, Notch did a first class job doing his low resolution graphics. Hard to beat that. But the visuals will probably change quite a lot with the updates. For one I want to have more rock types.

3. Any features that couldn’t make the cut? Any new add-ons that you have brought to the table?

A lot of features I wanted to put it haven’t made it into this first release (which btw is still in certification as of today). For example I really wanted to have some creatures in, and generally more survival features such as hunger, thirst, cold. But I knew I have to release early. I needed to get some feedback and to see what people make of it. Basically, I could not continue the lifestyle I was living this autumn for much longer without seeing tangible results and some encouragement. In the past I was working like mad on many projects that eventually never seen the light of the day, and I decided I
don’twant to do it this time.

The new thing I wanted to bring to the table is a better survival mode. There is a bit of a story there, you are not just dumped clueless in the middle of a random landscape, you are set down on an unknown shore by a ship. In general, Minecraft survival is too easy for my liking, and you get this feeling that you completed the game after just a couple of days of Minecraft time. If you are not into creative mode and building cool stuff out of blocks, there is not much else you could do there. I see massive potential in improving and expanding the survival aspect of it. Adding stuff like environmental disasters, dangerous animals that get more dangerous as the game progresses, so that you have to keep up improving your kit. This does not rule out having creative mode of course, which is rather easy to add.

4. How much will Survivalcraft cost?

I would like to keep it a mystery for now. You will all know soon enough when it hits the marketplace 🙂

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