Falling Frontier - Living up to a Dream - Indie Spotlight #14

foreign today's video needs a little bit of context before really diving in but it's basically the continuation of a long-standing video series that I started way back when I only covered video games the series is called Indie spotlights I just did another one recently about a game called War Tails which is fantastic it was primarily designed to raise awareness for deserving video game projects that maybe

don't have an enormous budget or a triple A level marketing spend the series was a bit Hit or Miss I really did enjoy and believe in the games that I covered but not all of them stuck around a good example of that would be a game called lemness gate which is kind of dead now and that's rather unfortunate because it really was a very special creation

the concept was amazing it had at least in my mind incredible potential but not every game I covered has gone on to find success that being said some of the games I talked about did find widespread success and one of those games arguably the Pinnacle of swords for the Indie Spotlight Series in its entirety is falling Frontier I've talked about it before and I'll certainly talk

about it again but the reason for that is very special to me I was actually the very first Creator in the entire world to cover this game and also gather my own footage I've been meeting with the developer one-on-one for years we first spoke about the game in 2019 I believe and since that time I've watched it Grow from something creative to something incredible falling Frontier

is the best possible example of what the Indie Spotlight series was originally designed to Showcase and today once again I'm able to talk about it this time with exclusive footage custom assets and a whole lot more for anyone who might be interested in what I consider to be the most exciting upcoming game release RTS games have a special place in my heart space combat RTS games

even more so and I won't bore everyone with the precise details on why or my childhood and how I played the Homeworld demo not the whole game just the demo for two hours every weekend during my parentally allowed computer time but the point is that this game has a special place in my heart I've seen it grow almost every step of the way witnessed the Creative

Vision coming to life and today I get to share that with all of you which is enormously sad satisfying and very fun to do I could say it over and over again but how about I just show you this is what the game started as the first version that I was ever able to play and gather footage for and here's what it looks like now the

systems have evolved with Incredible depth the combat strategy has been elevated with a wide range of functionalities and rather than a macro approach where I simply discuss a wider atmosphere today I want to be hyper specific and really explain just how deep the game has become with examples every ship as the first example now has bespoke main battle guns to match the silhouette and those turrets

are part of a broad customization system built on individual platforms the barrels attached to the unique base and the unique bass is attached to an internal hitbox ships can be customized with unique modules and cannons to specialize in long-range combat support roles or what have you they can have advanced sensors tracking modules or missiles beyond that they can have search and rescue capabilities hangers repair modules

or mine layers and each of these systems has its own use case let's take a look at how the hitboxes function for example this is custom turntable footage provided to me directly of the Hano Destroyer which has been stripped down to show only internalized hitboxes each turret obviously has its own destructible internal base there is a ballistic Armory in the middle of the ship which can

the standard penetration is modified by ship armor but loses velocity the further it travels through a ship one is the standard 0.5 cuts the penetration in half just as a rough overview etc etc during combat a ship lined up let's say bow to stern can be shredded by railguns because the ballistic projectile will pass through multiple hitboxes at once as it goes through the ship by

the end it may even continue on even further into ships behind the original Target as long as there's still velocity to draw from or penetration to draw from but correcting for this by only allowing port to starboard type hits will mitigate potential damage far better macro and micro are balanced quite well here with a built-in time slow the player can situationally control their PDC cannons in

a much more effective way they can determine targeting and control tactical advantages quite well but the game strikes a unique balance where the system depth is quite obviously huge while not overwhelming the player completely you won't be able to control everything in a larger combat encounter with a lot of ships going but you certainly can exert enormous influence at scale right down to microing and individual

missile volley another thing I wanted to mention was that ship drift makes for some pretty cinematic potential movement commands and certain modules I don't know how much I can say here so I'm just going to be vague certain modules will affect movement meaning that you won't just be clicking and forgetting about ships if you don't want to you can actually have them respond with particular Maneuvers

based on how you move them and when that result in Faster Superior turret positioning falling Frontier avoids the traditional formula mass resources Mass ships win game that's kind of the standard instead of something spammy for lack of a better word where you just grab as many of a certain unit comp as you can then sick them on your enemy and then win the game it strives

to give higher value to each individual ship that being said there are of course different combinations that can be taken advantage of like support ships with long-range sensor capabilities meshing with larger more close range type destroyers but the balancing here between tactical skill and unit strength is well struck heavy shift modification obviously increases per unit cost I probably don't need to talk about the pursuit of

economic balancing here that's just a given in any game like this and I hope I'll be partially responsible for providing feedback on those values so I hope I can do it justice but the scope of the combat is like night and day compared to what it was a few years ago falling Frontier is an example of a game that is truly a achieving its Creative Vision

I've had the pleasure of speaking with hooded horse the publisher supporting the project and they are an example of a publisher that does it right and trust me that's rare for me to say okay so when I say those words you have to know I mean them they absolutely unequivocally support the direction of the game and it may be true that some people on steam or

in YouTube comments are starting to get impatient I don't really blame you I know the feeling but let's remember that a long-standing critique of the modern video game industry is that things are launching buggy and unfinished falling Frontier is a break from that Trend it's being built into what it was always intended to be it will launch as a fully finished deserving product that stands proudly

on two feet and if that takes more time while we as players need to remember that if we demand Excellence which we do it will take time I'm not even a patient person for the most part myself but for this this I can be patient for the level of detail involved in this game is baffling as an example this turntable right here I you not has

been created with distance accurate positioning from the planetary bodies that rotate by in the background not only that scale and position for the three objects tighten Saturn and the ship itself has been measured with physically accurate Stars that's the level of detail in play here just for a custom asset that was given to me personally I could spend hours discussing the level of detail in the

game itself from ship design with visual assets for planetary re-entry even though that's like entirely unnecessary and they didn't have to do that but that attention to detail just fleshes out the entire world all the way to a decal system where damage will leave a patchwork set of burns scars and eventual welding marks after repair instead of a pristine Hull but some of it you'll just

have to play for yourself when the game launches because words probably aren't going to do it justice falling Frontier is a success story over time the amount of support that the gamers see has changed dramatically Todd the developer got personal support from individuals he got support from The Game's publisher of course hooded horse he got amazing support from the public in the form of reception and

positivity which enabled him to go back to the dream if you will which wasn't quite as possible early on with limited resources now it is and now the game is becoming something spectacular the type of success story I am honored to have been there for and the kind of game that will become wildly successful as a result the problem of being forced to pick and choose

is basically gone if it makes the game better even with a delay it is happening it's being added in the things that were needed to achieve the original Vision do fundamentally change certain aspects of the game itself but the resulting quality is quite obviously worth it changing core fundamentals can be considered by some not in my opinion but some people do consider it this way to

be a form of deception but all the support that falling Frontier has received allows for something special to be crafted that is a true realization of its artistic dream this is a success story I've said it before and I'll say it again learning over time it's the first game he's ever made the developer and the results here I mean they speak for themselves one thing I

personally found to be fascinating is that pdcs now use the same logic as first person shooters allowing thousands of objects to be fired the game has become a fluid balance of performance physics and creative decisions to enable the most content possible and believe me it shows financial support allowed the team to include a wildly talented professional artist which continued to push this past the original highly

ambitious concept to a dream reality where the vision of what the game should be with like big air quotes there is actually the game we're getting art mechanics scale customization sound you name it now one thing I wanted to do in this video in a kind way of course is a bit of a call out I don't normally do things like this but I wanted to

give my perspective on something as someone who's now met with Todd personally one-on-one for years and seeing the game evolve during that span of time this comment right here on Steam it reads as follows quote the main dev has confidence issues he could have done an open Beta by now at least problem is by the time he's done polishing and polishing and polishing that hooded horse

will probably pull their support well before release and a publisher pulling support can kill a game end quote for starters I can happily tell you that no hooded horse is not going to pull support for this game it's up around number 30 I think in terms of wish lists total wish lists on Steam it's very much in the public eye it's highly anticipated and hooded horses

they're actually supportive of the idea that the product should be fully finished which is great I don't say that often about Publishers okay mark my words that's not a common thing that comes out of my mouth but this is a good publisher developer relationship second thing though is that I see myself in this comment I don't know how old this guy is but I see a

younger intensely passionate version of myself in his words and he says this because he's excited he likes what he sees and he wants to play the game the developer does not have confidence issues that I can assure you he just has a well-formed vision and he's sticking to that Vision I think that when major Demon Lord plays this game he will fully understand and appreciate the

work that's been done he probably won't admit it publicly I wouldn't have either when I was more intensely active in the video game space but deep down he will see and respect the game in a way he's probably not fully prepared for it that makes me excited it does because we really do often get stories of disappointment Publishers negatively impacting video games support being withdrawn I

mean these are true things they do happen missed expectations on release that's a common one but everything I see here and now with the level of access that I have been given which is not inconsequential by the way I know a lot more than I can say publicly in this particular video I am extremely confident when I tell you that this game is one of the

good ones sometimes I forget just how cohesive the total vision actually is falling Frontier is a world with Shades of Gray the historical progress of society that resulted in planetary names being what they are was fully thought through top to bottom there is an atmosphere of I guess Spartan culture for the digital Space Age Mars and Titan are system superpowers Earth has declined or is in

Decline Titan is a colony seated by Europa and Titan is actually the only faction where no one was even born on Earth they have no strong connection to the original Planet if you will factions also have their own ship variants which is awesome with practical and decisive reasons why those variations exist top to bottom it's all being considered what I mean by all this long-winded yes

but very necessary is that the game is actually rising to meet its full potential and I know that some people will be annoyed or upset by such delays I fully understand that feeling but I will happily stake my reputation on this here and now it is worth it it's happening for a reason and the results will be deserving of your patience for those that want to

put it on their wish list the link is of course down below I could continue talking about this today focused a lot on combat and ship mechanics based on a variety of interviews I've done but some of the things I'm most excited to discuss I at least personally they're not quite ready yet so I can't talk about them it's not the last time I'll talk about

this game I assure you of that absolutely not I might even come out of my streaming retirement of sorts on full release to actually play it live on the channel but for now I'll leave you with this the game started way back when initially with no unit Collision only one type of ballistic projectile and mostly just stock Assets Now now it has entirely redone movement custom

ships unit Collision multiple Ordnance types dozens of modules and ship customization options crew supply chain Logistics military logistics and the list goes on on and on and on the scale of this world I'm going off script here but the scale of this sandbox that you get to play in is enormous impactful and it just feels like a worthy space game a space game where decisions matter

a space game where every single thing you do has impact and strength Everything feels intentional and and crafted deliberately instead of Hazard I mean it's really one of the most impressive games I've ever seen and it's even more impressive because it comes from such a small team and it's actually living up to its Creative Vision it wasn't just made and then thrown out there I mean

it's going to be exactly what it was intended to be and I just have a great deal of respect for that what the game was back in the day early on seemed cool what the game has now become is just unequivocally fantastic and I have no trouble calling it my most anticipated upcoming release period that's it though links down below to support I'll cut it there

and stop rambling as always thank you all for watching definitely do check it out if you have any interest in this type of game wish listed of course and have a nice night [Music] [Music]