Izmi: Lukáš Veselý – Project manager

Rumun: Radim Křivánek – Lead designer

Karel: Karel Makovský – Story designer

What is the background of Afterlight's story? How will it tie in with Aftershock?

Karel: The story of Afterlight occurs in the same time as Aftershock. Not on the Earth, but on the planet Mars. The small colony of people survived here the cataclysm of Aftermath. People from Laputa will get in contact with people on Mars and both sides will benefit from this. Their challenges will be mostly unique, but some of them will be shared with Aftershock heroes, for example learning about the background of Reticulan invasion. In the course of the game, the player will discover more details about alien races as well as he gains the wider image of the powers in UFO universe.

How will the Mars setting affect the story and, more importantly, the gameplay?

Rumun: The story and the gameplay cannot be separated while they support each other. Aftershock will not be only about fighting aliens, but also about the struggle against harsh environment of the originally hostile planet. The player will control only one base; the stations and outpost elsewhere in Mars will be automated and will not demand continuous human attention.

The first of all, the colony is able to sustain only very small number of people. So the human resources available to the player are strictly limited and to succeed, he must make the most of each member of his team. In this view, Afterlight might remind one of our previous games - Original War. Not only the soldiers, but also the other staff - scientists and technicians - will be all individuals with their name, experience level and specialization.

The Mars environment enables to introduce new elements in tactical missions, together with new combat styles and equipment. Colonists will have to learn how to produce safe and at the same time flexible suits. Later on, they will start to terraform the planet and accommodate it to their lives.

On your website, you mention that "diplomacy has a strong effect on the story." How strong of an effect? Can you side yourself with the aliens and fight against the humans and things of that nature? Will alien units join or leave the player's party based on the player's actions?

Karel: In several moments of the game, the player will have an opportunity to ally one of the alien factions. This decision will strongly affect his access to technologies, research and natural resources, and the player will be able to play Afterlight more than once, each time with different challenges.

The part of the treaties will be also participation of alien characters in player’s team. He can use their special abilities in combat or their specific knowledge when researching new technologies.

What sort of new abilities and attributes will the alien races have? How can they be used by the player?

Rumun: Each of the character races - humans, aliens and robots - have their unique set of attributes and skills, which represent their strengths and weaknesses. For example Reticulans - the aliens from the previous sequels of UFO will have an attribute showing their inclination to psionic manipulation, but there will be no skill associated with physical combat for them.

It is also good to mention that we expanded the character development system. We introduce three different classes - soldiers, scientists and technicians, each of them with the specific trainings and specializiation, useful both in strategic and tactical game.

What use will the "extra kinds of vision" be in combat? Will they be used by humans or aliens or both?

Rumun: Some equipment will enable special kinds of vision for people (for example night vision), other ones will be available to alien races in player’s team (for example psionic vision for Reticulans). The effect for the player will be both spectacular and useful - some of the threats may be hard to detect by normal kinds of perception.

Are there multiple ways to handle combat situations? What about non-combat situations?

Rumun: We plan to largely expand the options how to solve tactical missions. Different objectives will demand different approach - sometimes all-out attack, sometimes more of stealth action. Parameters of the weapons, armors and other equipment are set that the player may choose among different combat styles. The pre-prepared missions (instead of generic ones in previous sequels) give us the more control of combat situations, and consequently more elaborated tactical challenges to the player.

Karel: As mentioned before, the player’s diplomatic decisions may completely change the course of the game. The player may also decide to betray his allies and attack them suddenly, with expectable consequences of this action.

One of the specific moments in Afterlight will be terraforming of Mars. The impact of this change will be clearly visible on the globe and it will affect largely the tactical game as well, for example the characters will be allowed to use lighter armors.

What's your take on the notion that real time with pause is more accessible than turn-based? I find that turn-based is more accessible because it's slower and gives you time to get a feel for the game, rather than the frantic clickfest most real-time with pause games give you.

Rumun: Our system tries to be as accessible as the turn-based systems, but in the same time it can simulate the realistic combat situation, both in visual and gaming terms. Unlike classical turn-based game we can offer the experience comparable with action or real-time games, with the players loving deep tactical thinking being content as well.

Izmi: Our system is not the simple pausable real-time, but simultaneous action system - in other words, the player itself sets the length of the playing round and the rate between turn-based and real-time game. The game stops in the moments selected by player as the most appropriate, and he may plan the activity of his troops according to the immediate situation (and continually change the plan).

For example, I may plan for my soldier to run fast to the UFO wreck, so he can avoid the enemy shots. Then he crouches, changes his weapon to shotgun (suited for short-range combat) and carefully sneaks round the UFO to its entrance. Nevertheless, the game pauses during the soldier’s run, as I have set in the game options to stop whenever the enemy is spotted. Now I may react to the new situation and change my plan - to lie prone and start shooting at the alien with the rifle in my hands.

Similar system has been used in more games, but we have made it perfect in previous UFO sequels. We believe you are going to agree if you try it.

Would Altar ever consider making a turn-based game if the community called for it?

Izmi: Turn-based games have its unexceptionable charm, but we believe this approach does not use sufficiently progressive trends in interactive gaming. In our opinion, SAS is the step in the right direction - maintaining real-time action without the frantic mouse clicking and screen rolling as may be seen in up-to-date RTS.

You've said that the game has "strong RPG elements, the player knows his team by names." What are you doing to give the game a RPG-ish feel? Why would the player care if a team member dies, for example?

Karel: Besides the moment mentioned before - small colony with extremely limited number of available people - we want to put stress on personal history of each team member and its interconnection with the story of the game. You shall soon learn which of your soldiers is good in stealth missions and which of your scientists specializes for example in Reticulan technologies.

The players should be aware from the very beginning that losing one of their characters is vital, as there are hardly any human reserves at the base. We do not want to force the player to reload the game after every death in his team, but the reinforcements will be lacking at least the experience and trainings of the old veterans.

What will the base management be like? Will it be a major part of the game?

Rumun: This time, we have reduced time the player is going to spend with base management. It has two reasons. The first is that the story calls for only one central base that may sustain the life environment for all the colonists at one place. The second one is that we want to save the player’s mind from remembering a lot of details, so he can use it to enjoy his strategic plans.

What kind of research options will we have?

Karel: The weapon technologies will not be only necessary - the spacesuits, the terraformation, the alien biology, all this topics will employ the scientists in the base labs sufficiently. The player will have to decide where to concentrate their effort; all the branches of the research tree will bring him important advantages in the game.

It is important to emphasize that the scientists will grow in experience, higher levels making them much more effective researchers. This is furthered by their specializations in one of the fields, making them just as personalized as the soldiers. The same is true for the third of the classes in the game – technicians.

Is it intimidating to make these games in X-Com's shadow? How do you overcome it?

Izmi: We do not think that UFO series lies in the shadow of X-COM. Of course, we cannot deny the source of our inspiration, but our approach is considerably different from the previous model.

It was hard for the players to cope with the fact that Aftermath is pretty distinct from X‑COM series at the first moment. However, they soon accepted our idea that modern game cannot stay where X-COM started. Aftermath and Aftershock later found much more fans than hard-core X-COM players would ever have admitted.

How has community input influenced the development of both Aftershock and Afterlight?

Izmi: Considerably. From the very beginning of the game development, we collected suggestions and ideas from the fans. After publishing of Aftermath, we made extensive opinion survey, which we used up when creating design document for Aftershock. In this sequel, we implemented most of what cannot be implemented in Aftermath due to lack of time or unfit game concept.

When developing Afterlight, we still carefully observe the discussion forums where the players express their opinions. It is no wonder if we desire to make the game even better and more interesting than any previous UFO was.

Are there any plans for multiplayer or modding options?

Izmi: In Afterlight, we do not work on multiplayer. The reason is the same as in previous UFO sequels - this game format is not convenient for multiplayer. The game does not concentrate only at tactical and strategic elements; the story supported by research tree also plays the important role.

However, we still plan to offer the same modding options to the fans as we did in Aftershock. They will be able to change the numeric characteristics of troops and equipment, the textures, add their own weapons etc.

Does Altar plan to continue with the UFO series or start in a new direction after this?

Izmi: We are not giving too many thoughts to our direction, at least not at public in this moment. Simultaneously with Afterlight we develop Fish Fillets 2, up-to-date sequel of the devilish logical puzzle from Altar’s beginning. We shall make the decision about our future before we finish both projects. The options are many - we may spirit up our RPG strategy Original War, to continue with UFO series or to start something freshly new.

Tacticular Cancer would like to thank Altar Games for the interview.