It’s been a little while (about a year in fact) but you might recall that German-based developer NG:DEV TEAM has been working hard on their latest game, the Metal Slug inspired run ‘n gun Kraut Buster. Any game like this requires a lot of artwork so that is likely taking up most of the time but if you have been wanting to see what there results might be, check out this video below:
[Note that the video does show violence and gore, so there’s a warning for anyone that needs it]
The way the character moves around feels much more like the familiar Metal Slug movement although seeing it scream along at 60FPS like this is quite nice(remember, this is running on the Neo Geo MVS, which was released back in 1990). This video does show a little bit of the different mask abilities and weapons that they are using to help set the game apart from MS. If you’re into “retro 16-bit art”, this seems to fit the bill well, which is helped by the limitations of the hardware (although the modern tools NG has certainly helps).
Since it is a little long and not everyone checks these, I will repost their description of the trailer here:
We have great news for the music, Rafael Dyll is back with a vengeance. With a dramatically increased budget and the fist time with the support of a musician who plays live in the studio his guitar and e-guitar. Having live recordings from a studio musician is a first in one of our games.
The result is a fantastic rocking OST.The sound mixing of the video has priority on the music but we have tons of new SFX in the game too. Currently it has around 2x-3x the amount of SFX than Gunlord. We haven’t decided on voice recordings yet, but we will do some experiments with it later this year too.
As the project increased significantly in size and budget we decided to introduce some kind of mission select structure to the game. So the players can choose the length of the gaming session and the mission parts themselves.
Kraut Buster can be played both as a short and sweet arcade experience or a long more console like session. It also adds more variety and replay value.
The player can also select his military rank (1-PRIVATE,2-CAPTAIN,3-COLONEL) which has a big impact on difficulty. It influences the amount of action and AI of the enemies among other things. The grunts/Zakus are always kinda stupid but they may learn a trick or two in higher difficulties.
We are currently testing whether we allow difficulty selects for each sub mission (kinda like in Death Smiles) or only global.
The video was captured at rank 2-CAPTAIN.The wolf mask was designed for speed runners, it increases both movement speed and weapon power. It’s draw back is that it consumes ammo faster, so it requires a more careful ammo/weapon management.
The video is quite long as it’s purpose is to show new mission parts and general progress. More details will be added but like always in game development that will be done in the last 3 months (polishing phase).
It shows parts of mission 2 (2-2/2-4) and mission 4 (4-1/4-2).
The last video (#2) showed parts of 1-1, 2-1 and 2-3.
This game is currently Q1/Q2 2017 by their guesstimate – what are your thoughts about it?
