by RootSec
Cascadia Games is right in the swing of getting its most recent title Moon Raider ported onto PS4, Switch, and Xbox One consoles. So, as the game prepares to hit more platforms and reach out to new fans, the indie developer has sat down to talk about bringing the game to consoles and developing with a small team.
Game Rant spoke with Cascadia Games about the upcoming port of Moon Raider from Mobile and Steam to consoles, discussing all of the above and then some.
GR: What were some of the challenges in development of porting Moon Raider from PC to Console?
Jorgensen: Honestly, overall, it went very smoothly. A few years ago I decided to rewrite the game from scratch in Unity so it could be a truly multi-platform game. Prior to that, it was written in Torque 2D, which was a great game engine for a long time, but it was no longer supported and had no reasonable route to modern consoles.
GR: Was there any one console between the PS4, Switch, and Xbox One that was easier or harder to get Moon Raider running properly on?
Jorgensen: The biggest challenge was getting co-op to work properly on the Switch. For co-op mode, you can’t just have a person hit a button on a second gamepad to join. Player one has to hold down a button to bring up the controller prompt, and then player two can join. So it took more effort to set up and it’s not as smooth of an experience as it is on other consoles.
GR: Will there be any new content for players to find in the console version of Moon Raider, such as new enemies or upgrades?
Jorgensen: It’s a virtually identical version, just with a few additional tutorials, a new main menu, etc. If it does well enough on consoles, I have some ideas to further expand the game and / or its universe.
GR: Are there any plans to bring any of Cascadia Games’ other titles like Ammo Pigs or Mighty Aphid to console after Moon Raider?
Jorgensen: The plan is to have Mighty Aphid out this year on consoles. But that’s at a really early stage, so I can’t say much beyond that. As for Ammo Pigs, I’m looking into how to scale it up to something that will work well on consoles.
GR: Moon Raider’s art style and gameplay call back to classic, 2D titles, but is there any one game or games that acted as a major inspiration during development?
Jorgensen: Visually, we looked at 16-bit Metroid and Mega Man, of course. But it wasn’t until I saw the indie games “Eagle Island” and “Flynn: Son of Crimson” that I felt like we had to take the game’s art to another level. We took a lot of inspiration from those games. We added details, changed the palette, and even redrew the main character Ava — twice! I think the end result made Moon Raider visually competitive with many of its indie peers.
As far as gameplay goes, I ended up pulling extra inspiration from Mighty No. 9 of all things. When I first played it, I had assumed that dashing through enemies healed you. That turned out not to be the case. But I thought it was a cool idea anyway. So I added that into the main dash mechanic in Moon Raider.
GR: Is there another upcoming project in store from Cascadia Games once the Moon Raider ports have launched?
Jorgensen: Years ago I pitched to license a classic 90s platform game IP. Technically, I can’t say which one because I’m still under NDA. Ultimately, after months of discussions, I withdrew my interest in the license. As a result, I was left with a lot of unused artwork. Most of that is going into a new game called “Bay Lynx”. I’m still experimenting with the gameplay. I haven’t quite found its pace just yet.
GR: Will the PS4 and Xbox One versions of Moon Raider be backwards compatible with next gen consoles?
Jorgensen: Absolutely! It looks fantastic in 4K, I might add.
GR: Since moving to new consoles will bring in new players, are there any boss encounters or levels that you’re excited for new players to see?
Jorgensen: My goal with the game from day one was to create an experience that stayed fresh from start to finish. At the same time, I wanted to keep it as simple as it could be while keeping it interesting. So I hope folks just enjoy that it for what it is — a fun, accessible experience.
GR: Are there any unique challenges or benefits of indie development when preparing a title to release on multiple systems?
Jorgensen: Indies tend to work in small teams. So it has the same pluses and minuses small teams have on any software project. Communication and trust are high, which is great. But testing can be a challenge. There are so many hardware models, OS versions, etc, that you have to be strategic with your QA because you won’t have access to every combination — and even if you did, you won’t have enough personnel bandwidth to exhaustively test on each one. That was another reason I tried to keep the complexity at sort of a “just enough” level. Because any time you add another feature to your game, you’re possibly expanding the testing needs beyond your team’s capacity to thoroughly vet it.
Moon Raider is available now for Mobile and PC, with a PS4, Switch, and Xbox One release set for April 23rd.
