RymdResa Q&A: Adding Poetry to Space Gaming…

A little while back, I was made aware of a new space game called RymdResa, which had an interesting premise. While many space games include exploration and discovery, few eschew with combat entirely, which is one of many RymdResa’s interesting twists. With a poetic sense of space, a focus on a relaxing adventure, and text adventures without lasers or other types of typical space explodery, RymdResa looked like a very curious animal indeed. I therefore reached out to the developers at Morgondag, Kim Gunnarsson and Vendela Carlberg Larsson, to find out more about this intriguing game. Their answers are below, and I hope you’ll enjoy them. :)

Brian Rubin: First off, could you please give a quick description of what RymdResa is and what kind of gameplay it gives to the player?

Kim & Vendela: RymdResa is a poetic space adventure.

The game is divided into three chapters, including things as text-based exploration, a level-up-system where you choose orientation, a procedural world with different zones, randomized loot, ship customization trough items, dangers in space, unlocking events, art, beautiful music and poetry.

Each chapter will contain a main mission, when the players are done with this main mission they can enter the next chapter. The game is non-violent; the player can only protect himself/herself with shields.

BR: What is the ultimate goal for the player in the game, and how can they go about attaining that goal?

K & V: RymdResa have 3 chapters with different objectives. In order to beat them you need to basically survive, visit certain coordinates, gather material and unlock monoliths. In order to do that successfully you need to unlock ships, gather good items, level up and evolve.

BR: The game looks to have both ship and planet customization. What kind of options are available for customizing your ship, and how do you gain new equipment?

K & V: Each ship has up to 8 different item slots Engine, Style, Aura, Follower and two Custom slots. You can also unlock an orb and a shield.

Items can be found from exploration, from quests and some can be found laying around in space. Items are randomly generated with different rank and stats. A truly epic pilot only have legendary items and can roam the universe at his will. Some items increase your item finding, some items like seeker droid goes out and search for you. Your pilot level and stat points also plays a big role in how you obtain items.

BR: Do you get to choose the planet you customize, or is it your home planet at the beginning of the game? How do you go about gaining improvements for it? Research? Resource gathering? What are the benefits of customizing your planet?

K & V: The home planet is part of Chapter Two, your main objective here is to gather resources from other planets, ships and satellites you find in space. Every time you level-up your planet you get to choose one of 8 skills. In the last stage of the home-planet, you get to choose a mother-ship. Essentially you have to level up your home-planet in order to proceed to chapter 3.

BR: In the videos I saw, it appears as if your ship uses up its resources based on how much time goes by. How does one gather the resourced needed to keep going? The video wasn’t fully clear on this.

K & V: Resources comes in spare supply, you lose resources ones every year in space, and every time you use boost or your engine. You can refuel at your mother-ship, home-planet, from exploration from consumable items and if you’re lucky, you can find refuel stations in space. Once you lose all your resources you are dead so it’s important to reserve resources. Some items also increase resources. You can also put points into survival when leveling up your pilot level.

BR: I saw in the videos that when approaching a planet or asteroid, for example, an explore button appears. What happens when you click that button? Do you go down to the surface, or do you just gain resources, for example?

K & V: Exploration in RymdResa is a text-based experience; you will be presented with a written event. Some with two choices, where you need to pick the outcome. Exploration quests are randomly picked, based on exploration type. Exploration is the main way to interact with objects in space, some special objects like space shops or teleportation can also be explored or activated.

BR: The game also looks to have missions, so how does one acquire missions and what kind of missions might be available to the player?

K & V: The missions refer to the main missions of each chapter; Chapter One is about hope and finding a new home. Chapter Two is about collecting materials for your home planet. Chapter Three involves unlocking secrets in the dangerous nether space.

BR: The game also apparently involves text adventures. How do these work exactly, and could you give us an example of how one plays out?

K & V: Explorations sometimes present you with two choices where the outcome is based on what you pick. Every quest with a choice has two different outcomes on the same answerer.

BR: The art style is pretty awesome, looking like it’s all on an old CRT. What was the inspiration for that?

K & V: Pixelart in general, we love pixelart! We wanted to create a really stylized and restricted art-style. We thought about the color restrict of old systems like the Gameboy and drew our inspiration from that. We really wanted space to have a united look and created the theme for RymdResa out from that.

BR: An interesting angle is that your game has no combat. How was this decision reached, and have you found it’s given you more freedom in your design or has it constrained you at all?

K & V: There is no combat in RymdResa but there are a lot of ways to die. We were so tired of that every space game involved killing everything on the screen with laser-beams and explosions, we wanted to create a calm and relaxing adventure with music, poetry and art.

BR: Finally, what inspired you to make this game, and what would you say to other game designers searching for their own inspiration to help them find it?

K & V: We are creative individuals we love to create, we have always created stuff, if you have the feeling inside of you that you want to create something, go do it! When doing things you get inspired, don’t ever sit and wait for the inspiration to come. Just create things! And have fun when doing so, try to not feel stressed about it. It should always be relaxing to create, make it a daily routine and the inspiration will come. Of course you also have to force yourself sometimes, but you should never give up. And finish your projects, you should always finish them!