We see all kinds of inspiration in new video games from iconic titles of yesteryear. One of the games that you can easily see where the inspiration came from is the upcoming Exophobia title. Zarc Attack is developing this game, and it should arrive on July 23, 2024. As you can see, the game takes cues from franchises like the classic Doom series and Wolfenstein 3D.
In Exophobia, the game throws players into a thrilling action science fiction narrative. We’re a lonely human, the last of our kind within the crew that crashed land into a mysterious planet. Now hunted down by a deadly alien threat, we’re left to fight for survival.
We had the chance to speak with José Castanheira, the developer behind this upcoming title. In our conversation, we learned a little more about their debut commercial release and their insights into the gameplay experience you can expect when Exophobia launches. Hopefully, some of these answers pique your interest in trying this new game out.
Gameranx: How would you describe the game for someone just now coming across Exophobia?
José Castanheira: Exophobia is a retro first person shooter in the style of Wolfenstein 3D (even Doom is more advanced than this game ahah) mixed with metroidvania exploration in a sci-fi environment, where you are one of the last remaining humans trying to escape the planet your crew crashed in and is now being attacked by an hostile alien species. Along the way you uncover what happened before the crash, upgrade your gun with new abilities that give you access to new areas and fight every sort of alien creature and more.
The goal with Exophobia was creating a game that looked nostalgic but at the same time brought something new. You can point the inspirations easily, but it will not play exactly like Doom/Wolfenstein 3D for instance, it tries to modernize the gameplay given the restrictions from that time. By removing a lot of elements we take for granted in the FPS genre (no headshots, no vertical axis, no ammo/reloads, no weapon switching) and exploring the design space from there it was possible to focus more on fun elements like enemy behavior variety and combat based on strategic positioning. The end result is a fast paced retro FPS with a lot of gameplay variety, intercalated with moments of exploration and secret hunting.
Gameranx: When did development start, and how has it changed since it first began?
José: The game was born out of a weekend solo game jam, Ludum Dare, in 2016. At the time, the end result was pretty much unplayable, as I was figuring out how 3D in Game Maker worked. But players seemed to like the concept of a retro FPS in that style. At the time it had a more hand drawn graphic style instead of pixel art, but it already had the same color palette.
I ended up picking the game again in the end of 2019 as my first attempt at a commercial game, starting it from scratch and updating the game design to be what it is now instead of a level based game. At the time it was supposed to take a year of development, which already seemed a lot, but since I was struggling with 3D in Game Maker and it was my first time making a game in this scope I thought it was realistic.
It ended up taking 4 years to complete! With some release announcements with the publisher I signed with, that failed to come true. The scope and features remained pretty much what I thought at the beginning with few cuts, looking back I should have made more. But even though it took so much more time than expected to release, I’m happy with the end result and the amount of content (boss fights, mechanics, extra modes, secrets, etc…). Learned a lot along the way in development, marketing and bizdev.
Gameranx: What were some of the inspirations for Exophobia?
José: There’s actually a Twitter trend happening recently where I participated with Exophobia! Three of the inspirations were Wolfenstein 3D, Metroid Fusion and Megaman IV.
I didn’t play a lot of FPS when I was a kid, as I was not a particular fan of the genre. So Exophobia pretty much came from my need as game developer to make a game in every genre when I was starting out my career and answering the question “What would be an FPS in my style?”. The answer was a more colorful, arcade-y (Nintendo-y?) FPS game, and I guess it shows?
Gameranx: Could you elaborate on how the player feedback aided you as you continued developing the game?
José: There are a lot of examples in the game of features and polish that seems obvious to have now, but weren’t obvious to me at the time I was conceiving the game. The game had a demo out pretty early, in the first Steam Next Fest in 2020, in those first pandemic months, so it evolved a lot since then from player feedback, both in Steam forums, Discord or forms I made to check players intentions. Also watching people play on Youtube and Twitch helped a lot to see the game with fresh eyes, in the place of someone playing the game for the first time.
It’s quite painful to see someone get stuck for hours or give a bad review to a demo because of a silly decision I made ahah so I tried to correct everything I could that made sense to me. That means making the game way easier, as I was adjusting the difficulty to my level, but overall more enjoyable. But most of the things were just small polishes to better teach the mechanics to the player. One big request I had was to have a map available at all times, since the game palette makes everything look the same and the maze like rooms don’t help. I was very stubborn with this, as I wanted the players to make a mental map of where they are and discover things by themselves, but eventually I found a middle ground, with a map of your surroundings you can use at all times, but it has batteries so you can’t have it open all the time while you walk!
You can recharge them at every checkpoint, where you can also check the full version of the map for how long you need. Other thing that was requested was a way to switch up colors because players could get tired of seeing the same palette. So I decided to add different palettes in the form of secret collectables, which change the color of the game and even added some fun ones to make the game look like a Game Boy game or a ZX Spectrum game!
Gameranx: Are there plans for Exophobia post-launch or should we expect the next game project venture to start up?
José: I would love to thank all the players that supported the game with a free content update in the future, maybe for the one year anniversary if the game does well! But you never know. One thing I’ve seen requested was a level editor or a multiplayer mode, which would be big content updates. I would love to do that, but as a solo dev those would be though challenges.
Maybe if it sells well enough to hire more people ahaha. If that’s not possible, I still want to release an extra mode with a little bit more content, with challenges for the pro players, as a gift to everyone who bought the game. Meanwhile, I’ll be working on a new project (or more, still not sure) but taking it less serious this time, as Exophobia ended up becoming a huge thing for me from the idea of a small debut game. I want to explore more game genres and essentially have fun with it!
Gameranx: Can you offer an update on where you are in terms of development or preparing the physical release of this game?
José: Internally, I finished development at the end of last year. The console ports are being handled by an external team thanks to my publisher. I preferred it that way as I didn’t have any experience with it, and honestly, I’d rather make the game than all the technical stuff of making it work on each console and all the extra work with the stores there. But this also means that certification has been kind of hard with all the back and forth and required a lot of changes on my end, so development never really stopped in a way. Everything is looking good now, and we are confident it will release in the announced date July 23, 2024.
Again, we don’t have to wait too much longer before Exophobia hits the marketplace. Players interested in giving this title a chance will find it available on July 23, 2024, for the PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The game will also be available physically at select retailers such as Best Buy, GameStop, Walmart, Video Game Plus, and Amazon.
