RIOT Update #1: Who? What? When? How? Why?

To you, dear backers, fans and whoever is reading this post right now, we are proud to announce that after a long time of intense work, pain, stress, programming, drawing and lots of other fun things, we have finally started our development blog.

“Where have you been all this time?”

That, my friends, is a fair and legitimate doubt that may have taken some of you. There was no vital sign: we did not update the Facebook page, and the IndieGoGo campaign page was desert. Well, the answer is simple: we have been hard at work on RIOT, the game that we are all waiting for. In this post I am going to explain and break down some of the main aspects of the development. Some bits have already been revealed, but this is our first, big, post that is going to sum up and describe what is going on.

Part 1: Who are you?

Thanks to our backers’ support, the team is now as big as we need it to be. Five people are running the development, full steam ahead.
The team is composed of, in a very random order, Leonard Menchiari, the game director, he who brings the vision and carries us all. He is also the main artist of the game, and a pretty good one if you ask me (Check out the speedpaint and the gifs!).

Then there is Mattia, who is, well, me. I take care of the game design, a.k.a. “How the game works”. Leonard has the vision, and I turn it into game mechanics. It is pretty fun to mess around with an entertaining, but realistic system like the one in RIOT.

Then we have Giuseppe Navarria and Danilo Catalano, our two programmers. Both on Unity, respectively on optimization/shadows, and game logic. Last but not least is Giulio Perrone, our second artist. He is been helping a lot, and the art of the game is now proceeding at double the speed now.

As you can see, the team is all Italian, but our “office” is the internet. In fact while Leonard and Giulio hang out in Turin, Giuseppe and Danilo live in Catania, and I am located in Holland.

Part 2: What is this game about after all?

We have noticed that there is some confusion going around the gameplay of RIOT, so we should address it. RIOT is, first of all, a simulator. It tries to realistically portray the behavior of rioters and policemen during several real riots, which have actually happened in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and Spain.

Second of all, RIOT is made of two game genres. If the player chooses to play as the rioters, he will find a game that is strategic, but it is mostly about fast-pace reactions to the situations happening all around him. What I mean by that is that there will be very little time for planning, and it will mostly be about responding.
This is does not mean that the strategic component is cut out, but just that the response time will have be short. This section of the game will be about controlling a chaotic (but not random) mass of people.

The second genre belongs to the policemen. When played through this faction, the game becomes more similar to a strategy game.
It is more organized, orders are sent through an actual “button-y” user interface (instead of the gestures used for the rioter), and the game is more focused on planning rather than fast response. Both component are still present, but the policemen faction is more organized and logical.

Part 3: You promised me a beta!

And a promise is a promise. We are trying to release the beta version of RIOT for PC and Macs in November. We are still not exactly sure about the precise date, but it is going to be around that month for sure.

It may be a problem to release a beta version on tablets, so we will perhaps distribute the .APK to all our android users instead of deploying for the Google play Store. We will look into options to release a beta version on the App Store and Google Play Store, but that we cannot promise yet.
In case you may want to pre-order it, that option is available on our website, http://riotgame.org.

We are going to say more about the gameplay in the next post, that will explain in depth how the rule system works, and show some footage in the form of gifs and videos.

Part 4: Real pictures and unlockable

A really cool feature of the game that we can now announce is that since ALL the campaigns and levels will be based on actual riots, each level will unlock a real “object” belonging to that specific protest. Whether it is a picture, a video, a description, an article, there will always be something to watch and/or read about the level you just played.

Part 5: Level editor, and the mission

Something that we think has not been discussed enough yet, is our intention with the game, and how releasing a level editor is going to be fundamental in that regard. The idea is that RIOT will not only be a game, but also a platform, or even an information source.

Players will be able to re-create the riots that are currently going on in the world, and use the video game to spread awareness about them. Through user generated content and developers update, RIOT wants to achieve an informational goal.

Too many times these events are not covered by the national media, so many lost everything and still keep on fighting. Too many voices are dying unheard.
Something has to be done.

Stay tuned.