''Rymdkapsel'' is a 2013

minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post– World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...

real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to p ...

video game by indie developer Grapefrukt, the studio of Martin Jonasson. Players build a space station using

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pieces while managing resources and minions, defending against attacks, and extending the base towards four monoliths at the edges of the level. The game was built over a year and a half and was inspired by the base-building aspects of the ''

Command & Conquer ''Command & Conquer'' (''C&C'') is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game franchise, first developed by Westwood Studios. The first game was one of the earliest of the RTS genre, itself based on Westwood Studios' influential strategy game '' Dune ...

'' series. It was Jonasson's first full game as an indie developer. ''Rymdkapsel'' was released on May 7, 2013 for

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,_and_was_later_ported_to_iOS,_Android_(operating_system).html" ;"title="iOS.html" ;"title="pdate: Press release added Joystiq. Retrieved on 2013-08-23.) was a software framework us ...

Gameplay

space station

on a flat plane using

-shaped floors that represent rooms. Rectangular workers generate the resources to build more spaces by working in these rooms. The workers occasionally must defend the base against attackers, who come in waves of increasing difficulty. The player can have the workers research four TMA-1-style monoliths for additional shield, speed, and generator upgrades. Rooms are used for special purposes: mineral mining (extractors), growing food (gardens), cooking it (kitchens), making workers (quarters), and creating power (reactors). The goal is to flourish and protect the station's inhabitants, but there are three concrete objectives: research all four monoliths, survive 28 waves, and research all monoliths in under 45 minutes. The game ends if all workers are killed. There is a tutorial, but no story. The player is not specifically told about the endgame goals.

Development

In 2012, Grapefrukt developer Martin Jonasson began to make a space station game that considered what he found enjoyable and least stressful about real-time strategy games. The game coalesced as he revised and removed features over the course of its year and a half of development. ''Rymdkapsel'' was written in

Haxe Haxe is an open source high-level cross-platform programming language and compiler that can produce applications and source code, for many different computing platforms from one code-base. It is free and open-source software, released under the ...

, a programming language similar to

ActionScript 3 ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meaning ...

that let Jonasson use the same code base for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

, Android, and PC releases. He had used the language for years and had been making games for 20 years, primarily with

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Fla ...

. Jonasson left his web development job in 2010 to "go indie", and ''Rymdkapsel'' was his "first full-time game". The game's name translates as "

space capsule A space capsule is an often-crewed spacecraft that uses a blunt-body reentry capsule to reenter the Earth's atmosphere without wings. Capsules are distinguished from other satellites primarily by the ability to survive reentry and return a payl ...

" in the Swedish language, which Jonasson liked as a title for its uniqueness and foreign overtones, though he acknowledged that the name was difficult for English speakers and made the game hard to find in the App Store. He began the game after the 2012

Game Developers Conference The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tuto ...

as a weeklong diversion from another project, and slowly iterated into a full version. Jonasson started to prototype a game about a space station with a hull breach that releases the station's occupants into outer space. Within a day, he built a feature where players could build the station using

blocks. He liked this direction better than the hull breach, and abandoned the latter idea by the end of prototyping. He built the room construction mechanics within a day, and to make the construction more challenging, later added three different resources to be spent towards room construction. When the resources did not "look as interesting" as he wanted, he added minions to defend the station. The minions—shown as small white boxes—have retained their original design. It is an example of the minimalist design theme that pervades the work. Jonasson has said that he kept the

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

"a bit stupid on purpose" (doing things such as stealing food intended for other minions) because he found their actions "a bit adorable". He otherwise removed the features he felt were not vital to the game. Jonasson then added "conflict" to the game by putting the minions in danger of being removed. If he ever got stuck visually, he would turn on ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' until he got some inspiration. Jonasson's game design was inspired by

game ''

'', where he enjoyed managing his home base but not attacking the enemy. He designed the game to last 45 minutes, which he felt to be a proper length, whereupon the difficulty ramps up to require station defense over base construction. He felt that it was reasonable to reach all four monoliths within that time to be ready for the endgame sequence, and that the limit made players expand outwards rather than keeping the station small and easy to defend. The sole

map A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although ...

is hand-balanced, which made him reluctant to fulfill player requests to randomize it. He also considered adding a "zen" mode, which would pressure the player less. The music was composed by Niklas Ström. The game was released on May 7, 2013 for PlayStation Vita and

PlayStation Mobile PlayStation Mobile (formerly PlayStation SuiteHinkle, David. (2012-06-04 HTC is first partner for 'PlayStation Mobile,' the new name for PlayStation Suite [Update: Press release added Joystiq. Retrieved on 2013-08-23.) was a software framework us ...

. It was later included as a prize for completing "quests" in a Sony E3 2013 promotion. It is available on Android via the PlayStation Mobile app. The

and Android releases were released on July 25, 2013. Microsoft Windows, OS X, and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

versions were released on January 30, 2014.

Reception

The game received "generally favorable" reviews, according to video game review score aggregator

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

. Critics compared ''Rymdkapsel'' gameplay to ''

Tetris ''Tetris'' (russian: link=no, Тетрис) is a puzzle video game created by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. It has been published by several companies for multiple platforms, most prominently during a dispute over the appro ...

'' and ''SimCity''. Of its visual style, ''The New York Times'' published that the game makes others in the

genre "feel needlessly garnished". Reviewers generally appreciated the game's simplicity and challenge, but not its brevity and slow start. IGN's Steve Watts thought that the game made too many "design concessions" to its minimalism, though he considered the style "gorgeous", and felt that he was never fully in control of his base. ''Eurogamer'' Tom Bramwell said that the game's minimalism extended to its core gameplay, where the player should strive to "play the game less and less". Joseph Leray of ''TouchArcade'' described the game's Balance (game design), balance and pacing as "impeccable". He gave ''Rymdkapsel'' a perfect score and wrote that it felt as if it were custom-made for iOS. Bryan Vore of ''Game Informer'' criticized the game's lack of features and thought that it "fizzled out with no fanfare" as a "creative" idea but without sufficient "polish". ''The Verge''s Trent Wolbe called the soundtrack "a minimalist achievement". Jonasson announced that the game had sold 200,000 copies as of December 2, 2013, due in large part to its inclusion in a Humble Bundle sale.

References

External links

*
Official soundtrack
{{Portal bar, Video games, border=yes 2013 video games Android (operating system) games Indie video games IOS games Linux games MacOS games PlayStation Vita games PlayStation Network games Real-time strategy video games Video games developed in Sweden Windows games

Gameplay

Development

Reception

See also

References

External links