Scraper: First Strike looks like an interesting VR action game

Hello Jim, nice to meet you! Tell me what “Scraper: First Strike” is and make my readers fall in love with it.

First, thank you for the time, it is greatly appreciated. Scraper is an original RPG sci-fi shooter that places gamers in the future megacity of New Austin, Texas, where they must battle renegade robots in high-rise skyscraper complexes to save humanity.

A standalone game, Scraper: First Strike, Episode I, will premiere on all four major VR platforms in late 2018, in advance of the full Scraper game scheduled for a 2020 release on console and PC. Our goal with Scraper was to do something different and add to the incredible VR experiences that already exists.

We didn’t want to create just VR game, but a new IP. Scraper offers full locomotion, large levels to explore, dynamic missions, engineering, scavenging all wrapped in a fun shooter. We are building it to be more like a full-featured PC or Console game.

So, do you plan building a full saga?

Yes, Scraper: First Strike is Episode I in a series of 3 games we have planned for the IP. Each game will have 5 Episodes, or 15 in total. We teamed up with the legendary bestselling sci-fi author Ryder Windham to write the prequel novel. Ryder has over 80 books to his credit, mostly in the Star Wars, Transformers and Indiana Jones space. The book ends right where the game begins and builds up the world, characters and story brilliantly.

When is the release date and what will be the price?

Each episode is a complete game by itself. Numerous levels, bosses, objectives and a final boss. For Oculus, Vive, Steam and WMR, we are releasing on 11/21/18 and for PSVR on 12/18/18. The full game doesn’t have a hard date, but somewhere around 2020.

How the full game will be different from episode 1? And how are you thinking taking in count the evolution that headsets and controllers will have in these two years?

The technical advancements in VR is a big part of releasing it episodically. With each new version of headset, advancements in computers and VR tech, we can keep pushing the limits with VR. The full game is planned to release on PC and Console, as well as VR. There will be big quality differences with the PC and Console stream versions of the game.

What are the three features of the game that you think people will love the most?

The lore would be one. We have tons of lore in the game that you come across for every type of item. This is stored in your codex and can be accessed at any point on your RIST interface. We’ve also included the book in game with a VR reader. What better place to learn about New Austin than inside New Austin itself? Combat and boss fights would be another highlight of the game. It’s really fun to play and we’ve tried to make the enemies and boss fights original. We packed Episode I with numerous enemy and weapon types.

Another feature are the RPG elements like engineering and scavenging. You can loot schematics, farm for parts, build weapons with random mod slots and add mods to those slots. We think players will have a fun time building up their characters.

How has been hard developing a cross-platform game? How did you do it?

That was a studio wide choice. We wanted as many people as possible to be able to experience the world of Scraper. We designed a path forward to hit all the major VR platforms. Very challenging, but we hope the end result is great for the VR community. We had to get dev kits from Sony, Oculus, Vive and WMR. Then it was building the main stream in Unreal and branching off when needed. The hardest part of this is the control scheme. Since each platform has its own unique controls, we had to be very careful when making changes because it could have massive implications with a particular build.

What have been the greatest technical lessons learned while during Scraper?

VR has limits and trying to push them doesn’t always work out well. We’ve tried to make Scraper as cutting edge as possible. We’ve had plenty of bumps in the road along the way and realized it’s not one big thing, but a thousand little things that make it all work. Learning how to get the right combination of LODs, the correct texture map size, poly count, occlusion based design, instancing, particle effects on screen and numerous other factors all halted our progress at one point or another.

Part of the reason it all came together was due to the brilliant team we have. Everyone excels in their discipline, are passionate gamers and this made things easier to work through. Going from PCVR to PSVR was the biggest challenge. You lose some quality and need to make cuts for it all to work. We’re happy with the end result and hope VR enthusiasts will be too.

Beat Saber has shown us how marketing is as important as development. How are your marketing the game and what are the marketing lessons that you have learned?

It’s an amazing game. They have done a masterful job with the title.

Heavy community involvement has been a big thing for us. Things like online forums, newsgroups and social media have given us invaluable information to build the game. The supportive community pushes us to do better. Marketing is really tough in entertainment. You are competing against the big studios that spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising. There are also some incredible Indie games that do really well like Beat Saber. Word of mouth is a ferocious marketing power in VR. We hope we deliver something that captures that same effect.

How is being an indie VR studios? Earning money with VR is hard now. Have you some suggestions for people that want to take your same road?

Things take longer than you plan for, mistakes happen, unforeseen technical and artistic issues come up all the time. Whatever your budget is, double it and make sure you can extend your timeframe if needed. I would also strongly suggest not doing it purely for profit. That’s difficult to do right now. We are in it for the long haul and want to build a studio for the long-term.

Scraper is our first step and the ultimate goal is to become a developer that bigger studios want to work with while our in-house IPs become part of gaming culture. Building an incredible team, working with the community and delivering a quality product are the immediate goals of the studio.

Is there some secret about the game that you want to reveal me?

Let me think on that one. I can tell you there are no dinosaurs in the game at all! I have not mentioned that to anyone! : )

Is there something else that you want to add?

For those who love full-featured RPG shooters with a great story, lots of lore and the ability to build up your character over time, we hope you check out Scraper: First Strike when it is released!