Last week we brought Blocky Dungeon, a fantastic title that combines two genres as disparate as puzzles with roguelikes . Nor should it surprise us, since the waves of fashions and trends are natural and that this format has become so fashionable among the indie scene has its consequences.
Returnal is another newly created game that takes roguelike to triple A and this is how we benefit from seeing different points of view. And since we not only have to look at the future, it is well worth taking a look at the past and rescue the great jewels that we have had in hand. For this reason, few shine more than Half-Life, Valve’s masterpiece.
A twist
Released in 1998, Gordon Freeman still can’t believe the day he had to live at the Black Mesa facility . In the middle of morning coffee, an alien invasion from another dimension decides that it is a good time to destroy everything they find.
With this premise, one of the fathers of first-person shooters was shaped, who not only used his benefits during the confrontations, but was full of details that still amaze today. The same feeling that came across a video of a game in which good old Gordon shoots headcrabs and zombies from an isometric perspective .
The person responsible for such a marvel is the independent developer Pinky and the name of his project is Half-Life: Loop . When we ask him how the idea light bulb lit up in his mind, he makes two things clear: he is a follower of the game universe and he is a handyman creating roguelikes .
“I have always been a huge fan of Half-Life and have always wanted to create my own mod or game based on that universe, lately I have been experimenting a lot with the roguelike genre because my main project: Rogue Mansion, is a roguelike game survival horror, so I could say the idea came from a bit of that. “
The ingredients to differentiate
Be careful, we are not talking about a work that only transfers the concepts of the roguelike to Half-Life . There will be a ration of history to create context and, why not, experiment with situations in which Valve did not delve deep enough.
Everything takes place between the end of the first game and Half-Life 2 and the always mysterious G-Man places Gordon in a time loop to “pass different tests and he will only be released from that loop when he completes them all.” We will have to wait for the final launch to know more details.
Of course, you have to arm yourself with patience, since Pinky points to “before 2023” as an approximate framework to see the light. Currently Half-Life: Loop is still building its foundations and laying the foundations.
“The game started its development recently, I have not developed the levels yet, I am first doing all the main mechanics: movement, weapons, enemies, etc … and then I start creating the levels / rooms”.
These rooms are one of the fundamental pillars on which the game is built. “Each game will take place in a series of procedurally connected, hand-created rooms ,” reveals Pinky. In each of them there will be different dangers to overcome, with platforms and known enemies that will stalk us. However, it has not been too difficult to take the step to the genre.
“Half-Life has many elements that can work very well within a roguelite, it has a great variety of enemies, weapons, Black Mesa lends itself very well to create levels with modular rooms, the HEV Suit serves to justify different improvements / advantages and the plot can be perfectly adapted to the theme of dying repeatedly. “
Adapt the past, look to the future
Much less work stays here. Using the resources of the original game, the truth is that you have to pass the corresponding coat of paint . Today’s resolutions can bring out the flaws of the past, so a makeup process is necessary for some textures and modeling.
“I’m redoing all the Gordon Freeman animations and tweaking all the weapon models to make them look better from a third-person perspective because they suffer from very low quality as Half-Life is first-person, the rest are simple improvements in some details at a general level “.
Half-Life: Loop is a huge task for Pinky to do, nothing more. That is why it uses Patreon as a platform to support the viability of the title. A panorama that can disturb more than one developer, but he uses everything he learned in his previous work.
“I will use the help from Patreon to pay for any expenses related to the project as external assets to simplify the work as well as to be able to spend more time on this project, ” says Pinky.
Itch.io will be the place where Half-Life: Loop sees the light in a few years. Meanwhile, you can take a look at Rogue Mansion , his other work which has a demo through this link.
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