Hey all!
Can you believe it’s been 10 years already? Feels like yesteryear that Amplitude appeared in the 4X Space and staked their claim to Fame! From our humble beginnings with Endless Space, building our VIP program and spearheading what would eventually become the Early Access program on Steam, to our "Magnum Opus" in the works Humankind, Amplitude has come a long way. While I’ve been a fan of Amplitude’s games from the start, I only joined them a few years ago, so for a closer look at Amplitude’s journey, I will hand it over to our founder, SpaceTroll:
SpaceTroll wrote
10 years of Amplitude …
Endless Space…
I had a dream that we could create a strategy game that would put you in the shoes of a galactic emperor in a really immersive way. It had to feel like living a space opera, but to do that we would need to put a lot of effort into the art, music, and writing.
We believed that it was more a matter of having the right people, than just putting a lot of money into certain game elements. In the end it was definitely harder than we thought, but by going a little bit nuts with the factions, we began to understand what it would take to make our universe amazing. It was just the first stepping stone; from there, we were able to push the boundaries even further with Endless Legend.
It definitely was not easy to push the 4x genre to where it would be about more than just the mechanics, but I am glad we fought for it.
Endless Legend.
Though my reason for going in the video game industry was to be able to create Humankind one day, my first game design ever was the ancestor of Endless Legend. We pitched it to Cryo Interactive and were about to sign it when we got sacked because they faced financial troubles! That was a very difficult moment. To be honest, we were just a bunch a crazy students at the time, and we actually had no idea how to finish the game. Now, I’m glad that we waited long enough to have the time to properly work on it, and to build an experienced team who could tackle it.
The key idea was to create a fantasy world that evolved over time. Our first mockups had dragons with mounted laser guns in the last eras… frankly, it was a bit tacky, but fun!
Endless Legend is where we really pushed the idea of asymmetrical gameplay. My motto was:” we cannot guarantee balance, we can only guarantee the asymmetry.” That freed us, allowing us to create really different gameplay styles, some more complex than others… and the lack of balance wasn’t so bad, thanks to our community!
Dungeon of the Endless
Initially, the game was supposed to create a link between Endless Space and Endless Legend… but we quickly fell in love with it. The basic idea came out during a drunken evening, where we said: ”What if, for once, you don’t have to go explore a dungeon, but you have to escape from it? What if you do not attack it, but defend it from hordes of monsters?”
And a week later, we started production!
Endless Space 2:
In Endless space 2 we wanted to revisit the daily life of the galactic emperor and their people while presenting really dynamic cinematic battles. It was a chance to be able to push the art and universe writing even further. I think we only scratched the surface, but it shows some great directions where we can keep investigating...
It is always difficult when working on a game like that, because you can easily fall into creating a really rich simulation -- instead of a fun game.
Slowhands wrote:
Endless Space -- known as "Star Empire" pretty much up until release -- was a complete shot in the dark. None of us had ever made a 4X game, so we were betting on the idea that cinematic battles, a fluid UI, and beautiful art would make it stand out. We also bet that a strong community would help us catch the problems that might derail us, luckily with G2G everything went even better than we hoped. We also did tons of universe development, just in case we didn't go bankrupt and could go on to do other games... It was a work of true indie dev: a small studio with a fixed amount of money hurtling towards an unmovable deadline of either success or bankruptcy.
Endless Legend was the sum of all the cool ideas we had while developing ES and playing other games. We had learned a lot about 4X, and decided we were ready to take the terrifying leap of adding terrain and maps. A lot of the Amplitude trademarks really came into their own in EL -- the phenomenal 3D art, the asymmetric faction design, the narrative and lore layers, the region-based map system -- and of course we were incredibly happy with how it was received.
Dungeon of the Endless was indeed the result of a few designers having one too many beers at a B2G and fantasizing about a rogue-like dungeon crawler with tower defense where you manage a whole squad so it includes some RPG elements... The kind of thing that if you read in the cold light of day in a design doc you would never agree to. But we decided to go ahead, as it was a small team and the studio wanted to keep creative juices flowing outside of the big 4X projects. It's a weird little gem that helped remind us of out indie roots, and was incredibly fun to make.
Love Thyself isn't on the same level as our other games; it was made part-time by two and a half people and given away for free. The idea was formed essentially as a punch line -- "How do you do a dating sim in a society where everyone is an identical clone?" -- but we actually had a lot of fun (and deadline stress) plotting it out and pulling the art and writing together.
We said in the announcements that Humankind is the game we founded the studio for -- and that is not an exaggeration. It's there, back in our initial business plans, the "Civ-like" game that I think we intended to ship in 2016 or something because we really didn't understand how large the other 4X games were going to be! It pulls together everything we have learned from our previous games, and is Amplitude's effort to leave the indie 4X sci-fi corner and go more mainstream. There is so much dedication and passion going into it; it is by a long shot the biggest and most demanding project we have done in our 10 years.
Endless Dungeon will be a return to the past, but with a more experienced team and six additional years of game-making wisdom. The original has a special place in our hearts due to its style and personality, so it was really only a matter of time before we figured out how to follow it up. The new one isn't identical, but it will be as close as we can get without pixel art and with direct hero control. Stay tuned -- it's going to be a great ride!
A lot can happen in ten years, and a lot goes into making games and building a great community, so there’s way more history to Amplitude than we could possibly fit into a single blogpost. Instead, e’ve compiled some fun facts for you to enjoy:
That's a lot of heroes, and a lot of coffee...
Some of these numbers surprised even us! We’ve done so much already, but we couldn’t have done it without our community, without the votes and contests, the discussions on the forums, or our VIPs to give us early feedback. From all of us at Amplitude:
Thank you for ten great years, and let’s keep those numbers going up!
- The Amplitude Team