Milestone has delivered all manner of racing games over the years, and soon enough, the developer will be adding another one of those to its catalog with Monster Jam Showdown, which will be putting players behind the wheels in, as the name suggests, giant monster trucks. Promising loads of arcade fun, touting a comprehensive career mode, and giving players varied environments to drive around in, there’s plenty about the arcade racer that has looked promising. Ahead of its imminent release, we recently had the opportunity to ask its developers a handful of games about the game and what to expect from it. Below, you can read our interview with game director Federico Spada.
"The Showdown Tour has been created and implemented to give players the freedom to experiment and express themselves as they progress through the game."
The Showdown Tour sounds like a very comprehensive and ambitious campaign mode. Can you tell us more about what kinds of events players can expect in it?
The Showdown Tour has been created and implemented to give players the freedom to experiment and express themselves as they progress through the game. The Showdown Tour contains all different kinds of events: from the ones that fans know more like freestyle and head to heads, to the ones we’ve created specifically for this game such as circuit racing or the special Horde game mode. Players can focus on facing specific kinds of events if they prefer, for example, freestyle instead of racing, and then move to a completely different set of events to get better in that specific discipline. The Showdown Tour is all about tailoring your own experience on yourselves.
How long should it take a player to get done with The Showdown Tour on average?
After some testing and considerations, The Showdown Tour should take players around 10 hours to complete. This time does not take into consideration the time spent to complete challenges to get exclusive and specific rewards such as unlocking new Monster Jam trucks or new paint-outs for them.
The environments in a monster trucks game are obviously crucial to players being able to push their machines to the limits. Can you tell us more about the environments players can expect in Monster Jam Showdown?
After studying US geography we’ve identified three specific areas that we thought could well represent the variety of environments in the United States territory: Alaska, Death Valley, and Colorado. Each one of them is immediately recognizable by its look, with amazing color palette and naturalistic characteristics. On top of that, each one of them is really unique because of the different kinds of weather conditions they can unleash: sandstorms, snowstorms and rainstorms.
"After studying US geography we’ve identified three specific areas that we thought could well represent the variety of environments in the United States territory: Alaska, Death Valley, and Colorado. Each one of them is immediately recognizable by its look, with amazing color palette and naturalistic characteristics."
What was the process for coming up with the environments on a conceptual level and then actually designing them for the gameplay experience?
As I previously mentioned, we wanted to find 3 different kinds of environments that, as a whole, could convey the majesty of nature in the US territory. These 3 biomes were identified because they were really different from each other and could be immediately recognized by players as some of the wildest places on Earth. However, this was just the first part of the challenge. The second part of the challenge was represented when we had to create circuits and wild arenas that could fit these biomes: each zone had their own specific features that we had to use while designing tracks in order to make them feel and play differently.
Monster Jam Showdown is a welcomed rare exception to the norm these days in that it supports local split-screen. What were the challenges associated with getting that up and running for a game with as much going on at any given time as this one?
Split-screen, technically speaking, means having two screens rendering at the same time and I’m sure you can understand how complicated this might easily get. One of the biggest challenges we had to face was actually having it run as smoothly as possible on all the different consoles that we have the game running on. To do so we had to make a lot of iterations with both our environment artist and graphics programmers to identify all the details and assets and effects that we could more or less downgrade in order to achieve a good-looking result and a smooth gameplay. This is not an easy task and takes a lot of time and balance.
"Similar to what we had done with other games, Monster Jam Showdown will have post-launch support."
What should players expect from Monster Jam Showdown as far as your post-launch plans are concerned? Milestone has often supported its games excellently following release. Can we expect something similar for this game?
Similar to what we had done with other games, Monster Jam Showdown will have post-launch support. On top of that, we plan to release different DLCs that will offer players new Monster Jam trucks and a completely new environment. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the DLC is called “Aloha Expansion” so I’ll let you figure out what the new biome will be!
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