Dare Blogs – Gastank Games

Interstate Outlaws is a competitive two-player racer using the Kinect on PC, in which players take on the roles of classic American stylised bikers.

Using the Kinect to steer, players take to the tarmac along a hectic Americana route to battle it out for a place in The Outlaws biker gang! 

Dodging hazards, collecting pick-ups and pushing and shoving, players battle it out for road supremacy. With the Kinect actions, Interstate Outlaws is a brawling racer with classic retro roots in a modern package. 

There is no split-screen gameplay in Interstate Outlaws. Instead both players are located in the same screen space while travelling along the hectic route in order to strengthen the competitive play style.

Both players can bash each other’s hogs, trying to force their rivals into traps and gain the higher score. But this comes with its own risks – get it wrong and players could find that it is them that needs to use the Kinect gestures to fix up your hog and get back into the race. 

Although the players may not be the only thing to worry about in this fast-paced racer, the route itself is a force to be reckoned with, from falling rocks, to oil spills and the occasional train. Nothing is a safe bet along this hazardous road!

Dare is truly a fantastic experience for any young game designer, artist, programmer or audio engineer. Which wouldn’t be possible without the help and support that both the Dare team and the people from Abertay University have provided.

It is outstanding what the teams have created in such a short timeframe, the talent and the amount of commitment that every team member has put into their games is just incredible.

The work we have achieved wouldn’t be possible without the dedication of all five of us. 

Within the team we mostly work on separate areas, ether it be animation, UI design or Kinect. But we do often combine our skills and work together giving feedback on the work of another team member or sharing ideas for the progression of our game.

We have learned so much from the Dare experience that I am unable to explain it all. The fact that Dare is over a nine week period has pushed us to further our knowledge and take advantage of the skills we have developed at Abertay as students over the last four years.

We had our game up and running within a week using placeholder art assets and a basic form of gameplay mechanics, which helped explain our design to the industry mentors during their visits to us.

This resulted in better, more direct feedback and allowed us the time to change or redesign any areas of our game. 

We have been planning what to do for ProtoPlay before we started Dare. With the ProtoPlay visitors being our main audience we wanted to give them the best experience we could. The idea is to have the public to be able to sit down and play our game from the get go! 

The thing we are extremely excited about is seeing the public’s reactions to our game. Seeing the smiling faces of the kids playing it during week six when it was still at a early development stage was a huge buzz for the team. So hopefully we will get the same sort of reactions at ProtoPlay.

Follow Gastank Games on Twitter @Dare2012Gastank to learn more about their game.