As the day quickly approaches to Project Wingman’s 1.0 release, we think it’s best to put out some reports whose goals are to bring us all to a common understanding as to what the game will be on release. So sit right there and let’s all get ready, together.
The story mode of Project Wingman, the campaign, is the first half of Project Wingman’s single player mode. It is the constructed mission experience of a mercenary pilot known as Monarch, leading his allies to save a country against an imperial power known as the Federation. We’ve all heard this type of story before, and what better way to pay homage to these types of games than having such a campaign in Project Wingman?
This campaign will put you in the position to show off your mettle as a fighter pilot, destroying enemies that will do everything in their power to stop you. Ace pilots, flying airships, insurmountable odds and excruciating firepower will be turned against you, but you’ll kill them all on your path to complete a contract for a country under siege. No big deal right?
All this while you’re accompanied by two wingmen, an AWACS (and maybe a WSO), with a cadre of supporting voices from the sidelines.
In a world where history has reset, the earth itself is at hazard as people fight over its resources. Mercenary is a common term and great air ships crowd the skies as fire keeps the world turning. That’s where Project Wingman finds itself.
Lore-wise, this world has a history, a before, and even an after this game’s events. It is a stage that we may yet do many things in, but for now, this is our first foray into the World on Fire.
This is our first major game trying to pull anything like this off, and the standards which we speak to from other games are among the highest in not only this genre, but this industry.
The storytelling of those games which precede us are on a measure we strive to match, but remaining realistic, we do not have the outright capacity to completely match. As a two man team in regards to developing the campaign, it would be unreasonable to expect us to do such a thing on our first time around, and to expect something that is equal to the old masters in terms of our campaign and story telling is perhaps fanciful. We ask you to temper those expectations.
Unfortunately we couldn’t afford cutscenes, as is tradition in this genre, and for this reason the game’s story progresses entirely in what we consider ingame. Rather than try to half-ass a story which relied on external storytelling elements, we decided to rather work with what we have and contain it down to what we are able to do ingame.
In Project Wingman’s story lies a straightforward, cohesive experience from beginning to end, all of it in service to the gameplay of you, an ace fighter pilot, overcoming an insurmountable foe with pure skill and determination.
Our artbook, due to various Kickstarters, will release following the game, and it will detail further lore bits, alongside some of Project Wingman’s “inside baseball” and even some short stories from me.
With the game's story in particular, we had an image of it in our head that was very cohesive, very focused, that we worked toward, but even then sacrifices had to be made. We wish that we had more resources to work with especially in this department over development, however the lesson of this story, as in the one of Project Wingman’s campaign development, is that it is a progressive experience.
We hope you enjoy the story you'll embark on come December 1st!
-Matt
As always follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, Steam Group and join our Discord if you want to be informed with PW news and discussion. Wishlist us on Steam!
More information will be inbound soon, especially for those due keys for the game.
Update: Release Date
Told you you’d see us again sooner rather than later. We have another important piece of information to share with you, so go ahead and take a looksie:
[previewyoutube="SNkEJYPAQhk;full"]
Project Wingman goes live December 1st, and if all goes to plan, development is going gold this week, giving us a rather healthy amount of time to polish off what we can.
In the words of our forebearers: It’s time.
As we get closer to release expect more development updates, intended to get you up to speed with what to expect with Project Wingman’s 1.0. - As always follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, Steam Group and join our Discord if you want to be informed with PW news and discussion.
More information will be inbound soon, especially for those due keys for the game.
Update: True Colors
How ya doin’ pilots. Coming off of a burst of speed from our recent Gamescom appearance, we’ve kept that momentum going that will, as far as we can see, lead us right into release. (It’s sooner than you think we promise).
But we still have a little time, so we think it’s time for a little update just to let you know where we’re at, and to show off some cool things we’re finishing up behind the scenes.
AoA Module
AOA, otherwise known as Angle of Attack, is what we’re using as the offhand term for an AOA delimiter. What this means is perhaps more readily explained by example:
On a more noticeable content creation side, the paint jobs of our aircraft are all mostly squared away minus last minute applications and touches. Camo, tail-codes, the whole nine yards.
No promises for a speedy release, however there is a pipeline being developed where users can implement their own paint jobs, so that is something in the future we can look forward to, post-launch.
Modifiers
Project Wingman has four difficulties at launch, ranging from casual play to a truly hardcore, perhaps a little unfair, experience. Furthermore, these difficulties can be changed up by way of the game’s modifier system. Inspired by the skulls in Halo, these will change certain dimensions and aspects of play, ranging from damage scaling to HUD hijinks, all awarding a higher mission score if you’re one to chase after them.
My personal favorite is the gun only modifier, combined with a 2.5x damage increase globally…
Now Project Wingman isn’t intended to be played with them regularly, however, if you want to turn them all on and do a run of the Campaign with them on Mercenary mode, we’d certainly enjoy seeing you try.
VR Integration
While there's not much to be said on this one. We've received a lot of feedback from testers on how to make it an overall better experience. Mainly UI improvements but it's the little things that make it better for you!
All of this spoken about so far is granular, of course, and this close to release the full breadth of what we could actually share with you would “give away the ghost”. However, to simplify it down to percentages:
Campaign: 95%
Conquest: 80%
Assets: 90%
Audio: 90%
Post-Production: 95%
Polishing: 80%
VR Integration Campaign : 95%
VR Integration Conquest : 70%
As you can see a lot of that is pretty close to 100%. So we won’t delay. The time is nigh, and we gotta get right back to work.
However that means another issue that we have to bring up: A demo. Given where we are it would be very difficult to release a demo, seeing as, more likely than not, a demo release would take place no less than a week before the game’s actual launch, and as far as manpower is concerned that is a risk we cannot take. That being said as I’m sure you’re more than aware, there are testers out there in the wild doing their own work on QA for the game as these final days approach. (Which we will be taking more of if there are more interest under NDA of course. Join our Discord to sign up, other testing avenues will come soon closer to release.)
As always follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, and join our Discord if you want to shoot the shizznits with us (RBD2 and FlyAwayNow) while keeping informed with PW news and discussion.
We’ll be seeing you sooner rather than later pilots, stay beautiful, check your six, and all that good stuff.
And as always, Thank you very much for your ongoing support!
