GamingBolt had an opportunity to speak to Joe Mirabello and Grip Games’ Jakub Mikyska who worked on bringing Tower of Guns to current gen consoles and the PS3. Mirabello talked about the development of the game and the philosophy behind many of its elements while Mikyska discussed the difficulties and challenges (or lack thereof) in bringing Tower of Guns to consoles.

"When working on a larger team there's this shared investment in the project, this collaborative fuel. When working solo that's replaced with constant second-guessing of decisions. Doubt can sometimes be a healthy thing, since it means I'm always looking at the project critically, but it can oscillate into crippling inefficiency too."

Rashid K. Sayed: A RogueLite game mixed with FPS mechanics is a strange combination, what was the decision behind mixing these two elements?

Joe Mirabello: Quite honestly, my entire career prior to this point had been spent working on RPGs and MMOs, and I had always wanted to work on a First-Person-Shooter. I was raised on the classic FPS games like Quake, Doom, UT99, Deus Ex, etc. When I set out to develop Tower of Guns, I also was playing a lot of Binding of Isaac at the time, and became very interested in what a mashup of the two would feel like. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the RogueLite mechanics lent themselves to super small development teams very well, as iteration of the game play and core mechanics is a very straightforward path.

Rashid K. Sayed: Being the sole developer must have been tricky, what can you tell us about the single handed approach to development?

Joe Mirabello: To be fair, I was only *mostly* solo. I contracted my brother to do the music, had lots of friends and family help with testing, and in the months after the initial PC release I found partners, such at Grip Games, to help me bring the game to more platforms. As for being a “mostly solo developer”, well, besides the obvious stuff like properly scoping the project for one person, wearing a lot of hats, and the advantage of being able to make very agile development decisions, I was surprised to find how much motivation and morale became crucial resources.

When working on a larger team there’s this shared investment in the project, this collaborative fuel. When working solo that’s replaced with constant second-guessing of decisions. Doubt can sometimes be a healthy thing, since it means I’m always looking at the project critically, but it can oscillate into crippling inefficiency too. You have to keep things in perspective. In short, the real difficulty in creating something like this on your own is always maintaining momentum. My apologies if that’s too heavy an answer for you. 🙂

Rashid K. Sayed: The Tower of Guns itself seems to be placed in the middle of a city, what can you tell us about the game world?

Joe Mirabello: Well, the game’s story is randomly selected from a pool of stories: who you are, what you are doing, even what the tower is, can be one of many different things. So…the “world” in which the tower exists varies quite a bit. In one play session you’ll be a secret-agent canine and in the next you’ll play as a grandma looking for the local recycling center. It was a weird little experiment, but I had a lot of fun writing all the different stories.

I’m actually a sincere believer that if a creative person truly enjoys the experience of creation, or at least is emotionally invested in it on some level, then that translates into the final piece. The “world” of Tower of Guns is a strange, often purposefully-stupid, world..but it was a joy to create…and people seem to appreciate that. As for the actual artwork of that city outside the Tower–well, it needed to be flexible enough to support the wide variety of stories, and frankly I was getting tired of drawing all these rusty-metal textures and wanted to make something different!

Rashid K. Sayed: Given the current fascination with Roguelikes and RogueLites, do you think Tower of Guns has the power to last the ages?

Joe Mirabello: Wellllll…I think it’s very, very dangerous to approach a game’s development with the goal of “lasting the ages”. It focuses a bit too much on what others may like, on making a “magnum opus”, and on timeless mechanics (which is another way to say “safe” mechanics). I made Tower of Guns because I wanted to play a game like Tower of Guns, and I just had to hope others did too. It might not last the ages, but I’m grateful that it’s gotten the attention it has. The current roguelite genre(as in, the post-BoI, post-Spelunky era, not true Roguelikes) might only be a short lived burst in gaming history too, and I myself might find myself playing a different kind of game in five years, but for now I find these mechanics thoroughly fascinating.

"My definition of "twitch" gaming harkens back to the old school twitch FPS classics; Doom, UT99, Quake. This game invokes those wherever possible. It was an era where one misstep would lead to your players certain death, where there was little time to catch your breath, where you constantly were required to MOVE, where circle-stafing was king and you were constantly scanning the arena for pickups."

Rashid K. Sayed: The game has, for the most part, received high praise from a number of gamers and outlets. Gunplay is often criticized though. Is there perhaps plans to revisit the Tower of Guns and improve upon it?

Joe Mirabello: You’ve certainly done your homework! That was the major criticism of Tower of Guns. A quick defense: There’s a good argument to be made in my goal of making the game a very “pick up and play” experience. I didn’t want a player to ever have to “relearn” any extra buttons should they come back to the game months after not playing.. And I should mention that there is a tad more complexity to the gunplay than most reviewers saw; the gun mod system leads to some hilarious combinations, there are subtle, gun-based ways to affect mobility, there are some interesting gun-perk combinations, and quite a few secret, secondary guns.

Regardless, your point stands: most of those mechanics were faaaar too rare for people to see in their first few sessions with the game. While I question the notion that every FPS needs secondary fire or iron sights I wholeheartedly agree with the critics when they say that the core gunplay could be improved: better sounds, better animations, better handling, and, in general, a more advanced relationship between the player and their gun. However, some of those alterations would have involved changing the core experience of Tower of Guns from PC drastically though, and I think they’re better saved as lessons that I  apply to future projects.

Rashid K. Sayed: Have you got any plans for possibly bringing the Tower of Guns to other platfoms?

Joe Mirabello: I think that entirely depends on how well the game does on consoles, how technically powerful the other platform is (Tower of Guns hits the CPU pretty hard with all those bullets), and how busy I am in over the next year!

Rashid K. Sayed: The online store GOG call Tower of Guns a game for Twitch gamers, would you agree with that sentiment?

Joe Mirabello: I think so. My definition of “twitch” gaming harkens back to the old school twitch FPS classics; Doom, UT99, Quake. This game invokes those wherever possible. It was an era where one misstep would lead to your players certain death, where there was little time to catch your breath, where you constantly were required to MOVE, where circle-stafing was king and you were constantly scanning the arena for pickups.

I even injected some of the mobility-based quirks of that era like variants on bunny-hopping acceleration and rocket-jumping. I don’t think I quite hit the full 90mph of Doom, but even before you start collecting speed upgrades in Tower of Guns the players base mobility is quite faster than most modern FPS games. The game really is one big over-the-top love-letter to the twitch games I grew up on. While I had no desire to recreate those games explicitly, I did want to make a game that fans of those games would feel comfortable diving into, because that’s the kind of game I was looking to play.

Rashid K. Sayed: Would you go back and change anything about the game? Or are you happy with the final product you developed.

Joe Mirabello: Oh, I could change things about the game forever. That’s the danger of the roguelite genre (and traditional roguelikes too)—they’re flexible in their design in that they can almost always benefit from more “stuff” and further refinement of balance, mechanics, and content. For example, look at Nethack’s twenty-five year development time. You can quickly get into a pattern where a game is never “finished”, and while it’s comfortable to spend a career constantly refining a project, and it’s led to amazing results in the case of something like Nethack, for me personally I often have to start new projects in order to properly apply the largest of the lessons that I learn.

"We have already seen some cool examples of that in some Microsoft games. Any calculation that does not have to be made in real-time can be sent to server to allow more power for real-time processing. This is of course heavily case-by-case scenario and not every game offers an opportunity for something like that."

Rashid K. Sayed: As a developer what is your opinion on Microsoft’s parity clause in their ID@Xbox Policy?

Jakub Mikyska: Both Sony and Microsoft have their own policies and things you have to keep in order to be able to self-publish. Sony has certain parity policies as well. Both have certain content requirements, etc. I think that Microsoft’s requirements are not unreasonable and are quite understandable and what’s more, if you cannot keep them for any reason, you usually just need to ask and give a good reason and anything can be agreed on. We never really had any issue with Microsoft’s policies,

Rashid K. Sayed: Will the game run at 1080p and 60 frames per second on both the PS4 and Xbox One?

Jakub Mikyska: Yes, both versions run at 1080p/60fps.

Rashid K. Sayed: Did you faced any problems with the Xbox One’s eSRAM while developing the game?

Jakub Mikyska: Not really, no. Tower of Guns is more demanding in the CPU department.

Rashid K. Sayed: What are your thoughts on the PS4’s GPU and GDDR5 memory? Do you think they will become obsolete with time given the evolution of PC GPUs?

Jakub Mikyska: Our games aren’t really pushing the envelope of visuals enough for GDDR5 to make any difference. From what we hear from other developers, working on AAA projects, they really like GDDR5. The GPU is working quite fine. It is not the most advanced piece of GPU out there, but it does not have to be. When creating games for just one GPU, you can be much more effective.

And like any other technology, it will all become obsolete eventually. But that does not matter now. Consoles are about making the most with the hardware you currently have.

Rashid K. Sayed: What is your take on the differences between the GPU in PS4 and X1? Do you find them to be similar in performance?

Jakub Mikyska: Yes, they certainly are really similar. There weren’t any performance issues that would only appear on one platform, while the other one handled them better.

Both machines have some things they like and things they dislike and you have respect that and work around that, but in general, the performance of both is nearly identical.

Rashid K. Sayed: Microsoft has been talking about the Xbox One using the cloud to make it more powerful. What is your take on this? Do you think using the cloud a console with static hardware can become more powerful?

Jakub Mikyska: It can, in certain ways. We have already seen some cool examples of that in some Microsoft games. Any calculation that does not have to be made in real-time can be sent to server to allow more power for real-time processing. This is of course heavily case-by-case scenario and not every game offers an opportunity for something like that.

But cloud computing is coming, one way or another. Both Sony and Microsoft are testing the waters, so let’s see where this goes.

Rashid K. Sayed: Is there anything else you want to tell us before we let you go?

Joe Mirabello: Thanks for asking interesting questions. Anyway, I hope folks enjoy playing the game. It was fun to make.

It’s been more than a year since the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One, and we’ve been seeing some interesting variations in performance. While the PS4 was more capable of native 1080p resolution in third party titles, the Xbox One was always favoured with its anisotropic filtering. Be that as it may, Grip Games’ Jakub Mikyska – who recently brought indie shooter Tower of Guns to the PS3, PS4 and Xbox One – believes that there are still plenty of similarities in terms of GPU performance.

“Yes, they certainly are really similar. There weren’t any performance issues that would only appear on one platform, while the other one handled them better. Both machines have some things they like and things they dislike and you have respect that and work around that, but in general, the performance of both is nearly identical.”

As for the benefits of Xbox One’s cloud computing, which we’re really yet to see given how much Microsoft hyped it up prior to the console’s release, Mikyska believes it can help in various ways. “It can, in certain ways. We have already seen some cool examples of that in some Microsoft games. Any calculation that does not have to be made in real-time can be sent to server to allow more power for real-time processing. This is of course heavily case-by-case scenario and not every game offers an opportunity for something like that.

“But cloud computing is coming, one way or another. Both Sony and Microsoft are testing the waters, so let’s see where this goes.”

Thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.

Microsoft’s indie parity clause has been a subject of much debate ever since Microsoft announced the ID@Xbox policy at Gamescom 2013. Several developers in the past have outright mentioned their grievances with the parity clause whereas some have taken a neutral stance on it. In the past, Xbox One executives have mentioned that the parity clause can be tweaked if developers speak to them and bring along exclusive content for the Xbox platform.

Grip Games’ Tower of Guns is one of the many indie games that is available on both PS4 and Xbox One. GamingBolt recently got in touch with Grip Games’ Jakub Mikyska to have a chat on several topics including the indie policies of both companies. Surprisingly, Jakub revealed that Sony have their own set of parity policies as well, although he did not mentioned what it includes.

“Both Sony and Microsoft have their own policies and things you have to keep in order to be able to self-publish. Sony has certain parity policies as well. Both have certain content requirements, etc.”

He further explains that Microsoft’s policy on indies are not unfair and if developers speak to them, things can be worked on and agreed upon.

“I think that Microsoft’s requirements are not unreasonable and are quite understandable and what’s more, if you cannot keep them for any reason, you usually just need to ask and give a good reason and anything can be agreed on. We never really had any issue with Microsoft’s policies,” Jakub explained to GamingBolt.

These comments by Jakub possibly indicate that there are a lot of things going in the background that none of us really know. But what are your thoughts on this matter? Let us know in the comments section below.

Tower of Guns for the PlayStation 4 launched recently and GamingBolt was able to conduct an interview with the game’s developer Jakub Mikyska from Grip Games. In our interview we asked Jakub what kind of advantages did the unified memory architecture brought to the development of Tower of Guns.

“Our games aren’t really pushing the envelope of visuals enough for GDDR5 to make any difference,” he said to GamingBolt. But he did shared his views on how developers are feeling about GDDR5 and the PS4’s GPU.  “From what we hear from other developers, working on AAA projects, they really like GDDR5. The GPU is working quite fine. It is not the most advanced piece of GPU out there, but it does not have to be. When creating games for just one GPU, you can be much more effective.”

“And like any other technology, it will all become obsolete eventually. But that does not matter now. Consoles are about making the most with the hardware you currently have.”

Tower of Guns is now available on the PS4. We recently reviewed the game on the PS4 which you can check out over here.

The first thing that sets Tower of Guns apart from anything Gearbox has put together is that this game has long been billed as a kind of “lunchbreak FPS.” Having said that, I had caught someone’s comment about what the game was before I managed to get my hands on it and I have to say that is pretty much a perfect descriptor. This isn’t a game that has a terribly immersive story mode. In fact, it doesn’t really have any kind of story mode at all, unless you view a story as “hey look, shoot that thing that’s in front of you.”

"The first thing that sets Tower of Guns apart from anything Gearbox has put together is that this game has long been billed as a kind of “lunchbreak FPS.”"

There is also a peripheral storyline that goes on while I was playing, in the form of text dialogue, though that storyline has no actual bearing on the game itself. Rather this seems to just be a little thing that is built in to bring the laughs. The one that pops up the first time I ran through the game was that of the developer actually telling me a few of the tips and tricks to get through the tower.

Other storylines were of a pizza delivery guy who was trying to find his customer and another and perhaps the most guffaw inducing was when I was going reading a conversation between an apparent old couple that had gotten lost. As far as I can tell, there isn’t any rhyme or reason to the text dialogue and while it is sort of funny, I had to wonder why the developer didn’t put a little more into fleshing this out and making it a real story.

It’s possible Tower of Guns was just never meant to be serious enough to need or want a real storyline in the game. This game seems to have been built for those who just want to be able to pick up the controller and shoot as many things as they possibly can. The premise of the actual game is that I had to either blast my way through, or dash my way through a number of different rooms, all with different “enemies”in the form of unmanned gun turrets and flying killing machines.

"It’s possible Tower of Guns was just never meant to be serious enough to need or want a real storyline in the game. This game seems to have been built for those who just want to be able to pick up the controller and shoot as many things as they possibly can."

Tower of Guns combines elements from a number of other video game platforms in a way that makes it enjoyable if you are indeed just looking for something to spend the next 20 minutes with. Picking up and playing, without having to wait through a cut scene in order to know what you’re supposed to do is refreshing at times. As long as you’re not looking for an immersive world that will really draw you in. The game is roguelike in the notion that the rooms are randomly generated throughout the levels so when you have to start your run over, you aren’t guaranteed to know what you’re going to be facing off against.

And you will have to start over a number of times. Tower of Guns isn’t an easy game by any stretch. The game tried to help me out by allowing me power ups if I killed enough enemies and collected the little blue lights that came pouring out of them after they blew up. The little red bulbs also replenished my health from time to time but the rooms aren’t big and the enemies are plentiful and I died far more often than I’m even willing to admit in my playthroughs.

Clearly I wasn’t the only one to have this problem, considering one of the most important stats the game tracks is deaths. This is also where the game gets a bit repetitive, there aren’t a ton of different enemies and the ones that are there aren’t meant to ooh and ahh you with their look and feel.

"Clearly I wasn't the only one to have this problem, considering one of the most important stats the game tracks is deaths."

There are boss rooms too, but these bosses are rather repetitive as well. I went through one run where I encountered the same boss four straight times. The repetition gets even more annoying considering that when you die, you start over entirely. There aren’t any chances to save your progress and start off in the room you died. Of course, the reason for that is because the game isn’t really about making progress.

You’re supposed to rack up as many kills, power up and collect guns as much as possible and score as many points. Without a proper story to play through, there really isn’t a huge point to making that progress. As long as you go into Tower of Guns understanding and accepting that premise, you can have a decent, if not great time playing the game.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.