SPINE Q&A: Ep. 1

Our city operates on the principles of open dialogue.
That's why we asked you on our socials to send us any questions you want to know about SPINE. The result was unexpected — we received more than 300 Qs across Discord, X (formerly Twitter) & YouTube.
It took us a little time to process such a number, but we selected the hottest one and addressed them to SPINE producer Dmitry Pimenov.

This is our first Q&A episode, so let's get down to business!

• Can we expect Redline voice lines? Or is she a silent protagonist?

  Absolutely!
  Since we initially agreed to treat our action game as a real blockbuster movie, the voice acting for the main character holds immense importance for us. Currently, we're actively casting an actress for the role.

• Will we be able to customize or have more outfits?

  Yes, definitely!
  Stay tuned for more updates on this.

• Does the AI that helps Redline have any other use other than narrative purposes?

  The city, where everything unfolds, is governed by an AGI called Tensor, and Redline has her own sentient AI combat assistant — Spine. The theme of AI-human interaction lies at the core of our narrative.
  
  As designers, we believe that if you want to tell a story in the game, use everything that the game can afford for that. So expect Spine to work on all levels: narrative, gameplay, and the ability progression system of the main character.

• Are there multiple playable characters?

  We're highly focused on narrating the tale of Redline. She's the character we've always wanted to tell a story about: charismatic, adventurous, with a 'act now, think later' approach.
  
  However, we created the SPINE universe so we'll be able to tell more stories of various characters across different timelines.
  For instance, you can check out our webtoon, which is an indirect prequel and tells the story of slightly different group of characters: Bullet Dancers

• Will Shiva still be in this single player version of SPINE, and if so what will be her role since Redline is now the protagonist? Will Micki and the others from the comic make an appearance in the game too?

  You'll definitely meet some familiar characters as the story unfolds.

• It will be an open-world game? The style with fighting and gunshots reminds me of Oni, an old PC game that I love.

  It's great that many people remember Oni, which was one of the inspirations to us!
  
  No, we won't have an open world. Instead, our focus is on providing our players a very intense, emotional game with a strong storyline, which is not watered down by excessive playtime and grind.
  As gamers ourselves, we are tired of lengthy prolonged games and are now seeking more unique gameplay experiences, that we'll be happy to deliver.

• How much of a focus will the game have on the story?

  Let's put it this way: SPINE is focused on action movie feeling of cool combat with guns and camerawork. Everything else is pure narrative and storytelling :)
  The story is always crucial for capturing that movie feeling as well, especially as we plan on expanding our universe.
  I hope that answers your question.

• Does SPINE story take place in the same universe as Vector?

  Maybe ;)

• Animator here, I want to know if you'll tune the animations further.
  She animates smoothly but her attacks lack impact, the transition frames could be sped up while lingering on the anticipation and follow through frames + secondary animation with physics for her coat and body.

  Oh yeah! That's a great and very insightful question.
  I'm glad that people are diving deep into animations and bringing up these questions. With our previous trailer, we wanted to start collecting more feedback from gamers and initiate a dialogue with our community early on. One of the topics that the community has raised is the fluidity of the combat moveset and the responsiveness of character controls. We're directly addressing these issues right now and will fix them this summer. Redline will become more responsive and agile, and the pace of the game will even out and speed up. As for secondary animation, it depends on the character model, which we plan to fine-tune in the coming months (we're transitioning to an updated animation skeleton right now). Things like this (physics simulation etc.) will be improved all the way until the game's release.

• Will we be able to upgrade our combat skills, and level up our character? And also will we be able to customize our guns?

  We think this is a very important topic of our design, so we will definitely talk about it in more detail soon.

• Will there be accessibility settings to simplify the game for disabled people?

  One of our core game design philosophies in developing SPINE is to make the beat 'em up genre more accessible and interesting to everyone, as we feel like these types of games are often overlooked by many players.
  That's why we want to take special care of this aspect and welcome input from our players.
  What accessibility options do you expect from modern action games?
  Please share your thoughts in the comments.

• Is SPINE going to be playable on the Steam Deck?

  Yes, since I have a personal interest in it — it's one of my favorite gaming devices right now. I also play early dev versions of SPINE on it from time to time. We'll pay special attention to comfortable game performance at release.

• During your development, what would you say was the biggest roadblock?

  Our main roadblock is always our animation ambitions.
  Our team of animators is amazing, and we have some cool tools like Cascadeur, which increase the performance and quality of our animation production.
  But that leads to us having hundreds and hundreds of animations. There's always something to mocap, block out, or polish, and our technical design team is flooded with content to integrate into our gameBut our goal is to make SPINE another demonstration that smaller teams can achieve AAA-quality animations with the help of Cascadeur!

• How long it takes this game to complete and will there be anything for replayability?

  We strongly believe that gamers want more unique and emotionally engaging gameplay experiences.
  That's why we're creating a game that will guarantee you a few weekends full of action and fun, with some replayability features that I think are expected in our genre — such as a Hardcore Game Mode and New Game Plus.

• The game looks amazing so far and has hit my interests!
  But my question is why make a gun fu game? What brought you to this type of game?

  In short, when you work a lot with animation-based games, you always want to add more features to your next game which would emphasize the animations.
  That's why we decided to work more with in-game cameras. And camerawork leads you to the idea of taking inspiration from famous action movies. In the past, we worked for more than 10 years with martial arts animations and we really wished to work with firearms as well.
  
  Sum it up — and you have an idea of a Gun Fu game. Gun Fu is an incredibly fun genre of action, so the idea of it immediately resonated with all of our teams.However, this topic also deserves a more in-depth discussion, so expect a devblog about it.

• How do you learn to design and animate these beautiful martial arts-inspired fight choreographies, and how do you suspend the audience's disbelief of their realism when they involve guns?
  I assume you research a lot of martial arts and also use camera trickery.

  You're right, we're looking for inspiration everywhere.
  We watch movies together every week, deconstructing a lot of references. Additionally, our lead animators worked for a long time on our previous games, which featured parkour and martial arts, and some of them are even practicing martial arts themselves.
  We also work with actual movie specialists — stuntmen and one talented director of photography. These collaborations give us some amazing insights, and we can't wait to share with you more information on that later.

• I know this is early to say, but are you planning to release physical version of the game in the future?

  Indeed, it's quite early to answer that question, as this depends on our publishing approach which is not set in stone at the moment.
  As a gamer myself, I'm well aware of the importance of having a physical copy of the game, being able to smell the disc's plastic packaging, and truly owning the game instead of ‘renting’ it, if you know what I mean.

• When it's gonna be released?

  We're not able to announce a release date just yet, but we have plenty to share to keep you immersed in the world of SPINE while we all eagerly await that moment.

• Can we expect some artbooks or guide books or whatever like these?

  We love the way the game's art turns out. Besides, we have a ton of it — so we would be happy to share it with you in one form or another and we will definitely consider the idea of an art book, in some “fan kit”, for example.Thanks for the idea!

• Will there be a demo before the game release?

  We're considering it.
  The way we design the game — it's going to be a rollercoaster of gun fu emotions, so I guess the demo featuring the first gameplay missions would work quite well and leave you wanting more.
  However, the final decision will depend on our publishing approach, which hasn't been finalized yet.

• I've no questions, I hope y'all are ok and have a good work-life balance.
  That's all. Keep up the good work.

  Thanks! Sending love to all of our community.
  Don't forget to rest and play cool video games!

Thank you so much for so many insightful questions.
Stay tuned, because we have many more insights into SPINE development progress that we can't wait to share with you and 2nd episode of our Q&A, of course.

Stay Gun Fu!
SPINE Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1731290/SPINE/