Recently I spoke with Kalin, Co-Founder of Funktronic Labs about their pending game Wave Break Which is coming to Google Stadia on June 23rd.
I have been eagerly awaiting the return of skating games, but I had always said there needs to be something new, something innovative; but I don’t think anyone was expecting this. What was your inspiration behind Wave Break?
Well we were in the same boat (!) wanting classic skating games, as it felt like there was nothing hit the spot in quite a while. From that kind of foundation, our development workflow is super experimental, and we definitely messed around with a ton of ideas. We concentrated on the ideas we thought were really fun to try to bring them all together to create a fun game. Our lead programmer, Coty, also really likes water simulations, so it’s been fun tech to build.
Can you tell me more about the style of the gameplay? Are we talking racing similar to karts and motorsports, or more open-world like the more traditional skating games?
The style of gameplay is definitely more open-world like the traditional skating games. Just to be clear, and many people have asked us, but Wave Break is not a kart racing game. Flips, grabs, manuals, grinds, and good lines with gaps everywhere. On top of that, you’ve got the shooting mechanic, and a 3rd dimension of control in the air. You’ll have to bring skills from lots of other games in, on top of those skating muscle-memory skills.
Game-mode wise, it’s pretty familiar. Score battles, free play, mission objectives, deathmatch, just to name a few. Of course with online play, and skill-based matchmaking if you want to challenge people in multiplayer.
It’s obvious what is going to make you stand out from the competition. You’ve got the hook, what’s the sinker? What do you think is going to keep people coming back for more?
The old-school relaxing feel of skating games while vibing to cool music is what brings me back to play these games over and over. Finding better lines, and just trying to hit those big number combos. Combining that with making it easy to play with friends is a good match.
We’ll have more content (game modes, music, character) coming in the future, so dropping back every now and then to play some new stuff is always fun.
Will there be any customization options for “boards” or characters? What will that look like?
You can customize the character clothing and accessories, along with your boat with decals, attachments, paint jobs, antennas. We’ll definitely have more cool content coming for that stuff over time.
We know that Wave Break is releasing first on Stadia, then for PC Console later? Which console(s) can we expect to see the release on, and do you have a time frame?
PC/console TBA – can’t say for now, but soon!
Stadia is an interesting choice for first release platform, what do you think the Stadia experience will be able to bring to your players that the other consoles cannot (if anything)?
The ease of playing wherever with no fuss is probably the biggest difference in the day to day experience. Opening a really graphics-intensive game on your cheap-ass laptop or mobile device, and playing on the couch, is pretty comfy.
How has the “new normal,” as it were, affected your development process for Wave Break?
We’re at the phase of grinding through content towards the end so we are all just heads-down working and we know what we all need to do, but it is a little bit sad to not have the regular everyday banter and silliness. It is nice to see random stuff people are working on throughout the day. I’m sure a lot of the earlier ideas wouldn’t have come about if we were like this at the start of dev.
