Airship Dragoon – The Interview
Lloyd has a chat with Steve Acaster, the developer of Airship Dragoon – which can be found on Steam’s Greenlight program.
Airship Dragoon is clearly and proudly anchored in a steampunk universe. What are some steampunk influences that have inspired you and can be seen in the game?
Airships! But I guess that one is rather obvious. There is something majestic about dirigibles in a manner which winged aircraft do not possess. They seem to glide effortlessly and silently, moving with grace whilst aeroplanes are noise and can’t just turn around on a fixed point. They’re oceanliners of the sky.
I always imagine their interiors decked out in mahogany and sumptuous shag pile carpets. You don’t much more steampunk than airships … except maybe goggles. All the characters in the game wear different goggles, with the exception of the British who have their goggles hanging around their necks. I tried to design the goggles for each faction to be indicative of the nationality, so the British have very traditional goggles, the Dastardly Pirates have an eye patch, the Austro-Hungarians a monocle and the Americans have wrap around shades to symbolize their modernity.
The “evil genius” weapons are also a popular steampunk theme. As the game progresses and the player upgrades his troops equipment the hardware becomes a little wackier. There are railguns which can blast through objects, a laser type “lightning gun” and of course no steampunk arsenal would be complete without a good old fashion “death ray”. There’s a little joke about radiation poisoning on the information screen for the “Atomic Death Ray”.
Defence-wise I came up with the idea of having a harness which projects a moving image which dazzles the enemy and reduces their accuracy. The concept for that was based on the naval “dazzle camouflage” of The Great War. I really liked the striking designs and wanted to include them visually. The great thing about steampunk is that there are no hard and fast rules, nobody is going complain that it isn’t scientifically or historically accurate – it’s not supposed to be! Steampunk is a lot more fun and a lot less po-faced than many other genres.
Science fiction can be quite sterile and take itself far too seriously. Nobody thinks that a characterture of Dick Dastardly with a zeppelin and a death ray is sterile!
