Indie studio Emptyvessel today announced its first game: Defect, a multiplayer cyberpunk shooter set in a city ruled by AI. The studio, which revealed himself earlier this yearsaid at the time that it was working on a new shooter title. According to the studio, Defect is a squad-based title built on Unreal Engine 5 and is currently available to wishlist on Steam, though it currently does not have a release date.
Defect is set in a futuristic city divided by its cruel technological overlord, the SYSTEM. Players choose from various factions, including the city’s police force, rogue cops, and various gangs, as they vie for power—though they can switch factions at any time. Defect’s maps are destructible, and players can use their tools and the world around them to gain combat advantages as they complete objectives like assassination and smuggling.
GamesBeat spoke with Emptyvessel CEO Emanuel Palalic, who also serves as the game's director, about Defect's gameplay and storytelling. He said, “Our approach is to create a new kind of genre in the immersive shooter category, and with that we're focusing on making players feel really enveloped and immersed in our world in a variety of ways, some subtle, some more obvious. We aim to communicate as much gameplay information as possible through strong visuals and experiences — game art found in the world, diegetics, on your weapons/gadgets/characters, through dynamic animation states (are you injured, did you just get out of a tense fight, etc.), and we really focus on removing as much of a traditional HUD as we can.”
Evolution in game development
As part of Defect's announcement, Palalic also said that the title should not only offer a new approach for gamers, but also for their fellow developers. In a statement, he said: “For the industry, we want to inspire other game creators to work in smaller teams like us, to be able to take more creative risks and work more independently.”
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He elaborated on that point, telling us, “At Emptyvessel, we're really focused on creating something that's consistent across the board. We manage the scope to be something achievable and instead focus on the depth and sophistication of the content that we introduce… A lot of it comes down to being disciplined enough to build a strong foundation and a set of pipelines that we can work with. That's not the sexy part of making games, but it's certainly a critical aspect that we know comes from our experience.”
Palalic told GamesBeat: “We founded Emptyvessel with the goal of making great games with smaller teams and having more creative independence. I think the biggest benefit is that we can move quickly, iterate quickly, and test our game more efficiently. It's easier to take risks because our scope ultimately has to be limited and focused, meaning we can try out new art styles, new gameplay mechanics, etc. and really focus on them. For us, we don't have to cram a million gameplay mechanics into a game just because they're trending and some generic spreadsheet tells you it'll help you sell X units of your game.”
Palalic added that Defect is currently in active development and that Emptyvessel will share more information with gamers soon.