Chris Archer, Earth Fall
Earth Fall was a big surprise when I first got my hands on it at PAX East 2016. A majority of the shooters present focused more on player on player action with the exception of and Earthfall. The game is Co-Op focused with dozens of alien creatures filling up the screen for you to destroy. It had a very Left for Dead vibe but still brought interesting new features to make it stand on its own. AND I had fun playing. Simple as that, its just so easy to pick up and playing and get into some instant action. Back at PAX 2016 I managed to hang out with Chris Archer and talk more about his game. We exchanged some emails and finally we were able to get everything nailed down to tell you guys some more information.
Who are you? Chris Archer, Executive Producer & Weapons and Combat Designer – We wear a lot of hats at Holospark!
How did you get into game development? A long time ago (24 years). I was going to law school and working at Egghead Software and some folks from Virgin Interactive came in looking to recruit for a new game company and game they were working on, the Seventh Guest. I was offered a position as Associate Producer and the rest is history!
What other projects have you worked on? Well it all started with, you guess it the Seventh Guest. Some other notable games that I Produced or Designed: The 11th Hour, The Daedalus Encounter, Tony Hawk, Spider-Man, X-Men Legends, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, True Crime: Streets of LA, Sleeping Dogs and Offensive Combat
How did Holospark come to be? How did the team form and how did you get involved? Holospark was formed by a group of folks that came out of Cryptic North closure. That Cryptic team was a combination of ex Flying Labs folks (Pirates of the Burning Sea) and ex U4ia folks (Offensive Combat).
How many team members do you have? We now have 35 employees working on both Earthfall and unannounced VR titles.
What is Earth Fall? Earthfall is a four player co-operative first person shooter where players band together to beat back the alien horde and complete mission objectives. Earthfall’s unique feature is player investment in the map – in addition to just staying alive and completing mission objectives, players can invest in defenses to reinforce their position. Earthfall fills a void for players in a PvP rich shooter world. It’s more fun when I play with my friends together against the enemy.
What can we expect to experience at launch? We’re targeting early this year, but we want to make sure it is ready before we ship and since we don’t have a publisher and are self-funded, we can make that call.
What was the initial concept for Earth Fall? The initial concept of Earthfall was very much what we ended up with so far, 4 Player Cooperative shooter, with based building, 3D printers and scary hordes of aliens.
What did your team set out to achieve? We set out to create a fun and beautiful coop shooter in that Left 4 Dead style, but with more to do than just A to B play, by adding base building, some objectives and story to the mix.
How long has it been in development? It’s been in development for just about a year.
While playing I could see that you had some influences from Left 4 Dead which has inspired a whole generation of cooperative focused FPS titles.
What are some features that distinguishes your project from the crowd? We really love Left 4 Dead and in general Coop shooters, so we very much take our inspiration from those types of games. We wanted to take it further though, by adding base building/defense mechanics, 3D printers and Story objectives.
What is the future for Earth Fall? Can we expect to see new content down the road or potentially new weapons or enemies before launch? We are hard at work trying to get out the first release, but we definitely have plans for more content, but can’t announce anything just yet.
