Killhouse Games - Developers of Door Kickers

Our forums have been attracting a wide number of developers showing off their upcoming projects or sharing ideas with the public, and when Dan from Killhouse Games came in with thread on Door Kickers, I knew I had to get in touch with the team to see what it was all about. Fans of the Rainbow Six series remember the planning phase of the game, where they plotted their strategies, their teams' loadouts, go-codes and everything. To see this aspect of the game make an appearance as a tactical strategy game on the PC is definitely something to read into. 

Currently Door Kickers is still in alpha phase, but from the few select screens we were able to get our hands on, it is looking quite close to what appears to be a finished product. Lets see what the team has to say to my questions:

Wargamer:  How did Door Kickers come to mind? Was it something the team wanted to do from the start?

Killhouse Games: The game idea spawned a couple of years ago; we were working on another small game, which I would call an attack flight planner for the iPhone. Codenamed "Flight of the Intruder", it had the player draw a path for his A6 / F-18 / F-35, dodging aircraft patrols, avoiding radars and SAMS or crossing them with the right aspect to get away, that kind of stuff. Casual in controls but with some realistic elements and freedom of action thrown in, cause we don't like to build stupid games that play themselves or clones of other peoples honest work.

Anyway, that effort progressed quite slow, as we were still employed full time in the local games industry. And one day while toying with the prototype it struck me that the iphone screen could display a building plan relatively easily; made instant connections to SWAT teams, fire arcs, room clearing and CQB (close quarters battle) work. I sat on the computer and drew a quick mockup, was very happy about it, but we didn't want to jump ship as we find jumping from project to project without finishing any to be the bane of the would-be indie studios.

Note that all this was before either Spy Mouse or Frozen Synapse were released or even known to us. We sat on the idea for 2 years, got even more bored with our day jobs, got the itch to express ourselves more directly, and decided to go back and do the SWAT-themed game.

 From banks to mansions, you'll take on Ts.

WG:  You mentioned in our forums that Door Kickers is like the planning phase from Rainbow Six. Was that a game that the team is fond of, and are there any other aspects of Rainbow Six in Door Kickers?

KH: Part of the inspiration for Door Kickers is indeed the planning phase of the first 3 Rainbow Six games.

It?s hard not to remember R6 fondly; back in the day if you wanted to play a more realistic shooter you were stuck with realism mods for "normal" games - Marine Doom, Navy SEALs Quake, and computer generated forces. Then the market kind off exploded with R6, Spec Ops, Operation Flashpoint and Hidden & Dangerous.

R6 stood apart with its very-focused CQB scenarios, quick play and unforgiving mission end screen.  It was a different breed, quirky in parts but so satisfying when the plan came together. I think it was Eagle Watch that added the possibility to sit out the execution phase and play in observer mode, just handling the Go-Codes and hold orders. For some, that was the best way to play it.

As for aspects of R6 in our game, there are some, but we're basically different mediums. R6 had a strong FPS side that allowed you to interact directly with hostages, objects, tangos. We don't have that part to keep the player busy, so our players have more control and interaction in the strategic view.

Now, given that the subject matter is relatively the same, it makes sense that many details from R6 will also be found in our game. For example the planning will allow for Go Codes and Hold Points, breaching and flashbangs; while the sniper interaction will be partly similar to the one in R6. However we aim to have the troopers in Door Kickers a little more self-reliant, thus negating the need to baby sit them every step in planning.

Flashbang out!

WG:  How is Door Kickers played out? Is there any in-operation commands that can be changed, or is everything done before the start of the mission with no real-time interaction?

KH: Once you get a mission - either via level select or through a generator - you check the map, deploy troopers and plan their routes and special actions as you wish. Even after you call "execute" to run the plan, you can always just pause and change the plan. You are however running against the clock so if a wrong decision was taken in planning, those 3 seconds that you lost turning right instead of left are 3 seconds less you have to save somebody that is getting killed immediately, to find the bomb or whatever critical task you have at hand.

Even when the game is running and troopers are moving you can still interact with them and give some nudges to look right or left, change their route or order tactical reloads and other actions. But this is more of an emergency measure as you cannot order more than 1 trooper or stack at any single time, so co-ordination is very hard. And coordination is needed, trust me.

WG:  Will Door Kickers be strictly single-player, or is there a co-op or versus mode planned?

KH: At the moment only single-player is in the cards. We have a few ideas on how to make a cool versus mode work, but we're not focusing on it now.

WG:  What are some of the difficulties as an indie developer working on a tactical planner such as Door Kickers?

KH: Specific to the indie developer is the lack of funding and poor attraction of such a title to would be investors. It's not the next Farmville or Angry Birds, that?s for sure. Also, any game that is not at least half a clone of someone else's work will not present much interest to people that only care to look at statistics of "what sells" to judge what to invest in.

The lack of funding means its "do or die" for us. Despite the 2D graphics, the game is a complex one and requires a solid code base to build upon. Unlike a clone / casual game, we cannot just throw it at the public, see if it sticks, adjust and resell a variation in 2 months. This is a serious project that takes serious time and commitment to build. 

The lack of funding also meant that we were not able to have an artist working full time for us - which has delayed lots of our interface, level and character work.

There's also the question of experimentation. We're sailing in unknown waters for the much of our design, trying to build something new, accessible and very playable, without forgetting the depth and feeling given to the player by some very hardcore game built years ago. It?s not easy, and we don't have 100 guys building prototypes with millions of bucks behind them.

To solve all of these we'll do a little crowd funding, in a not so distant future!

WG:  Did the team ever go to any police/SWAT/military sources for research or information?

KH: With CT (counter terrorism) being a dear subject of me (Dan the designer), a certain amount of such information has been accumulated over the years. I've also been lucky to get to know more than a couple current serving or ex CT operators from various units in Romania. Running training sessions with a seasoned CT operator as your instructor is always an eye opener, and if you also get to sit for beers afterwards, you learn a lot. I've done both more than once, and remembered to bring a notebook too! We also have one of these guys on call for questions and feedback, and trust me, he's the real deal.

WG:  A full-blown integrated mission editor, along with background creator, a mission and campaign generator was mentioned, what other modding abilities will be in Door Kickers?

KH: We love mods and modders, just have to ask our Silent Hunter friends :)

We're thinking of a way to give the source code to the community after the game is launched. This will probably be done in the crowd-funding stage; we'll see how that works out. In the long run we would also like to bring mods and modders together by means of a centralized system a-la Steam Workshop. This goal may not be so far off if we manage to get Steam to publish our game.

We really don't see any reason why the developer tools that we use to make the game shouldn't also be available to any other person playing the game; even all data files are written in huma- readable text format. Adding or tweaking units and equipment should be very easy to do for anyone.

Also making a game as configurable as possible does not only make an easier job for the designers/artists, it does so for the programmers as well, who don't need to waste time by coding every little thing  that needs tweaking on the design side for example. Optimizing time is really important to us, since we're a really small team; therefore ease of change (modding) was a technical design choice for us from the beginning.

WG:  Will there be a demo before release? Is there a planned release date?

KH: We're aiming for a late 2013 release. As for the demo, maybe in the future.

For now we are pushing to get a proof of concept / alpha build done, and release it to the public via crowd funding. People will be able to preorder the game and get instant access to the current and all future dev versions. This will help us stay on track and improve our game, and donators of a certain tier will even be able to vote on features to be implemented and help shape the game :)

Stay tuned for Door Kickers news in the following weeks, and help us build this game!

I'd like to give my thanks to the Killhouse Games team for taking the time to answer our questions! We wish them much luck through the game's development!