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Three Moves Ahead

Three Moves Ahead 122: Refreezing Synapses

Three Moves Ahead

Idle Thumbs

Video Games, Games, War, War Games, Strategy, Games & Hobbies, Strategy Games

4.8532 Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2011

⏱️ 64 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mode 7's Paul Taylor visits with Julian, Rob, and PC Gamer's Dan Stapleton to talk about Frozen Synapse. They discuss the game's development, its lengthy beta process and how that has contributed to the game's success, and the decision to sell the game as a 2-for-1 package. Paul gets into the fiction a little bit, and how it has been received. Apologies for any audio issues. Some interference got onto Paul's audio track, and there were nearby lumberjacks chopping down trees with chainsaws.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome once again to three moves ahead. I'm your host, Rob Zackney, being hosted myself by regular panelist Julian Murdoch. Julian, thanks for putting up with me once again.

0:08.7

Well, thanks for putting up with the sound of chainsaws out the front window. Yeah, a quick preemptive apology to our producer, Michael Hermes, and to you, the listener, if he can't work miracles this time. There was a wicked storm out here a week or so ago, and a lot of trees came down.

0:24.7

So right now, Julian's got some dudes out there cutting down the remnants of a forest.

0:29.8

So you're probably going to hear some chainsawed workmen out there.

0:35.0

Nothing we can do about it for now.

0:37.0

All right.

1:11.6

Today we're going to be revisiting Frozen Synapse, which we discussed last year during its beta. We're joined by Frozen Synapse Superfan, Dan Stapleton, a PC gamer. Dan, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Rob, and I apologize if my chainsawing up hooker bodies causes any of it. Michael Hermes can remove that, right? Because that would be incriminating. It's the screaming that's the problem. Right. Finally, Mode 7's own, Paul Taylor, has joined us for what promises to be a victory lap as he tells us about the turn-based squad combat game. Paul, thanks for making the time to come visit. Hey, no problem. No chainsaws here,

1:15.4

but I'll do my best to make sort of loud cracking and grinding sounds every now and again.

1:20.9

Excellent. See, this is just a feature-rich podcast we put out for three moves ahead listeners every week. Okay, so Paul, before we get into the game itself, why don't you tell

1:26.1

us a bit about yourself and Mode 7?

1:28.4

What's your gaming background and how did it lead you to making Frozen Synaps?

1:31.7

Sure, well, we started Mode 7 and by we, I mean myself and my business partner and

1:38.0

long-term friend Ian Hardingham.

1:39.6

We started when he was at university and he'd done a bit of work experience in a local development studio, we're based in Oxford

1:47.0

in the UK.

1:48.0

And he kind of, he enjoyed it, but he didn't really want to work in the mainstream industry.

1:52.0

So he decided at that point to kind of make his own indie game, and that was sort of back in around 2005.

1:58.0

And we did that, we made a sword fighting game called Determinance, which was pretty

2:03.2

crazy and didn't do particularly well, but was a really good education in the ridiculous process

2:10.2

of making games. So from there, we just decided that we wanted to kind of take it forward and try

2:15.6

and make it a proper business and make a game that we thought would work and would really kind of show people what we could do. So we started

2:22.7

on Frozen Sign-ups and sort of ran about three or four years ago. And sort of everything went

...

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