You can’t have missed Skyclimbers, the little gaming bomb from Paratope which has literally broke all the records with their Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign exceeding by 1362% its pledged goal, and has gathered through the weeks and months a lot of fans. Fans who were also there and in numbers on Stadia until Google decided to contact the developers so that the alpha version of Skyclimbers can be released by the end of the year on Stadia and not current 2022 as it was scheduled. We had the chance to ask Paratope a few questions.
Hello ! Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little more about Paratope ?
I’m Justin, the Co-Founder/CEO of Paratope and Artist, Composer, Designer for Skyclimbers. I got started as a musician and sound engineer but eventually found myself at home in the startup/game development circle.
Skyclimbers is a very ambitious game. How do you explain your game aroused such keen interest ? Would it have been even possible without Kickstarter and the incredible response you received ?
Skyclimbers is indeed a very ambitious game, however, all its parts are consciously intentioned with harmonious overlap. The game has been in development for a long time, so we would have been able to deliver the game with or without Kickstarter.
Speaking of keen interest, would you have ever imagined so much support from the Stadia community ? Can you tell us how everything happened including how you felt when Google reached out ?
Stadia has been a promising platform in our eyes from the very beginning, even though public interest would have you think otherwise. We never expected such a fantastic response from the community but are forever grateful that they picked up such an interest in the game. Having google reach out to us directly was a huge surprise and very exciting.
Can you tell us more about the game and its universe ? It looks like an astonishing mix between The Legend of Zelda : Breath of the Wild and Minecraft with some Pokémon vibes in it. What are your inspirations and what are you trying to achieve with
creating Skyclimbers ?
Skyclimbers is a mix of all our greatest inspirations within the RPG and fantasy setting. This includes Zelda Breath of the Wild, Avatar the Movie, Avatar the Last Airbender, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Game of Thrones « ASOIAF » which all come together to create our universe. This means we have a mix of Sci-fi and ancient fantasy within a single fictional world, which can be jarring at first. Our goal is to create deep and believable fiction that can be used to direct gameplay in new and unique ways.
Skyclimbers should have been ported initially on Stadia way later next year. Now with the recent events and all the support you received from the community, Stadia players will be able to play the alpha version at the same time as PC players. How did all that upset the development of the game ?
Since the success, we have decided to prioritize Stadia even more, which means shipping Alpha ASAP. This has shifted internal resources a bit, but nothing too far off from what we initially planned.
When you play on Stadia, you can literally play with a controller or
with a keyboard and a mouse and even with a virtual controller on mobile devices and tablets. Rumor has it that Stadia will even have a Direct Touch feature. How will we be able to play Skyclimbers ?
We are going to target the two primary inputs, PC mouse/keyboard OR controller. Although our mobile port will force us to create touch controls which could eventually make their way to Stadia.
The game can be played as a single player but also in coop. But you also mention PvP and full-scale domination battles. Can you explain how everything will be intertwined ? Will we be able to switch between PvE and PvP ? Can you give us some informations about those domination battles ?
PvE is the default style of play by yourself in single-player or with friends in locally hosted Co-op. Dedicated servers will be hosted by us OR by the community and will allow for players to take on 24 vs 24 battles with their monsters and warriors.
Stadia has a lot of great features like Crowd Play, Crowd Choice, State Share and Stream Connect. Do you plan on supporting some of these features with the Stadia version of Skyclimbers ?
Yes, Crowd Play and Crowd Choice both sound like great marketing tools within the Youtube ecosystem, while features such as State share make it easier than ever to share with friends.
Paratope looks like such a unique company and it’s hard to believe that such a company working on urban farming and industrial design could one day be at work to create its own video game. How did you come up with that idea in the first place and what do you think about cloud gaming and its impacts on the environment ?
Paratope is a sustainability company, which means any market that can assist in our goal to make the world sustainable is fair game. Games are the best way to keep our minds engaged when compared to traditional media such as text or video, and are going to become the primary form of user interaction across all technology platforms. Although we still need to eat and use products day to day in our lives, which is why we also started Printrhub and Grownlocal, which will both continue to grow in the coming years.
Cloud gaming fundamentally still has many environmental concerns, as most data centers are large sources of carbon emission, however, if service providers can host green/eco-friendly gaming servers cloud gaming could easily become the most sustainable gaming medium. Perhaps Paratope will one day deploy their own server solution for gaming in collaboration with companies like NVIDIA and Google 😎