This is Daniel Hedjazi, the director of Phantom Fury.
The idea for this game has been a shared dream of mine and Frederik Schreiber for a long time, and seeing the game come together over the last few months is a wonderful experience for all of us.
Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of a project’s core creative goals, but for Phantom Fury, we had one specific vision that we stuck to throughout the whole development: Making an interactive action road movie.
Ion Fury took place almost completely in Neo D.C., but for this one, we wanted to take our protagonist Shelly out of her familiar surroundings.
A lot has happened in Shelly’s life since Ion Fury. She lost her arm and her squad in a tragic accident, and as we enter the world of Phantom Fury, Shelly fights with feelings of guilt and anger.
Shelly’s journey is about dealing with the past and moving forward, and we wanted to reflect that also in the way the world is structured. Albuquerque, the Grand Canyon, Chicago… Each place has its own story to tell and plays an important role in Shelly’s adventure.
The variety in locations also gave our development team a great playground to come up with different ideas. Depending on which area you would talk about, you would hear people making references to Aliens, From Dusk Till Dawn or even Twin Peaks. But nevertheless, the road movie concept tied to Shelly’s motivations helped us make sure that it doesn’t just become a random mishmash of ideas, but actually works together in a cohesive way as part of Shelly’s journey.
This is also where the importance of interactivity comes into play: Even in a more story-driven, linear game like Phantom Fury, we wanted to make sure that the world feels alive. And the high amount of interactivity present in our game is perfect for that. Each level has a variety of objects players can interact with. From small details like edible pizza leftovers, to puzzle-solving devices like cranes or minigames, there is a lot to discover in Phantom Fury’s world.
Everyone in the development team has a chance to chime in with ideas for interactive content. I’m happy to say that many of the cool details in the game are the result of all our developers working together to get as many surprises as possible into the game.
Now obviously we are first and foremost an action game, and making the combat feel good is one of our highest priorities. But this is also a point where we come back to the game’s road movie structure again. Many of the locations directly influenced how we set up the various combat encounters and action-packed events throughout the whole game.
In summary, I believe having strong pillars that everyone in the development team can follow is important for a project to stay on track. So with that said, I can’t wait till all of you get your hands on our interactive action road movie journey.
So what are you waiting for? Wishlist Now.
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