Updated 13 Feb, 2012, 10:53 am IST

An Interview With Unknown Worlds

29 May, 2007, 4:25 pm IST | Nikhil Singh

We speak to the designer of Natural Selection, Charlie Cleveland...

To be brutally honest, a few years ago, LAN gaming in India was a total bummer. Your standard Indian LAN gamer was a rigid Counter-Strike or Warcraft III whore who’d shut himself out from all the other awesome games out there. Sick and tired of playing the same bull over and over again, me and my crew were on the lookout for a new game – something more intense and strategy oriented, that would still retain the action and fun of a shooter. Our search ended when we stumbled upon an awesome Half-Life mod called Natural Selection that was developed by a small independent developer known as Unknown Worlds. The game was an instant hit in the cyber caf� we gamed at, 'cos it gave us the best of both worlds – strategy and first-person shooters.

When Half-Life 2 and the Source Engine released, the first thing that came to mind was Natural Selection 2. We finally got an opportunity to interview the game’s designer Charlie Cleveland, and asked him a little about their upcoming standalone game – Natural Selection 2, and here is what we found out …

How far into development is Natural Selection 2, can you give us a rough release date?

Right now we're still in "pre-production". We're creating tools and processes that will speed our development and prototyping the basic game mechanics to prove some of our new gameplay ideas. We're also updating our web site to help us get game information and progress out more easily.

Also, we're creating a base set of materials and map props which we will give out to the public before the release of the game in order to kick-start the mapping community. We did this with the first Natural Selection and it worked great; we had tons of great maps to choose from when we shipped v1.0. We're doing the same thing this time around, though because we're selling Natural Selection 2 (over Steam), we will be paying mappers for the maps that we choose to include with the game. This is going to be a great opportunity for budding level designers to get their work in a shipping game that many people will see and play.

We've learned our lesson about giving release dates. We want to make the best game we possibly can, so we that means we don't have a deadline. I wish I could tell you more! It won't be years though.

Tags: Unknown Worlds , Natural Selection , Charlie Cleveland