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''Rymdkapsel'' is a 2013
minimalist In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...
real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a Video game genre, subgenre of strategy video games that does not progress incrementally in turn-based game, turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time." By contrast, in Turn-based strategy, tur ...
video game by
indie developer An indie video game or indie game (short for independent video game) is a video game created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A ...
Grapefrukt, the studio of Martin Jonasson. Players build a
space station A space station (or orbital station) is a spacecraft which remains orbital spaceflight, in orbit and human spaceflight, hosts humans for extended periods of time. It therefore is an artificial satellite featuring space habitat (facility), habitat ...
using
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pieces while managing resources and minions, defending against attacks, and extending the base towards four monoliths at the edges of the
level Level or levels may refer to: Engineering *Level (optical instrument), a device used to measure true horizontal or relative heights * Spirit level or bubble level, an instrument designed to indicate whether a surface is horizontal or vertical *C ...
. The game was built over a year and a half and was inspired by the base-building aspects of the ''
Command & Conquer ''Command & Conquer'' (''C&C'') is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game franchise created and originally developed by Westwood Studios and currently owned by Electronic Arts. The first game was one of the earliest of the RTS genre, itself ba ...
'' series. It was Jonasson's first full game as an indie developer. ''Rymdkapsel'' was released on May 7, 2013, for PlayStation Mobile, and was later ported to
iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...
, Android,
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,
OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
, and
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. Reviewers gave the game generally favorable reviews, where they appreciated its simplicity and challenge, but not its brevity and slow start.


Gameplay

Players build a
space station A space station (or orbital station) is a spacecraft which remains orbital spaceflight, in orbit and human spaceflight, hosts humans for extended periods of time. It therefore is an artificial satellite featuring space habitat (facility), habitat ...
on a flat plane using
tetromino A tetromino is a geometric shape composed of four squares, connected orthogonally (i.e. at the edges and not the corners). Tetrominoes, like dominoes and pentominoes, are a particular type of polyomino. The corresponding polycube, called a tetra ...
-shaped floors that represent rooms. Rectangular workers generate the resources to build more spaces by working in these rooms. The workers occasionally must defend the base against attackers, who come in waves of increasing difficulty. The player can have the workers research four TMA-1-style monoliths for additional shield, speed, and generator upgrades. Rooms are used for special purposes: mineral mining (extractors), growing food (gardens), cooking it (kitchens), making workers (quarters), and creating power (reactors). The goal is to flourish and protect the station's inhabitants, but there are three concrete objectives: research all four monoliths, survive 28 waves, and research all monoliths in under 45 minutes. The game ends if all workers are killed. There is a tutorial, but no story. The player is not specifically told about the endgame goals.


Development

In 2012, Grapefrukt developer Martin Jonasson began to make a space station game that considered what he found enjoyable and least stressful about real-time strategy games. The game coalesced as he revised and removed features over the course of its year and a half of development. ''Rymdkapsel'' was written in
Haxe Haxe is a high-level cross-platform programming language and compiler that can produce applications and source code for many different computing platforms from one code-base. It is free and open-source software, released under an MIT License. ...
, a programming language similar to
ActionScript 3 ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meani ...
that let Jonasson use the same code base for
iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...
, Android, and PC releases. He had used the language for years and had been making games for 20 years, primarily with
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. Jonasson left his web development job in 2010 to "go indie", and ''Rymdkapsel'' was his "first full-time game". The game's name translates as "
space capsule A space capsule is a spacecraft designed to transport cargo, scientific experiments, and/or astronauts to and from space. Capsules are distinguished from other spacecraft by the ability to survive reentry and return a payload to the Earth's surfa ...
" in the
Swedish language Swedish ( ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language from the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family, spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland. It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it the G ...
, which Jonasson liked as a title for its uniqueness and foreign overtones, though he acknowledged that the name was difficult for English speakers and made the game hard to find in the App Store. He began the game after the 2012
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as a weeklong diversion from another project, and slowly iterated into a full version. Jonasson started to prototype a game about a space station with a hull breach that releases the station's occupants into outer space. Within a day, he built a feature where players could build the station using
tetromino A tetromino is a geometric shape composed of four squares, connected orthogonally (i.e. at the edges and not the corners). Tetrominoes, like dominoes and pentominoes, are a particular type of polyomino. The corresponding polycube, called a tetra ...
blocks. He liked this direction better than the hull breach, and abandoned the latter idea by the end of prototyping. He built the room construction mechanics within a day, and to make the construction more challenging, later added three different resources to be spent towards room construction. When the resources did not "look as interesting" as he wanted, he added minions to defend the station. The minions—shown as small white boxes—have retained their original design. It is an example of the minimalist design theme that pervades the work. Jonasson has said that he kept the
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"a bit stupid on purpose" (doing things such as stealing food intended for other minions) because he found their actions "a bit adorable". He otherwise removed the features he felt were not vital to the game. Jonasson then added "conflict" to the game by putting the minions in danger of being removed. If he ever got stuck visually, he would turn on ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' until he got some inspiration. Jonasson's game design was inspired by
real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a Video game genre, subgenre of strategy video games that does not progress incrementally in turn-based game, turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time." By contrast, in Turn-based strategy, tur ...
game ''
Command & Conquer ''Command & Conquer'' (''C&C'') is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game franchise created and originally developed by Westwood Studios and currently owned by Electronic Arts. The first game was one of the earliest of the RTS genre, itself ba ...
'', where he enjoyed managing his home base but not attacking the enemy. He designed the game to last 45 minutes, which he felt to be a proper length, whereupon the difficulty ramps up to require station defense over base construction. He felt that it was reasonable to reach all four monoliths within that time to be ready for the endgame sequence, and that the limit made players expand outwards rather than keeping the station small and easy to defend. The sole
map A map is a symbolic depiction of interrelationships, commonly spatial, between things within a space. A map may be annotated with text and graphics. Like any graphic, a map may be fixed to paper or other durable media, or may be displayed on ...
is hand-balanced, which made him reluctant to fulfill player requests to randomize it. He also considered adding a "zen" mode, which would pressure the player less. The music was composed by Niklas Ström. The game was released on May 7, 2013, for
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and PlayStation Mobile. It was later included as a prize for completing "quests" in a
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promotion. It is available on Android via the PlayStation Mobile app. The
iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...
and Android releases were released on July 25, 2013.
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
,
OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
, and
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
versions were released on January 30, 2014.


Reception

The game received "generally favorable" reviews, according to video game review score aggregator
Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
. Critics compared ''Rymdkapsel'' gameplay to ''
Tetris ''Tetris'' () is a puzzle video game created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer. In ''Tetris'', falling tetromino shapes must be neatly sorted into a pile; once a horizontal line of the game board is filled in, it disa ...
'' and ''
SimCity ''SimCity'' is an open-ended city-building video game franchise originally designed by Will Wright. The first game in the series, '' SimCity'', was published by Maxis in 1989 and was followed by several sequels and many other spin-off ''S ...
''. Of its visual style, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' published that the game makes others in the
real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a Video game genre, subgenre of strategy video games that does not progress incrementally in turn-based game, turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time." By contrast, in Turn-based strategy, tur ...
genre "feel needlessly garnished". Reviewers generally appreciated the game's simplicity and challenge, but not its brevity and slow start.
IGN ''IGN'' is an American video gaming and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa district and is headed by its former e ...
's Steve Watts thought that the game made too many "design concessions" to its minimalism, though he considered the style "gorgeous", and felt that he was never fully in control of his base. ''
Eurogamer ''Eurogamer'' is a British video game journalism website launched in 1999 alongside parent company Gamer Network. In 2008, it started in the formerly eponymous trade fair EGX (Eurogamer Expo until 2013) organised by its parent company. Fr ...
'' Tom Bramwell said that the game's minimalism extended to its core gameplay, where the player should strive to "play the game less and less". Joseph Leray of ''
TouchArcade ''TouchArcade'' (stylized as toucharcade) is a mobile games journalism website. It was launched in 2008 as a sister site of ''MacRumors'' by its founder Arnold Kim and Blake Patterson. ''TouchArcade'' also hosts a forum and a weekly podcast. ...
'' described the game's
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and pacing as "impeccable". He gave ''Rymdkapsel'' a perfect score and wrote that it felt as if it were custom-made for iOS. Bryan Vore of ''
Game Informer ''Game Informer'' (''GI'' is an American monthly Video game journalism, video game magazine featuring articles, news, strategy, and reviews of video games and video game console, game consoles. It debuted in August 1991, when the video game reta ...
'' criticized the game's lack of features and thought that it "fizzled out with no fanfare" as a "creative" idea but without sufficient "polish". ''
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''s Trent Wolbe called the soundtrack "a minimalist achievement". Jonasson announced that the game had sold 200,000 copies as of December 2, 2013, due in large part to its inclusion in a
Humble Bundle Humble Bundle, Inc. is a digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Humble Bundles, collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and ...
sale.


See also

*'' Twofold Inc.'', game by the same developer


References


External links

* {{Official website, http://rymdkapsel.com
Official soundtrack
2013 video games Android (operating system) games Indie games IOS games Linux games MacOS games PlayStation Vita games PlayStation Network games Real-time strategy video games Video games developed in Sweden Windows games