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Pinoy-made giant robot action game ‘Garrison: Archangel’ now on Steam
By MICHAEL LOGARTA“Garrison: Archangel,” a Pinoy-made action game involving giant robots, has just been launched. Both its full version and free demo are available on Steam.
Described by developer Indigo Entertainment as “a love letter from the Philippines to Japan’s robot anime,”
“Garrison: Archangel” has players piloting a range of giant mecha and engaging other robots in stylish, high-octane combat.Players customize their mecha using a diverse selection of robot body parts, firearms, melee weapons, armor, thrusters, ammunition storage, and more. You can even play around with colors, win poses, and gestures.
“Garrison: Archangel” features many modes of play. Arcade and its classic one-on-one brawls will scratch your fighting game itch. Survival drops you into a series of challenging duels. Horde tasks you with eradicating wave after wave of multiple enemies.
The game allows up to 4 friends to play cooperatively against A.I. opponents in split-screen local multiplayer — a mode which can be taken online via Steam Remote Play.
And then there’s the latest addition to the game, Missions. This single-player mode “puts you in the Baja Secunda conflict as a mercenary pilot called a Ghost. Fight or befriend the different factions, earn money, gain fame (or infamy), and unlock new parts and cosmetics!” said Indigo Entertainment.
Secret Wars
Centering on factions and megacorporation manufacturers waging secret wars with each other in what’s known as the Baja Secunda conflict, Missions Mode tasks players with completing an array of unique objectives for various rewards.
“When we set out to make Missions Mode, we made sure that progression and replayability were the primary design principles,” said “Garrison: Archangel” Producer and Lead Designer Paolo Miguel Cabe. “Most of the missions in the game are random and procedurally-generated, but these procedural missions strictly adhere to the rule of a faction benefiting and another being victimized. One will reward and seek to work with the player more often, while the other will hate and try to kill that player.”
By choosing missions, players can support or antagonize a majority of the game’s factions. Favoring factions awards you prestige points and money.
In addition, “allied manufacturers will sell their more powerful equipment to trusted agents, which is how players can unlock new parts and weapons,” said Cabe.
“However, they have to balance that desire with the prospect of having enemy assassins disrupt them during missions, which become progressively more common and worse as they continue to anger enemy factions.”
Enemy mechs and missions become more challenging the more you play Missions. This “helps with the idea of progression and of decisions having consequences… the conflict can turn very ugly if no single faction can seize victory after a certain period of time,” said Cabe.
As such, “no two runs of Missions Mode are exactly the same. To unlock everything, one will have to play several repeat runs of Missions Mode, which also features different endings depending on which of the main factions takes the lead.”
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Mission Mode’s development proved vital to the overall enrichment of “Garrison: Archangel.”
“We added new systems, lore, enemies, maps, equipment and upgrades to bring this game mode to life,” said Cabe. “Much of the new mechanics, features, parts and weapons you can use in the other game modes were actually made for (or as a result of) this new single player mode.”
Forged by the community
Indigo Entertainment is grateful to the community of “Garrison: Archangel” players, as “they are responsible for a huge chunk of the game.”
“(W)e’re a small team with limited resources, and it is thanks to their continued outpouring of support that we have come this far,” said Cabe.
“A lot of the game’s mechanics, features and systems were direct results of suggestions and feedback generated by the community.”
The studio was inspired to develop “Garrison: Archangel’s” most significant feature, Missions Mode, after the game’s Early Access players stated they “wanted a game mode with progression, upgrades and multiple enemies to blow up (as opposed to just one or two opponents).”
The studio also credits the community with encouraging it to develop “the current iteration of the deflection system and the extended vulnerability changes, which give the combat system a more refined and unique experience when compared to prior iterations.”
Indigo Entertainment held numerous robot/weapon design contests and PvP fighting tournaments, the latter producing “data that helped us balance the game and also added ‘champion archangels’ to our roster of preset characters” in addition to new weapons and mecha body types.
“Garrison: Archangel” even features fans’ voices.
“We allowed players and volunteers to send in one-liners and quotes which enemies would scream when they appear and/or die,” said Cabe. “The variety of different voices and quotes really added to the personality and charm of the game.”
Future plans
Indigo Entertainment will continue to support “Garrison: Archangel” via bug fix updates and patches.
“We will still be available to answer questions and talk with players on our community forums and social media,” said Cabe.
Thanks to its expansive universe, “Garrison Archangel” could also be the springboard for other projects.
“Missions Mode barely touches upon a lot of concepts and entities that are key to the setting… A lot of this information is in the codex entries and the emails sent by the different faction heads. Some are written in the lore of weapons and parts. There’s a lot of room for more stories and games in the setting.” — LA, GMA News