Indie Highlight 005: Delivery Must Complete, Zakon

Mind Melting Air Combat, Soviet Future Punk Monster Slaying

Hey howa’ doin, FlyAwayNow here again, bringing you Q and As from the cold dystopian Soviet flavored future past and simultaneously a bombastic delivery simulator. The line between these two being, of course, aerial combat. In one: the enemy is rebellion and monstrous manifestations of creatures more horrible yet than all of the imagery of Christian reckoning. In the other? Drones and dragons and the g-force itself.

We are surrounded by radical dreamers in this genre, building brick by brick new games that bring this genre of arcade flight action, in its wide gradient, to its gameplay ends of explosive, fast-paced, insanity seen only in Touhou or the rebirth of the Boomer Shooter these last few years, or the other side of the Iron Curtain, where order and politics at the End of History are as much of a threat as cancerous beings, bleeding in the streets. 

Here are two of those dreamers:

Yollie, and Misha, of Delivery Must Complete and Zakon.

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Delivery Must Complete

Website Links: Linktree

Who are You?

I'm Yoyoyollie, but I prefer people calling me Yollie. If you call me Yoyo, I will stab you. I'm an Australian gamedev who makes games as a hobby and have been doing so for like, 5-ish years now, all for game jams. I've made 29 games as of now, but currently this game is going to be my 30th.... that is, if I don't end up doing (another) jam in the middle of making this one. You might know me from GMTK 2024 (because I was a winner, Pizzascaper, search it up). I'll do my best to make this game with the skills I learnt from making all those. 

Why are you making your game and this type of game? 

Honestly, the main reason I'm making this game like this is I just feel like I should make a full game by now (lol). A lot of my dev friends are moving from doing jams to making full games and I felt like I should be doing the same, so here I am. This genre in particular because I'm sick and tired of waiting for Ace Combat 8 to release. Though as you might be able to tell, I'm also a big fan of the spectacle of games like Devil May Cry / Ultrakill, plus I also like roguelikes, so I sorta just stuffed all that into the game and it works?

What do you want this game to be?

I absolutely want this game to be fast paced and action packed, as well as having a ton of build variety and depth in its roguelike elements. I mean, I can't be the only one who found Project Wingman's Conquest mode lackluster, right? As I design the game, I realize I'm deviating a lot from traditional acelike design (by that I mean, basically just Ace Combat and games like it) but it lets me have way more freedom in what I can do with the game, so it's a fair tradeoff. Also, I do not want this game to focus on story as much as Ace Combat does, and the story won't ever be nearly as serious. Instead, I want to dedicate all that into the gameplay, because I think a fun game is more important. 

29 Game Jams and games is a lot, what’s your secret?

I just kept making games, every time a Game Jam which seemed interesting came up, I'd join it and give it a shot... which ended up being like, 80 (lol). I only managed to submit to 29. It's not like I had much else to do. The Australian school curriculum doesn't really kick in until the senior years. 

What’s your background? When did you get started making games?

Aside from messing around with scratch when very young, I basically learnt gamedev and programming entirely through game jams. I did originally start gamedev by just straight up following a tutorial series loosely for a month or so, but game jams were what really taught me how to make games. I guess, after practicing making games for jams enough, I just got good at it?

Were you surprised by how much traction Delivery Must Complete, then Cloudbreaker, got when you shared it for the first time?

Not at all, the first time I shared it, it got as much as most of my other twitter posts get. A couple dozen likes and a few retweets (lol). The first reddit post (and later on the first YouTube post) REALLY surprised me though. I literally did not expect the community to have that good of a reaction to the game and was very unprepared for it. Now I’m terrified of filling up the Ace Combat subreddit with posts about Delivery Must Complete instead of Ace Combat (lol). I wonder what the mods will think about that. 

This game used to be called Cloudbreaker, and now it’s Delivery Must Complete. What caused the name change?

Literally a day or two after I put the game up on Steam, another game that was ALSO called Cloudbreaker got put up. The other game's team had been working on their title for longer than mine at that point, so it was just a pure coincidence we both came up with the same name and published the pages at the same time. Anyways, I decided to change the name of my game so we wouldn't sabotage each other's place on search engines (also it gave me an excuse to get a redesign for the old mediocre logo for the game). 

How about inspirations for Delivery Must Complete? You mentioned Ultrakill and Devil May Cry above, but anything else? 

The main inspirations for the game are, of course, Ace Combat, Project Wingman, Ultrakill and Devil May Cry. I also took a lot of inspiration from Afterburner, especially the sheer speed and energy it has. I suppose the roguelike elements of the game are heavily inspired by Backpack Hero and Sephiria, with a little bit of Slay The Spire and Hades on the side. The drift and boost in the game were actually inspired by Mario Kart, funnily enough. I don't actually have a Nintendo Switch, I just thought one day, "oh, that could work in a plane game."

How long do you think a run in Delivery Must Complete can last?

I'm aiming for a full run from an experienced player to last somewhere around 45-60 minutes! There is still a bit of game design that will probably change a lot as I develop the rest of the game though, so it might be longer / shorter by release.

What features make your roguelike experience the way it is?

The biggest feature is the upgrade grid system. It’s difficult to explain through text and it’s still WIP but it allows players to customize and improve on practically every aspect their weapons and aircraft throughout a run. Much deeper than what games like Ace Combat let you do. Aside from that, the fully procedural environments and the Slay The Spire style map are both pretty new to the genre and makes the game feel wildly different between runs.

Why’d you decide to go after this crazy aesthetic for DMC?

It's more like I really don't wanna do realism and stuff like other acelikes do because it takes too much effort. Plus I'm too lazy to draw any textures. This style means I just have to make a couple shaders here and there, and I'm not restrained by having to make things look feasibly realistic. I mean, I do this sorta similar visual style for a lot of my jam games because it's pretty damn fast, so I'm used to it by now -- its gotten to the point where some people I know can tell that I worked on a game just by looking at the VFX... which might mean I have a unique visual style but might also mean I'm not creative enough. Idk. 

You post a lot of new features on your social media, how much more can you possibly have?

I'm lucky enough to be working in a genre which already has crazy ass stuff constantly, and I'm designing the game around having a ton of variety in the content. So literally anything. I'll continue showing them off on socials though, making weird content is always very fun to do 

I don't want to dig too deep but, what's going on as far as story and characters go in DMC? What are we delivering?

The game will have story, characters, but most importantly, planes. No, actually, not that, the most important part of the story is what you're delivering. It's highly confidential but you gotta get it there fast, it tastes way better piping hot!

Is it a pizza?

No comment.

Alright well what's your favorite type of pizza, unrelated to the previous question?

Pineapple.

Nice. Any closing thoughts or things you want to say?

Wishlist the game, RIGHT NOW ON STEAM (https://devilmayfly.com/). PLEASE WISHLIST I BEG YOU. Also join the Discord too if you want.

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ZAKON

Website Links: Itch.io | Steam | X.com |

Who are you?

My name is Misha (or Mishanya). I'm a regular shmegular software developer who is developing Zakon in my free time.

Why are you making your game and this type of game?

The origin story of Zakon is related to Ubisoft but not in a way that you would think. During my last year of University, I applied there for an intern or junior dev and got rejected. One of the reasons was that I didn't have a C++ project in my portfolio (which was true). So, I decided to play around with Unreal Engine and have something in my portfolio.

Because I didn't know any 3D and especially modelling, I decided to go with the flying game because:

• A. I always liked the jets IRL and jet & vehicle games.
  

• B. It was much easier to do, in comparison with the normal 3D human-characters games.

After some time though, the game grew into something much more defined and I decided to try and make it into a real video game.

What do you want this game to be?

Sadly, I didn't know what direction I wanted to take with Zakon for a fat while. That made a lot of the aspects feel incoherent or not well developed all together. Only somewhere late in the development I was able to shape out what Zakon is and what ideas I want to explore with it.

Developing a game, for me, is a way to explore a certain idea or a topic. Usually, I have only one main idea that the whole game is structured upon: from gameplay to the story, UI, sounds, worldbuilding, etc... I've always been fascinated when videogames are using all of the available tools of this media: from the writing and cinematography during the cutscenes, sparkly VFX, gameplay input controls, etc... to the consequences of the player's actions in the world. When everything is being made with the idea of the supporting the main topic.

That being said, the main topic of Zakon is "following orders". Especially now, with so many terrible conflicts in the world, we yet again are faced with the arguments surrounding "I was only following orders". It's easy to judge it while being inside our cozy houses, but it's hard to imagine what it's like to actually be a soldier and receive inhumane orders. Of course, if it were only good vs. evil there would be far fewer questions about that, but I think there are a lot of variables that have a great effect in the decision making and even in knowing that the there is a decision to be made.

In a way, Zakon is just a tool to explore that. Through the game the player will have questionable mission objectives and it's up to the player to decide what to do with them. Not knowing that you can disobey is already a part of this conversation. You complete the orders? Great! The UI is going crazy in the affirmation of your actions and here, have some cool new shiny upgrades that are fun to use. You accidentally helped the protestors? Careful, your Social Score has been decreased and who knows what happens when it goes too low? Better keep it high and healthy. And the people and the officers are shaming you? Not good. You helped to stop the protests? Yay, people are cheering and happy, right? They must be happy if they are cheering?

I don't want to sound all this artsy-housy pretentious guy. I'm not trying to hide it under layers of deep meanings. On the contrary, I just think we kinda lack some simple games with silly gameplay and a topic that is somewhat easy to access and digest.

What are some inspirations for Zakon?

I've been thinking about it for a lot but honestly, I don't think that there are many inspirations. Obviously, I take a lot of visual inspiration from Evangelion, Gundam, old PS2/PS1 games. But nothing in particular.

The most "influential" were real events, such as protests in Belarus and in Russia. In both countries, after the big protests and the start of the war, there was a trend of policemen burning their uniform on video. Some of them got arrested and are still in jail AFAIK. I would say this is one of the big questions that I want to explore and maybe find an answer to in Zakon.

Zakon can be a bit intimidating to get into, so, just for a short summary, what is the world of Zakon?

The world of Zakon is somewhat based on the real world which had quite a few historical turns during the 19th century. 

The game takes place in the capital of a country called Krasnogorie. It's an exaggerated high-tech world with old problems. I often find myself calling it "futuristic soviet punk" to give it a simple and short explanation.

I've played Zakon, and it's not exactly the easiest, or most traditional of "flight" games. Do you intend it to be a harder experience?

Yes, that's one of the biggest hurdles of Zakon. There is a lot to this question, but ultimately it comes down to the trade-offs of what I want from the game and what a player will experience. 

From a conceptual point of view, Zakon is on the harder side:

1. Much more dense map

2. Non-trivial navigation

3. Big boss fights

Due to the high density of the city, I had to modify the controls to the extreme in comparison with other flight games. However, this led to a lot of frustration for the players because it doesn't feel right at the beginning. Especially if they have little experience with flight games. I received a lot of feedback from the demo about it, tried a bunch of different methods, but sadly I couldn't get anything to work properly to give the same feeling and level of control.

But also there is another big point to it - my abilities. The game is clearly unpolished and lacking some of the basic QOL features. Buuuut I'm still relatively new to game development and due to the lack of experience I might not even know how to make something feel better. 

That being said, the game fundamentally has a level of difficulty which I wanted. I will work on improving it and adding QOL features but I doubt I will make it easier, hopefully less frustrating though.

How much farther do you have to go in development before 1.0?

Ah, the famous question...

And the famous answer is - hopefully not a lot.

All the main things are more or less completed: all the missions are done, most of the cutscenes are done, the main systems are done, etc... So, the roadmap would be something like:

1. Finish all the endings

2. Improve QOL

3. Localization

4. UI fixes

5. Sound fixes

6. OST coherence

7. Fix what needs to be fixed

8. Balance changes

9. Performance optimization

Any closing thoughts or things you want to say?

Thank you for the opportunity to speak about Zakon. I really feel grateful that my little game could bring so much attention. I appreciate everybody for their support and thank you to all who played the demo. I did not expect myself to be an indie developer and definitely did not expect Zakon to reach this level. I'm enjoying the ride and, with all the flying games that are being baked right now, am excited about the future of this genre.

And remember: war bad, jets rad.

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About the Interviewer

Matthew "FlyAwayNow" Nguyen

Artwork by alice (@atrousyolks)

Producer, writer, incidentally personified online as a rooster. One of the three main developers of Project Wingman and now working across the board on several other combat flight videogames, audioplays, podcasts, and books. Advocate for indie creators, fanfiction, and critical analysis of what you love. [Bluesky / Linkedin / X.com]