Interview & Gallery: Robo-Shambo

"What the heck's a Robo-Shambo?!" you ask? Nooooo, it's not some sort of newfangled "European-style" late-night infomercial room cleaning device ("This is Vince for Robo Shambo!"), nor is it a wacky YouTube mash up of RoboCop and Rambo (although, that would be pretty darn hilarious seeing a metal-clad Stallone clanking around blowing holes in evil, evil men with .20 caliber rounds... "Adriaaaaaaaaaan!!!").

Robo-Shambo is in fact, a game project by GearSphere, a small team of 17 young programmers and artists up at the Art Institute of Vancouver. The game is a a third person six-player LAN shooter (set for release on September 14, 2009) coded using Microsoft's XNA Framework, which could mean a potential Xbox LIVE release down the road. And all this time you probably thought all they did in up in Vancouver was watch hockey, be Canadian and get free health care...

Carina Kom, the team's Project Manager, took time out to answer a few brief questions about the project, her obsession with the big boat she'll buy with her share of the game's royalties and her amazing collection of sealed jars of Nutella. OK, she only talked about the game, but I figured I'd beef up her profile a tiny bit to make her seem more like other big-shot project managers I've met in the games industry. It IS an important job, y'know...

Greg Wilcox: Does Robo-Shambo have a story, or is it a simpler "hop in and play" experience?

Carina Kom: To be brief, the story takes place in a future where soldiers have been replaced by Robots. There are two big companies (Cybernetics for Society and Cyber Soldiers, Inc.) that provide these Robots for fighting. In an effort to take out the competition, they have decided to destroy each other using Robots. Now the players take control of the Robots and run amok in the destruction.

GW: Is there a single player tutorial or other mode new players can jump into to learn things?

CK: Robo-Shambo is fairly straightforward and plays like any FPS (W, A, S, D, left click, right click). We did not implement a single player mode, players just jump into a multiplayer match via LAN.

GW: How many maps will the game have in total and what sort of environments can players expect?

CK: There are three maps in total. Players can expect futuristic levels (space ships, etc, etc...)

GW: What sort of system requirements does Robo-Shambo require and for the FPS junkies out there, what's the game running at?

CK: The system requirements aren't very demanding and the game should run on any computer (in other words, I'll have to get back to you on that one!). One of our programmers quoted me 40 frames per second on average for game speed over a LAN connection.

GW: How will the game be distributed and are there any plans to submit it to Microsoft for possible XBLA consideration?

CK: There is some talk about getting Robo-Shambo up onto XBLA, more information will be released as we draw closer to the release date.

Sounds good to me (although now, I'm curious as to whether or not Carina actually even likes boats or Nutella). Actually, Kom's true ambitions are to eventually enter the game industry as a game or level designer and hopefully work on a AAA product with a long-term goal of working her way up to a management position (where boats and Nutella are bonuses, from what I hear).

Here are some screenshots and wallpaper images from the game:

We'll have more on Robo-Shambo as the game nears its release date - stay tuned.